Colored Pasta Bracelets

 This week we have been learning about the Maasai tribe of Africa. Two of our favorite books are Papa Do You Love Me? and We All Went on Safari. While reading these books and looking at pictures of members of the Maasai tribe, we noticed the colorful jewelry that the Maasai people wear. Today we made our own colorful bracelets out of pasta. 

 To color the pasta, I added about five drops of food coloring to 1/4 cup of water. 

 I poured the colored water over a bowl of uncooked rigatoni and stirred it until the pasta was coated. 

I spread it all out on a tray and left it to dry overnight. 

The next morning, I set out a bag of pipe cleaners and the tray of pasta for the children to use to make the bracelets.  

 After stringing the "beads" we twisted the ends of the pipe cleaners together to form bracelets. 

The children were so proud of themselves when they realized they could make these pretty pieces of jewelry all by themselves.  

Pin It

Sticky Board Fun

Recently I read about making sticky boards on several different websites and decided to try it out in our classroom. The results were wonderful! The children absolutely loved it and it was inexpensive and easy to make.

 To begin, I found a piece of stiff cardboard and covered it with white paper. 

 Next, I covered the white paper with clear contact paper, sticky side up. 

At first I taped it to the top of a table and we tried sticking all kinds of things on it - pom poms, ribbon, plastic letters, our hands, bubble wrap, and small toys. The pom poms and ribbon made the contact paper fuzzy and nothing else would stick to it after we took them off. 

 Then we taped the sticky board to the back of one of our shelves and made a second one so that more people could play at one time. 

I found some plastic hearts and X's and O's at Target that were perfect for sticking on the board.

 The children loved making patterns with them

or just sticking them on and taking them off again. 

We are planning to try sticking other objects to the boards in the future. 

Pin It

Crocodiles

 

This craft is a fun way for children to work on their fine motor skills. 

Before beginning the activity, I cut out a crocodile shape for each of the children. 

Then I folded them and drew guidelines for cutting. 

The children in our class love to cut with scissors so they were eager to begin. Cutting on the guidelines required a good amount of hand-eye coordination. 

Some of the children just wanted to cut and went a little overboard, which was fine. I had a few extra crocodiles on hand in case they wanted to try again. 

 We glued on the eyes...

and drew faces. 

I love that they were all different!

 

Pin It