Salaric

I made this card to show to my scouts an alternative to making spooky halloween things. I got the purple card and the sequins on the card, not to mention the PVA glue, from the Big Box of Spooky Crafts.

I picked out three black star sequins, three metallic orange butterflies sequins, one black circle sequin, two metallic orange three dimensional flower sequins and four metallic green sequins. I then arranged the sequins into a pattern I liked and glued them in place. If you look at the picture you will notice that I stuck one of the flowers onto the black circle, I think this gave a nice effect. Also the purple worked well with the orange and green metallic sequins.

A planisphere is a device for working out where the planets and constellations are going to be in the sky and as I was doing the Astronomy badge with my Scouts I felt we should make one. So I printed two circles: one of them has all the constellations that are easily recognisable from the northern hemisphere and the other is slightly bigger and has the months round it.

I printed the two circles onto two different pieces of paper and then got the children to cut around the star circle. The second larger circle with the dates on it needed the middle cut out which was a bit more tricky and we had to help a few of them with it. 

We then put each of the two pieces of planisphere in a separate laminating pouch each and put them through the laminating machine.

We then cut out the circles again but not the inside bit of the date circle. We made a hole in the middle of both discs using blue tac and a compass point. In the holes that we made we pushed a split pin through and opened it out at the back. Now we could rotate the discs and we had a working planisphere. 

I have been working on the Astromomy and Astronautics badge with my Scout group and to go with the Coloured Card Solar System, I got them to all make these pom pom comets.

For this you need:

• Medium sized pom poms in various colours

• Crepe paper in assorted colours

• String

• Scissors

• Glue or tape

Basically we cut crepe paper into strips which they attached to the pom pom to represent the comets’ trail; some of the kids added secondary tails at different angles. We then tied or threaded the string around or through the pom pom.

They then ran round the hall whirling them round their heads to make the ‘comets’ orbit them; the tails fluttered in a pleasing manner 🙂 and only one ended up in the rafters.

I have been doing the Astronomy and Astronuatics badges with my scout group and as part of it felt that they needed to understand what was in the solar system and where so I made a solar system out of card which they had to put in order.

I then got them to add the things that were missing such as the asteroid belt and comets! Some of them made their own version of it to take home.

For the planets Neptune and Uranus I cut out one green circle and one blue circle, and one blue and one green oval that were about twice as wide as the discs. I then drew a smaller ellipse in the ovals – these touched the top line so when I cut them out it left two ‘broken rings’. Uranus and Neptune are the two smaller gaseous planets and have rings, they tend to both be sort of icy colours so I decided to reverse the colours. They also have rings but this is a relatively recent discovery.

Using pritt stick glue I stuck the rings on with the ‘broken’ bit of the ring behind the planet. This gave them a sense of perspective and helps you to visualise that the ring goes around the planets.

For Saturn I drew a larger yellow circle and cut out an orange ring. Saturn and Jupiter are the larger gaseous planets and tend to be the more warm colours, Saturn is also famous for its rings!

I glued the ring in place on Jupiter.

I then wanted to add in the stripey type banding that you see on these planets – this is their atmosphere and how it moves about. I chose brown for this and drew a circle the same size as the yellow circle I had initially used for the planet. I then cut it out. Once I had the brown circle I cut sections and bands from it and stuck them on the planet. I should have done this before I stuck the ring on but never mind!

For Jupiter I took a sheet of orange paper that had a pattern of smudgy red lines on it; these represent the storm belts on the planet. I then simply cut out a yellow oval for the ‘red spot’ a storm that has been raging for a stupid length of time and which is very big. I know it’s called the red spot but it doesn’t look that red to me and a red oval didn’t actually look right on the orange and red card.

For Earth, which is one of the small inner rocky or terrestrial planets, I drew a small circle on some pale blue card. I then cut out some green card in roughly continent shapes and put white card on the two poles – to represent the ice sheets – though if warming continues I may have to revise the planet.

