Author Archives: Tammy

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

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Early Learning Game ~ There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

I’ve never swallowed a fly, and I can’t even begin to imagine swallowing a spider!  That just makes me shiver thinking about it!  I have a hard enough time removing a spider from my house let alone eating one.  Maybe that is why the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly holds such appeal to kids.  There is always lots of giggles as we read it.  It was also one of my childhood favorites and I am so excited to be able to bring it to life with this fun activity.  Simple activities are the best and this one is no exception.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

 There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly!

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

 

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Materials needed:

  • The book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly  ~ you can pick up a copy at your local library if you don’t have one, or borrow from a friend like I did:)
  • Empty, clean and label removed syrup bottle ~ our Mrs. Butter-worth’s Syrup comes in a bottle that is shaped like a lady and perfect for this activity!
  • Pipe-cleaners
  • Alphabet beads ~ We were given a package of Alphabet beads from Craft Project ideas, and love them.  (You can follow Craft Project Ideas on Facebook for more great ideas.)

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

To set up this learning station:

  • Set out the book
  • Precut the pipe-cleaners into about 4″ sections.
  • Clean, dry and remove the label from the bottle
  • Set out the alphabet beads ~ I chose to just leave them on the table, but a shallow tray would contain all the beads and keep them from spilling to the floor.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

Have your child find the animals in the book that the old lady swallowed.  Then have them thread the matching letters onto the pip-cleaners, to spell the animals names.  To secure the alphabet letters on the pipe-cleaners, simple bend each of the pipe-cleaner ends back on itself.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

You can also use these simple word animals as a fun sequencing activity.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

Once you have the pipe-cleaner animals all assembled, read the book.  As the lady swallows one of the animals in the book; have the child drop the corresponding pipe-cleaner animal into the bottle.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

A great way to extend this activity:

There are so many fun versions of this classic book that would work great with this activity.  “There was an old lady who swallowed a pie” or “There was an old lady who swallowed a shell” and so many more!  Read a new book and then create more pipe-cleaner words.

You could also create your own funny version of this book.  My kids would get a kick out of that!   “There was an old lady who swallowed a __________” and let the kids think up silly things to ad to the list.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

This fun activity is great for spelling, word recognition, early readers, sequencing and working on fine motor skills.  Lots of learning fun all in one activity!

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

I was surprised at how easy the pipe-cleaner animals were to dump out of the bottles.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ~ fun learning activity. Fine motor, sequencing, early reading and spelling all rolled into one!

I would love for you to share what you have been learning with books.  Feel free to leave a link in the comments so we can find what you have been up too!

Disclaimer: Not too long ago we received a delightful package from CraftProjectIdeas.com.  It was packed full of craft supplies. One of the things we received was a ginormous package of Alphabet beads from Craft Project ideas.

Watercolor Spin Art

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Watercolor Spin Art

Watercolor Spin Art

As you know we love our spin art machine!  It is one of our simple go-to art activities that the kids just cant get enough of.  We are always trying new mediums in our machine just to see how they will spin.  I am thrilled with the results of our latest experiment, Watercolor Spin Art.  Head on over to Buddy and Buggy where I am guest posting, and you will find the full tutorial.  I adore Chelsey’s site and I am sure that you will too.

Nature Weaving Looms

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My sweet friend Chelsey from Buggy and Buddy and I are swapping spots today.  While Chelsey is here sharing her creative Nature Weaving Looms; I am over on her site sharing how to make Watercolor Spin Art.  I have really enjoyed getting to know Chelsey over the past little while and I absolutely adore her nature posts.  You are in for a treat.  These creative Nature Weaving Looms that are perfect for creating with little fingers and I can’t wait to try it with my kids.

