Jumble House Art, painting, Printmaking, Modelling for young children, Crafts for kids, Sunday Challenge, Uncategorized

Fun with Autumn Leaves

There are SO many things you can do with Autumn leaves!

First go our and ENJOY them. Let the kids have fun crushing them under foot, jumping in the. Throwing them in the air. Watch. Listen. It’s a fun way to learn so many new words. How do they feel? Which words describe the sounds they make? How many colours can you see?

Then collect and press some in old magazines .

Then they can be used to make spoon people or table decorations or collages or beautiful lamps.

Preparation 

It’s a good idea to take an old book out with you when you go collecting because fallen leaves curl up very quickly. If you take a book then you can slip the leaves between the pages.  Then, on returning home, the book can be placed under something heavy or between other books on the bookshelf until you are ready the use the leaves.

On today’s programme (click on the link below) you will see how to make models and pictures and a lantern but there are lots more things you can do and there will be more ideas in our next programme. The programme is designed to inspire and motivate young children and is introduced by the JUMBLES puppets. Watch it together and then …have fun!

                        Click here for the AUTUMN LEAVESg programme


Jumble House Challenges, Children, Crafts for kids, Early Learning, Fine Motor Skills, PreSchool

Hands!

Hands may look boring but just look what you can make with them!

Link to video with activities

With a little practice, young children given a chunky pencil, felt tip or crayon can draw around their hand. They will find it even easier to draw round yours.

The outlines can then be coloured or patterned and cut out to,make collages or funny people, creatures, trees or flowers. There’s no end to the creativity.

Older children can be challenged to find a different way to texture each of the fingers.

Progress from drawing round a normal hand-spread to moving some of the fingers to suggest dogs, rabbits etc. Just like when you use your hands to make shadows on the wall.

This is a fun family activity which can be adapted to suit all ages and abilities.

It improves hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills and creative thinking.

Jumble House celebrations, Crafts for kids, Creativity, Easter, Easter crafts, Learning for young children

Making dyes from onion skins

Adult supervision required.

Easter is close and everyone is busy with the usual Easter crafts. Coloured eggs is one of the most popular but very predictable!

Today we made our own dyes by boiling onion skins. We used red skins and predicted that the egg shells would be red. They came out more purple but maybe they would have been red if we had used eggs with white shells. That’s something you can find out!

We cracked the shells of some of the eggs before putting them in the dye to make ‘spider man’ eggs. Again our prediction was that we would have a network of spidery red lines but that wasn’t the case!

There was dye left over so we used it to tie dye a white handkerchief.

Then we tried dying pieces of other material to see which took up the dye, always predicting first what we thought would happen.

Last but not least we looked at some pieces of onion skin through a magnifying glass.

Some very interesting discussion arose from the questions asked during all this work with eggs.

Why do chickens come out of some eggs but not others?

Why do we give eggs at Easter?

Why are eggs and chicks symbolic of springtime?

Why do eggs have shells shells?

Why don’t we lay eggs?

It’s fun trying something new!

CLICK HERE FOR THE PROGRAMME VIDEO

Jumble House celebrations, Crafts for kids, Creativity, Easter, Easter crafts, entertainment

Spider-Man Eggs

Link to video instructions

A fun activity which can be adapted to suit all ages.

We always recommend adult supervision.

Uses shaving foam, food colours, hard boiled eggs. We definitely advise wearing disposable gloves unless you don’t mind your fingers looking like the eggs themselves!

We use hard boiled cracked eggs.  The colour can’t penetrate the shell but stains the egg white because it, like your fingers, is a protein! Thus the spidery pattern.

The unde-fives will love playing with the shaving foam.

Older children will take up the challenge to try out different ways to colour the eggs.  Onion skins are good. (Boil them in a little water before adding the cracked eggs.) Frozen fruits of the forest and  fresh berries give varying degrees of pink and purple. (Simply leave the cracked hard boiled eggs in the fruit mixture overnight)

Everyone will find the video fun!

Please note that the colouring does fade so if you want them for Easter morning don’t make until the day before and then peel on Easter Day.

Jumble House Crafts for kids, Fun Learning for Young Children, Learning through Play, Music

Balloon Drum

Easy and fun.

Bought musical instruments for young children are very colourful and adaptable but you can’t beat helping your child to make a musical instrument and a good first one is a drum.

I made this one it’s my little granddaughter from a burst balloon and a coffee mug but an empty canister would do just a# well. She played with it for ages. We tried out different drumsticks, wooden spoon, metal spoon, chopstick, paintbrush and achieved very different sounds. Then I clapped out simple rhythm patterns and she tried to copy.

Then all the toys arrived and had a go! It was great fun and that’s where learning starts , with play.

Jumble House Crafts for kids, Creativity, Festivals, Halloween

The March of the Spiders! 


Another fun craft for Halloween.

These spiders are quick and easy to make and are great for decoration and for giving to children at the end of a Halloween party.

They are a bit bottom heavy so don’t hang well but look great on a web!

I made the web below from a hoop .  You could spray the hoop silver or wrap it in fabric or crepe paper before making the web but I  didn’t bother because it won’t be noticeable by the time I’ve filled it with spiders!


It’s better to make the web from string or a strong wool.  A flimsy web will not secure the spiders. The hoop can then be placed on a wall but I think it’s more effective hung from the ceiling or a doorway. That way you can fill both sides with spiders and it will look really cool spinning round.

Do secure with a dab of glue, the points where the wool wraps round the diagonals otherwise your web will very quickly deteriorate!  I need to do this with mine before I put any more spiders on!

What do you need?