I cut small circles out of red card for Mars, orange with red smudges for Venus and brown for Mercury. I then covered Mars and Mercury in glitter from glitter pens and 3D paint. Red for Mars, silver and gold for Mercury.

For the Sun which is the star at the centre of our solar system I drew the largest circle on yellow card with orange smudgy lines on it.  I then cut triangles around the circle to represent the heat rays and light coming off instead of just cutting around the circle (the foot belongs to my little girl who was ‘helping’).

I then used gold and bronze glitter pens and yellow and red 3D paint pens to decorate the sun.

The scouts added in moons and asteroids which was fun, oh and Pluto which is still being argued about but is considered a plutonian object now rather than a planet or asteroid. Or was last time I checked!

If you made the planets double sided I think you could make a lovely planetary mobile out of them!

Paper Leaf

A while ago we went to Cheltenham museum and as part of one of the exhibits the children could make leaves to hang on a tree. My husband made this leaf with our two year old.

He started off with a green circle of waxy tissue paper and folded an edge into the middle so that part of the edge was on the other edge of the circle, then he folded it in half and cut out a crescent shape. This left a leaf shape. Whilst it was folded in half he folded out from the middle crease, which represented the main middle vein in the leaf. The folds were at an angle and he only made the folds/creases ‘hard’ by running his finger over them near the main vein. This gave the leaf its characteristic shape.

The idea of these leaves was to put them on a ‘alphabet’ tree with something written on them, but I think with different greens it would be a good project to make for summer mobiles and you could even get some twisty twigs to act as a tree to hang the leaves on. Alter the colours to include yellows, oranges, reds and browns and you could have fun with some sort of autumn tree.

Last year I gave the scouts some sheets of different coloured card, stick on red and orange gems in various sizes, stencils of cars and boats, and various colouring pencils and pens. Here are the fathers day cards they produced. Some of the fathers had birthdays around that time so some of the kids made joint cards for the two occasions. They also had some sheets of felt that I had picked up in the Pound Shop; the glues they used were PVA white craft glue and pritt stick.

Apologies for the state of the photograph, I had forgotten to take the camera with me and this particular one was taken on my husband’s phone.

I made this princess hat with my two year old for a Prince and Princesses week they were having at her nursery, mainly because I had left the little princess/fairy dress she’d been given for Christmas at my parents’ house and therefore had nothing to make her into a princess. The idea behind the hat was that it was one of those big pointy jobs with the material train coming out of it.

We used one paper doily, PVA craft glue, and little carousel horses and hearts I had stamped out of wrapping paper from presents and coloured envelopes from Christmas and birthday cards we’d been sent. We also used masking tape; scissors; purple, gold, iridescent blue, pink and silver glitter paint pens; gold and red twisted cord; and pink silky fabric offcuts from a dress my mother had made about five years previously!

I the started off by folding the doily in half and half again so that I ended up with it divided into four equal quarters. Whilst folded up it looked like a ‘pizza slice’, which I cut the tip off. Once unfolded the doily now had a hole in the very middle of it.

I then cut a slit up to the hole from the frilly edge, and slipped one side of the doily underneath the other and moved it all around until it made a cone. I used a strip of masking tape to secure it in place (I put one strip on the inside of the cone as well to make it more secure).

I then gave the hat, drizzled in PVA white craft glue, to my two year old daughter along with the paper shapes and some offcuts of the red and gold twisted cord. She proceeded to put the shapes on the hat or to give me some specific ones to stick on for her.

Once bored of this she picked out the colours she wanted from our glitter pen collection and proceeded to squeeze glitter all over it. I did have to help her with some of the glitter pens as they need to be squeezed harder than she was capable of.

For the train I selected the pink silky material offcuts I had, and presented them to Jean for her to pick her favourite. I then cut out a rough isosceles triangle.

Once the glitter and glue were dry enough I pushed the point of the triangle of material through the hole in the top of the cone.

I then cut two lengths of red and gold cord and tied them to the sides of the hat as a strap to tie under her chin.

