Clothes peg Butterlies – Simple Craft for Kids

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Ness

Last month I took R (4 yrs) to a local zoo and one of the highlights was a beautiful butterfly enclosure. He is always so excited when we spot a butterfly in our garden but they are elusive and usually flutter away before he’s able to observe them properly. The butterfly enclosure was so exciting to him.

We were able to observe them very closely as they sat on the plants in the enclosure. Those of you who follow OnePerfect Day on Instagram will recognise the photo above which I shared last month.

All of this has sparked R’s interest in butterflies so I opened our copy of The Garden Classroom – the fabulous e-book from Cathy at Nurturestore. The gorgeous colour photos throughout The Garden Classroom make this e-book such a pleasure to read and R loves to flip through the pages himself and pick out our next project. When he spotted Cathy’s clothes peg butterflies he couldn’t wait to get started.

How cute is this little guy? We have been making our way through the wonderful kids gardening activities in the e-book. It is full of fun projects to introduce kids to the wonders and pleasures of gardening, and the activities offer learning opportunities in math, literacy, cooking skills, art, craft and science.

R loved making these sweet little butterflies and afterwards there was lots of imaginative play as we took them on a flight around the living room. These will make a really sweet Mother’s Day gift and R is very excited to be giving them to his grandmothers this Mother’s Day.

The Garden Classroom has been such a wonderful resource. There are so many projects and there’s always something that takes our fancy. The projects are suitable for kids from two through to ten so I know we’ll have years of use from this book.

Cathy provides lots of tips for extending the learning opportunities for each project – even in a simple craft like this one. During this project, we talked about symmetry, colour and butterfly life cycles.

The instructions in The Garden Classroom are clear and simple. I really appreciated the tip about standing our clothes pegs on a glass to help press the wings in place while the glue dried.

I think what I love most about The Garden Classroom is the sheer number and variety of projects. There’s always something to inspire us. There are ideas for growing our own fruit and vegetables, bringing the outdoors inside with our own mini meadow, recipes for enjoying all of our home-grown produce, art and craft projects, science projects, maths and literacy activities, indoor activities, outdoor activities, and there are projects for every season of the year.

Download your copy of The Garden Classroom with a 25% discount

The Garden Classroom is available for download as an e-book. Just click on any of the links in this post to download your copy and, to celebrate the beginning of Spring, Cathy is offering a 25% discount off the cover price! Simply enter the discount code GrowingKids1 at the checkout to receive your discount. The 25% discount code is only valid until March 8, so be quick!

Cathy kindly spoke with me last year about her wonderful book. You can read the full interview here.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest or Twitter where you will find lots of ideas for kids activities, thoughts on parenting, family recipes, and much more.

*This post contains affiliate links.

Pin It

Building Volcanoes ~ Fun (and a little science) at the Beach

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Ness

It’s often the simplest activities that end up being the most fun. We’ve been enjoying some gorgeous Spring sunshine this week so we decided to spend a morning at the beach. We spent some time collecting shells, driftwood and a few precious pieces of sea glass. We also had fun building volcanoes in the sand and even managed to incorporate some educational play into the activity. We began by piling the sand into a mountain and forming a crater at the top to create our volcano.

We then began pouring water into the crater so that our volcano erupted and lava begin pouring down the sides.

We watched as each new bucket of water created interesting rolls and mounds of “lava”. To achieve these types of formations the trick is to pour just a small amount of water at a time.

R (4) loved the idea that he had made his very own volcano. We even managed to add a science lesson to our play by talking about why the water stops part way down the volcano and forms these shapes and undulations in the wet sand. We talked about absorption and the reasons why the water didn’t simply pour all the way down the side of the volcano. There are so many opportunities for learning through play at the beach.

After we’d emptied our bucket of water, R was keen to shovel fresh dry sand over the volcano and start again.

He didn’t show any restraint with the “lava” this time ~ this was one very active volcano!

What are your favourite beach activities?

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

Imaginary Soup – Outdoor Sensory Pretend Play

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Ness

I am so excited to welcome the lovely Melissa from Julia’s Bookbag here today as a guest writer. I’ve mentioned before just how much I adore Melissa’s blog. Melissa has a knack for finding the most delightful children’s books, she shares wonderful family recipes, and sweet musings on motherhood and family life. My Pinterest boards are full of images from Melissa’s gorgeous blog. You can also find Julia’s Bookbag on Facebook and Pinterest. Thank you so much Melissa for being here today!

IMAGINARY SOUP

Continue reading →

Pin It

Getting Outside, Slowing Down and Being Present.

