Glitter Fireworks

For bonfire night I wanted an activity that children ranging from one to six years in age could become involved with. I came up with the very simple idea of glitter fireworks pictures.

We looked at some pictures of the fireworks on the internet, talking about the colours and the patterns the fireworks made. We then set to creating our own firework images. I presented all the children with some pastels and chalks and black paper as well as glitter and lots of glue!

Each child came up with their own ideas and had a lovely time getting covered in glue and glitter as well as producing some colourful, unique sparkly patterns that looked very effective on the black paper.

November Theme

In November we have an Under The Water Theme.

We will be going on a number of aquatic themed visits ranging from the aquarium through to the beach as well as making use of our fish puzzles and looking at numbers, colours and movement of fish.

Painted Pumpkins

The children were so excited about buying the pumpkins in preparation for Halloween so I wanted to get them more involved. Obviously they are a bit young for carving so we decided to decorate them first.

We used the pearl acrylic paints straight from the bottle so that they would be easy to squeeze out. Whilst some simply squeezed the colours directly onto the top of the pumpkins and let the paint dribble slowly down the smooth surface of the pumpkin, others used their pumpkin as a canvas and requested paintbrushes to mix up the paint. 

The colours all began to blend together and actually looked quite stunning pieces of art although they did take several days to dry and were only just ready in time for carving our halloween faces! Once lit, the children were delighted with them. 

Halloween Sensory Tray

The children are becoming aware that it will soon be halloween so I decided to incorporate a little sensory fun into our day with this Halloween themed sensory tray. 

 Our tray contains a few halloween themed items such as cups, spoons, spooky shaped cutters and some plastic fingers and skeletons for effect but the main fun comes from the orange lentils and the black beans. As ever with the sensory trays, the pouring and scooping of the beans brought out some lovely imaginative stories as well as enabling the younger ones to practice spoon control. 

Rolled Conker Art

We have been out and about in various parks and the children had collected a lot of lovely shiny conkers. After playing with them for a while I decided to add some paint and shake things up a bit! The children had a lovely time choosing colours, shaking their paintings with some eye catching results.

Using a washing up bowl, some paper and a handful of conkers, the older children chose the colours of paint they wanted to make blobs with and squeezed some blobs onto the paper. We opted for autumnal colours in line with our Autumn theme this month but any colours would work. They then began to shake and roll the bowl to make the conkers move. 

As the conkers travelled through the paint they transferred it all over the paper in a lovely, unpredictable variety of lines, colours and patterns and the colours blend together to make some beautiful marbled effects and produce some lovely abstract artwork.