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Hi, I’m Chelsey from Buggy and Buddy! I’m absolutely thrilled to be here at Housing a Forest today to share an activity that we had so much fun with- weaving with nature! It’s the perfect combination of art and the outdoors, and it’s appropriate for almost any age. Both my 23 month old son and 5 year old daughter enjoyed creating natural art with their weaving looms!

lucy's hands

Recently, we made some little weaving looms from Popsicle sticks and string. The kids used fabric, yarn and ribbon scraps to weave beautiful artwork indoors. The weather had just been so nice outside lately, I thought we should take the looms outdoors and see what we could create!

Before taking the kids outside, I decided to make a simpler loom for Theo, my almost two year old. (Being so young, weaving is still quite difficult for him.) I bought a small grapevine wreath from our local craft store for under a dollar. Then I haphazardly wrapped some string around the wreath so it somewhat resembled a web. (Wrapping the string in this way makes it easier to just stick the nature treasures into the loom rather than actually weaving.) Here are our two weaving looms:

empty looms

Finally it was time to put on our shoes and jackets and head outside with our looms in hand ready to weave with nature!

We began searching for grasses, flowers, twigs, and leaves right in our own backyard that we could use to weave into our looms.

My 5 year old, Lucy,  collected all her nature items in a basket and then found a peaceful spot to weave. (That girl is a pro at picking flowers! She’s even been known to pick some stray flowers right in the middle of the soccer field as her game is going on.) Here she is getting started!

lucy weaving

Later on in the day I found her sitting in a chair in the backyard doing some more weaving.  “Aren’t these beautiful, Mom? Don’t you love them? I’m an artist!” Those comments put the biggest smile on my face!

chair

Theo and I worked together to add his nature collection to his loom. He loved being able to create just like his sister. I think his turned out so cute!

circle loom on rock

The best part about these looms is that when you’re done you can either display the finished product as artwork or simply remove the woven materials and start again later.

I can’t wait to pull these looms out again in the fall and see what creations we come up with then!

two looms

Chelsey ~ Buggy and Buddy

BuggyandBuddy | Facebook Page | Pinterest

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Thanks so much for sharing Chelsey.  You have inspired me to create little nature weaving looms with my kids.  What a great way to explore nature and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us.  We all love comments, so why not pop over and visit  Buggy and Buddy and tell her how much you enjoyed her post on Housing A Forest.

Here are a few of my favorite posts from Buggy and Buddy to get you started:

A Note to the Tooth Fairy

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It time for the weekly Kids Co-op.  I know I have said it before, but I love seeing what you are creating with your kids.  This week I am trying something a little different and sharing a little snap shot into our week.

Things have been a little crazy around here.  I’m sure like most houses with the close of school and the beginning of summer, there is just a lot going on.  I can’t wait until the last bell rings and school is out for the summer.  With that said, I think the kids are feeling the chaos as well.  The other night we went to bed to find this adorable note on my hubbies pillow!

Note to the Tooth Fairy

 

Apparently the last time my sweet little lady lost a tooth, the tooth fairy was a little busy.  I hear that it took the Tooth Fairy a couple of days before he/she made it to Bree’s room.  Oops!  My kids know that their Dad is the Tooth Fairy, but love playing along.  Plus, the Tooth Fairy would probably stop coming all together if they just asked for the money for their teeth:)

Over the years there have been lots of cute notes and suggestions to the Tooth Fairy.  My favorite was a few years ago.  When we went to tuck the girls in, there was a note tucked into 2 tutus hanging on the girls door.  The note read “Please put on the tutus.  I left you 2, one for each leg since you are too big for just one.”  Ha!!!!!  I love kids!  I so wish that I had my camera ready for that one:)

I would love to hear your adorable and hilarious Tooth Fairy stories.  Please share them in the comments below:)

If you are looking for more Tooth Fairy inspiration, I love these adorable Tooth Fairy drawings my kids created!  I asked them to draw what they thought that the Tooth Fairy could look like.  My favorite is the rocket boots:)

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Now on to the Weekly kids Co-op.  I can’t wait to see what you have been up to this week:)

Weekly Kids Co-op



Tire Swing Pendulum Painting

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It is Paint and Play time again!  I am really enjoying this fun series that I am doing with Crystal from Growing A Jeweled Rose.  The focus for our series is all about the process, having fun and getting kids excited to create art!  This week we challenged each other to create Pendulum Art with our kids.  Growing A Jeweled Rose created glow in the dark art, and we headed to our neighborhood park to create our art!