I made this castle with my two year old for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how we did it over three posts; this is the last one of the posts. In order they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

We used a silver craft/poster paint and pots of yellow, orange and black paint we had picked up in Tesco’s. We also had a mixing pot, a water pot, one large children’s paint brush and one small children’s paint brush, plus some tissue to blot spills up! We also had a plastic mat on the floor to work on and a painting apron on the two year old. 🙂

We mixed the paint, which was mostly the silver paint with a little bit of black in it, as well as varying amounts of the yellow and orange in it.

We didn’t completely mix it up as we wanted a nice stony, mottled texture. We then painted the castle.

Obviously, with the uneven texture of the tissue castle, I had to go over it at the end, making sure all of it was covered in the paint. I also attempted to make sure the inside of the towers were painted.

Whilst I was doing this, Jean was washing the brushes out rather militantaly.

We then left it to dry.

Once it had dried I made up a 3:1 PVA glue to water mix, which I painted onto the castle to seal it. This did, however, make the paint run slightly which didn’t really matter with the texture we were hoping for. But it still makes me wonder if I should have mixed the PVA glue with the paint in the first place and reduced the amount of drying time that we had.

I made this castle with my two year old daughter for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. For ease, I have split up how we did it over three posts – this being the middle one, they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

I started off with the above masking tape and cardboard castle and then used watered down PVA white craft glue, tissue or loo roll, a baking tray, tin foil and an oven.

Jean helped unravel and rip up the toliet paper, a task which she enjoyed greatly. This resulted in some frustration at the end when I said we’d finished making the castle. She asked to make another and I stupidly said we didn’t have any more loo roll innards etc. To make another one she then promptly unravelled the last of the toilet paper to make an ‘all gone’ that we could use to make another castle!

The PVA water mix was about 4 parts water:1 part of PVA and stirred thoroughly. We then dipped the toilet paper into the mix and literally slapped it onto the castle. I found that I had to use a square of tissue paper for each of the turrets, or as they were at the time, sticking-up lolly sticks.

Once the castle was completely covered in the PVA-soaked tissue I covered a baking tray in foil and carefully moved the castle onto it. I realised that the thickness of tissue would mean it would not dry in time for Jean to take it to nursery and I had read a book that said you could bake paper mâché in the oven. So I put the castle in the oven on 120 degrees C setting.

This, it turned out, was a bit too hot so it got turned down to 100 degrees C for a second cooking. I left it on for about 45 minutes, and the next morning I put it on again for about 2 hours at 80 degrees C. It had got slightly singed but seemed ok.

What I hadn’t planned for was that it had become glued to the tin foil, so I cut a panel out of the back of one of the boxes that Jean’s Christmas presents had come in and simply transplanted both castle and foil to the cardboard once it had cooled sufficiently. I then turned the castle upside down to neaten up the tin foil on the underside and to fasten it with brown parcel tape.

Me and my two year old made this castle for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how I did this into three posts called:

• Making the skeleton of a castle
• Making a tissue mâché castle
• Painting a tissue mâché castle

This is how I made the ‘skeleton’ or framework of the castle:

We used one small box (about 15cm across) that electronic components had been delivered in, four loo roll innards or tubes, masking tape, scissors and wooden lolly sticks.

We cut strips of masking tape and then taped the lolly sticks around the loo roll innards but with the lolly sticks slightly proud of the top of the tube, to make the turrets of the castle. The loo roll tubes were going to be the towers. Jean helped a lot with the taping.

Once all the lolly sticks were in place I wrapped the whole thing in masking tape to get rid of all the tatty ends – which, as a two year old was helping, there were a lot of.

We repeated the process with the other three loo roll innards until we had four towers ready and waiting.

I then attached the towers to the corners of the box using the masking tape – this was actually quite fiddly and they still moved a bit precariously after I had fixed them to the box.

To try and make it more secure and because at this point I hadn’t yet thought about doing the paper mâché, I covered the entire structure in masking tape as I thought it would make a better surface to paint.

I ended up with a masking tape tower.