Very little! Each spider uses four pipe cleaners, two eyes and a Chupa Chups lolly. That’s all.

It’s so easy that’s there’s really no need for instructions. The only thing you need to remember is to lie all four pipe cleaners together side by side and wrap then round the lolly stick together tightly. If you try to do it one at a time it’s fiddly  and you will probably get in a mess! You can use a blob of glue to secure.  The eyes are stuck on with glue too. It is possible to cut the sticks a little shorter if you feel they protrude too much.

Jumble House Autumn, Crafts for kids, Fun Learning for Young Children, Learning through Play, nature

Autumn Garden

Kids love gardens and one like this is so fun to make and takes virtually no maintenance apart from watering. They will really enjoy making new items for the garden and changing the theme as the seasons change.

It is a very good way of teaching about plants and germination and seasons plus they will hopefully develop a sense of responsibility caring for their little garden.

We don’t have a garden so I created this on a patch of tarmac at the bottom of the steps.

I simply laid a sheet of plastic over the tarmac raised up around the borders on bricks. This made a hollow in the centre which I filled with compost.

I planted a mixture of real and artificial plants . Some planted directly into the compost. Others in small plant pots.

The garden was made in the spring and has survived high winds, rain, drought and temps. of 40+

Last week I changed the theme to Autumn by adding lots of fir cones, dry leaves and little Veggie characters.

Jumble House crafts, Crafts for kids, Fun Learning for Young Children, Halloween

Make a Fun Spider Decoration

Here’s a fun activity for families. Please note that the finished ‘Spider’ does contain small parts and so is not suitable for small children.

This spider can be dangled from a thread or used as a magnet!! It is incredibly resilient . I know that because I still have one hung outside from last year’s Halloween!

It’s quick, easy, cheap and fun to make. Kids love them and I have groups of 6 and 7 year olds making them easily by just watching me or this video. A great idea for a Halloween Party activity.

Please remember that Jumble Fun does advise adult supervision for all its activities..

Jumble House Books, Crafts for kids, Learning through Play

Make a Jumble Tuft


Make your own little Jumble Tuft puppets and have fun making up and telling stories with them.  They can also be used to decorate backpacks. They are quick, cheap and easy to make like all the ‘Jumbles’ toys and the basic ones don’t require any stitching.  One pair of coloured tights will make about four little Jumble Tufts.  I make the hats and little shoes from a contrasting colour of tights stuffed with cotton wool and secured with rubber bands or tiny hair elastic. I make the arms from pipe-cleaners so the Jumble Tufts can hold objects.  Inserting magnets into the hat, feet or body opens up even more opportunities. 

To use them as puppets a chopstick or wooden skewer can be inserted through a tiny hole in the back of the Jumble Tuft. To make it secure smear a tiny bit of glue on the tip of the skewer before inserting. 


Watch this video to see them in action as ‘Santa’s little helpers’ last Christmas. 

SANTAS LITTLE HELPERS
Once you have made a basic model then have fun designing your own Jumble Tuft characters. Just change the colour, the shape, the kind of hat, the legs, the size or type of bobble eyes .

In this video Georgie Jumble shows you how to make a very basic model.  Then you can have lots of fun adding your own features. 

Make your own Jumble Tuft

Books featuring the Jumble Tufts are available as ebooks on Amazon : My books

 ……….    and as paperbacks from Jumble House. Quite soon you will also be able to purchase them from this website. 
  

Jumble House Art, painting, Printmaking, Modelling for young children, Crafts for kids, Learning through Play, Toddler crafts

Crayon Melt Fun


Melting crayon art is not just for older children.

With support even toddlers will be able to produce fun pictures and they will also learn a little about melting and colour mixing. 

A Small, light hairdryer, a canvas board and a few crayons are all that is needed.

I’ve found that keeping the paper on the crayons and sticking them to the board makes the job much more manageable for Tinies. Then they, and you, can concentrate on the important part – the melting.  Cellotape or glue can be used to secure the crayons. 

 Make sure surfaces are protected! It can be messy! 

The idea is to keep the hairdryer pointing downwards onto the crayon. Tilt the board slightly.  When the crayon first starts to melt it sprays a little in all directions and then will start to trickle downwards .  Once there is a stream of each colour then the fun begins!  The board can be tilted in different directions so causing the colour  streams to cross and mix. 

Once the child is familiar with the technique it’s  fun to experiment. Obstacles can be stuck on the board to send the melted crayon in different directions or a picture can be painted on the hoard beforehand so the melted crayon looks like a fountain or fire or volcano.  

 Above:  a card cut out can be glued to the board so the crayon covers the cutout making it look like the little people are under a multicoloured fountain.  

Less is best! Children usually want to keep going and going until all the crayon has melted and mixed.  The result? Usually a muddy mess! Should you stop them? No!  We know that mixing too many colours together makes well, a pretty yuck colour. They don’t! 

It’s much better for them to find out themselves.  This is the way they learn.  


What you can do is to suggest taking photos at different stages and then discussing them later.  Which did they like best? Which colours worked best?  How would they change what they did? Would using fewer colours be best! 

With a toddler I would suggest using very small. Rayons or break longer ones in half.  That way the melting time is halved and the mess! 

The video below is a fun introduction for very young children to crayon melting. 

FUN CRAYON MELTING 

Below: grated crayons! 


Another fun way with crayon melts. 

This works well with a simple black or grey painting or drawing on canvas. Here we’ve used trees. 

Grate the choice of crayons onto newspaper. Place the canvas picture (face side down) on top of the crayons. Then blow hot air at the underside of the canvas.