Tire Swing Pendulum Painting

Have you tried creating pendulum art before?  It has been on our summer bucket list for quite a while.  I shared this amazing pendulum art on Housing A Forest’s Facebook Page and I could not wait to give it a try!  We wanted to come up with something different and a little more interactive so when the idea of Tire Swing Pendulum Painting came up I knew it would be perfect!  (Thanks to my sister-in-law, who blogs at My Adventures in Preschool for helping come up with this fun idea!)

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Pendulum Painting

Materials to create your own Tire Swing Pendulum Art:

  • A park with a tire swing
  • Large roll of white paper
  • Squeeze bottles full of watered down paint
  • Kids that are excited to create art!

Pendulum Painting

Since we would be using the tire swing as our pendulum, the set up for this activity was really simple.  We rolled out a large sheet of paper under the swing and the kids all squished in to the tire swing, armed with a bottle of paint.  That’s it.  No need to build anything, and no need to fancy supplies.  Love that!

The kids could wait to try painting is a whole new way.  We have created lots of art at our house, but painting while swinging on a tire swing was a first for us:)  The hardest part was getting the kids on and off the swing with the paper under neath them.  Next time I would have the kiddos get on the swing and then roll the paper out under their feet.

Pendulum Painting

I had the kids hold their bottle of paint so that is was touching the swing.  That was a bit of a challenge at times since it was just too fun to squirt paint everywhere.  However, since we were after the concept of pendulum art, I was not to worried about the extra little dribbles and squirts of paint.

Pendulum Painting

My favorite projects are the ones that my kids are learning, they are so busy having fun that they don’t realize it.  Love that!

Pendulum Painting

If you are wanting a more “true” pendulum painting you could simply tape open ended containers to the tire swing.  That would remove the extra movement of the kids swinging paint.  Personally, I think this way is way more fun and the kids are able to really be a part of the art.

Pendulum Painting

The kids had a blast with this fun and interactive painting.  It was not a busy day at the park, or I’m sure we would have had a huge line up of kiddos wanting to have a turn.  There was one sweet little girl that joined in on the fun.  It was so cute to see her eyes light up when it was her turn.

Pendulum Painting

Tips:

  • Tempera Paint comes in all different consistencies, so you may have to play a little with how much water you add to get it to flow properly.
  • Bring a bucket of water and a few rags for easy clean-up.
  • Washable, biodegradable paint is the best to use.
  • My kids were a little sad to see their creation rolled up and placed in the garbage, but it would have been too hard to carry their masterpiece all the way home.  You may want to think through bring the artwork home if that is something that will be very important to your child.  Maybe stay a little longer at the park and let everything dry so it can be rolled up and carried easily.
  • Be prepared to have kiddos from the park want to join in on the fun:)

Pendulum Painting

Have you tried pendulum painting before.  I would love to hear your experience and any tips that you have.

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Make sure to stop by  Growing A Jeweled Rose and check out all the amazing fun they had creating pendulum painting in the dark.  My kids love anything that glows in the dark, so I am sure they will want to try their hand at creating Glowing Pendulum Painting soon.

Glowing Pendulum Painting

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Make sure you stop back in next week for more Play and Paint!

Play and Paint Series

Don’t miss out on any of our Paint and Play series:

Balloon Painting 5 Ways

Super Creative Balloon Painting

Homemade Spin Art Machine

A Spin on Spin Art

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If you love process art like us, then check out my Painting Without Brushes Pinterest board.  It is packed full of fun ideas.  I would love to hear how you have used balloons to create or play with your kids.