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Ness

Yesterday I read the latest post from one of my favourite blogs, Famiglia&Seoul. If you’re not already familiar with Famiglia&Seoul, pop on over and check it out. Gina has set herself a challenge of getting outdoors for at least 15 minutes every single day, for 365 days. I think I’m entranced by this so much because I’m not naturally an outdoors kind of girl. Don’t get me wrong, I do love nature, but I just don’t naturally gravitate outside. I am consciously trying to make more of an effort in that regard, both for my benefit and for R’s as well. For our health, our creativity, and to help us better connect as a family. When I read Gina’s post, celebrating her 30 day anniversary of getting outdoors, I was completely inspired. The entire post is beautiful, but something in particular that she said really struck a chord with me. Gina mentioned that when she’s outside with her (utterly adorable) son, she is present in the moment, and the usual day to day distractions are fogotten, at least for a while. Being present in the moment, being fully present, is my greatest aim, and equally my greatest challenge, as a mother. There is always so much else to think about – what will I be making for dinner tonight, the load of washing has just finished, the beds aren’t made yet, did I call the doctor to change that appointment, I think those library books were due back yesterday…. and so it goes.

So when I read that getting outdoors for a while might help to switch off all that other “stuff”, I immediately suggested to R that we take a walk down to the creek near our home. He jumped at the chance to get out and about. So where did we go? Well, despite living in the middle of suburbia, we have this on our doorstep…..

Pretty special, isn’t it? We’re so lucky. This is right in the middle of two suburban streets. A magical little spot we can head to on the spur of the moment and just enjoy the calm and the wonder of it all. When R was a newborn, and I was at home alone with no car to get out and about, I would bring him to this spot every day. It was the best time of our day. Then I stopped going. Mr. Perfect Day often takes R for a walk to the creek but I usually opt out these days, seeing it as a chance for some alone time to catch up on housework, paperwork, or ironing. Say what?? I choose housework over this? Priorities need to change here! Continue reading →

Sometimes a walk in the garden is all it takes

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Ness

The photos in today’s post are not all that exciting, but they show a truly lovely part of our day and that’s what this blog is all about. We had reached the witching hour this afternoon. You know the time of day that I mean, when everyone is tired, patience is an effort, the dinner needs to be made, and no-one is at their best. I knew what we needed was to just re-group and get some fresh air and sunshine. We headed outside with no particular plan in mind.

We began by watering our vegetable patch. R(3) has been carefully tending some carrots and celery that he planted with his Daddy a few weeks ago. As he sprayed the hose over the garden, he said “Just soft and gentle, like Daddy said. We don’t blast them.” He continued watering the garden, declaring that “hosing is fun” and at one point “Hey Mummy. Guess what?” “What darling?” “I love you.” I knew heading outside was a good idea.

Continue reading →

Nature Walk Art

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Ness

It feels like ages since we got our craft on around here, so today we took advantage of the gorgeous sunshine and took our art outdoors. We are fortunate enough to have a creek running close by our house and we often head down there, throwing stones and twigs into the water, and watching them float downstream. Today we took a basket along and R(3) gathered a few things here and there - stones, twigs, leaves. It was lovely to slowly amble along, stopping to inspect a rock, a tree, or a flower. Talking about what we were seeing. Feeling the rough textures of tree trunks, or the coolness of the stones on the ground. When we returned home, we took a walk around our yard and R gathered a few more items to add to his collection.

You can just make out the blue and yellow paint on one the stones in the above pic. These stones were painted during our Big Messy Art adventure a couple of weeks ago. When we finished up that day, I tossed the painted stones back into the garden bed. They make me smile every time I walk past them. They caught R’s eye too by the looks of things.

Once R was happy with his collection of natural items, we set up in the backyard to create some hanging art.

For this project, we used:

A long, think tree branch (ours was about 70 cm long but any size would work)
Found natural items (leaves, flowers, twigs, stones, pieces of bark)
Fishing line (any thread would work such as cotton, nylon or silk)
A sewing needle
Paint and paint brushes

We began by painting the long thick tree branch. R chose gold, blue, green and pink paint and he decided to save time by using two brushes at once!

You could wait for the paint to try before moving on to the next step, but we didn’t bother. A few pink and gold fingers never hurt anyone! I tied four lengths of the nylon thread to the painted tree branch. I didn’t measure them, there’s no need for accuracy with this project, but at a guess I would say they were around 40 to 50cm in length. I spaced them fairly evenly across the branch but again, I didn’t bother to measure that they were spaced exactly. This piece is all about the freeform beauty of nature, not precise measurements.

Once I had tied the four lengths of thread to the branch, I threaded a needle on to one of the lengths of thread and R began threading on items from his basket of natural goodies. This was the very first time R had used a needle and thread and he really enjoyed it.

It was such a relaxing afternoon, collecting natural items as we walked together, and then bringing them back home to create something lovely.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

I’m linking up with the All Year Round Blog Carnival:Spring. Check out this post or click the button to see all the wonderful ideas that have been shared.