DIY Learner

Super easy Gingerbread Man Christmas Ornaments

2011-12-23T12:29:00.009+01:00

Last week we've been making some Christmas ornaments in class.

One of them is the Gingerbread Man Christmas Ornament. It's really easy, and you can make it with 3-4 years-old children up to 99 years-old children ^_^

You only need:

- A gingerbread man pattern, such as this from K-2 printables (http://k2printables.com/documents/December/gingerbread_glyph_kit.pdf)

-A cardboard to glue your man to

- Colouring stuff: crayons, felt-tip pens, wax crayons, colour pencils....

- Glue (stick glue and craft glue)

- Scissors

- Glitter

So, these are the steps we followed:

1- Give each child a blank Gingerbread man pattern. They will colour it as they want, no rules!!

2- Glue the pattern to a cardboard and cut it out.

3- Add some glitter wherever you want.

4- (Not shown in these photos), make a hole on the Gingerbread man's head and pull a thread/yarn throuh it so you can hang it from the Christmas tree.

And that's it!! Easy, huh??

Halloween 2011

2011-10-30T21:24:00.009+01:00

This year we made two crafts for Halloween and all we needed was this:

(I googled it, but I don't have the link right now. I promise I'll look for it and share it)

With the eyes, a card and toilet paper we made these mummies:

And with the pumpkin pattern we made these stencil halloween lanterns:

Here you have two pics of the process:

Beaded Sprites

2011-04-21T20:38:00.012+02:00

Well, this is not the Saint Patrick's post I promised, but.... I'm so excited about these beaded sprites I made!! (Saint Patrick's post will be here soon, don't worry)

Let me show you them:

Super Mario's mushrooms

Tetris' pieces

Super Mario's fire-flower and fish

Pac-Man and ghosts

Duck Hunt (oh, I love this one)

Space Invaders

Puzzle Bobble's dragon

Guess what I'm going to do with them??

Here I am!!

2011-03-18T21:24:00.004+01:00

Sorry!!

I've been busy, but now it seems everything is coming back to normality...

By the way, thank you for your comments!! Next day I'll show you the display we prepared for Saint Patrick's day, but I haven't loaded the photos yet. So today, I'm showing you this mural painting my husband and me draw and paint at one friend's hairdressing salon.

See you soon!

More art in class

2010-12-10T20:42:00.013+01:00

After posting this, I decided to go to my school and take some photos of all the art paintings we did for the "Open doors day".

The whole school worked during Crafts Class and the teachers displayed them on the hall's walls so the parents could appreciate how hard their children worked.

Let's have a look at them!.

Gernica by Pablo Picasso

This mural was made by the 3rd and 4th grade students (8- 10 years old children)

Soft Self-Portrait by Salvador Dalí

Made by one of the 5th grade classes (10-11 years old children)

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Made by one of the 2nd grade classes (6-7 years old students), my past year students ^_^

Walk on the beach by Joaquín Sorolla.

I'm really fond of this work because was made by students with special educational needs.

Hope you enjoyed this minitour as much as we enjoyed working with our pupils.

Art in class

2010-11-29T21:56:00.005+01:00

I've always loved teaching art to children: How do they react to their first contact with art, what do they think about the work, the colours, composition... it's such an experience that everyone should experience it at least once in their lifetimes.

Everytime I plan an art unit I follow the same steps:

- Decide what I want to work: a special style, an author, a set of paintings... and once I've made up my mind....

- Presenting the work/s to the students. Then, they can start a brainstorming about how does the work makes them feel, what do they think it represents...

- Talking about the author/s: most of the times, I ask my students to seek information about the author, so they can work with their parents at home (and parents can know what are their children are up to). Then, the day you want to talk about the "investigation", most of them are sooooo eager to talk about what they discovered that they hardly let the rest speak (it is really amazing!)

- The last step is to make their own works of art.

And this is what this post is about ^_^

This time, I decided to make a non- introductory art lesson. I looked for well known pieces of art to colour on the internet, but there isn't much variety... so I printed the ones I wanted, enlarged some of them to a DIN A-3 format and copied them with the help of a window (I guess most of us have done this when we were children). Then, I distributed the children in groups and handed out the same paintings for each group to colour. They could choose how to paint them, means to do so, colours... even I allowed them to make the frames if they wanted to.
Once they had finished I laminated them, so they could last forever =)

It's not a good photo, I know, but it's because the strip lightning of the school...

The next art class, I showed them the real works and we commented them. It's great to hear their opinions about the original works and their view.

Even if you aren't a teacher, you should try this with any child you have around.

No messy pumpkin

2010-04-04T23:50:00.004+02:00

Working in a school as an English teacher means that I can't spend more than one hour a day to make crafts, and it's important to keep in mind that I'm the one that moves from one class to the other, which means that I can't leave the classes too messy or the class teachers may complain.

So this year, I chose to make a fast and no messy-at-all Halloween craft: our special pumpkin.

You'll need:

- A nice pumpkin carving pattern.

- Glue.

- A sheet of orange cardboard.

-A school bradawl.

-A filter pad.

- A tealight candle.

And the instructions are so simple....: Glue the pattern to the sheet of orange cardboard and place it on the filter pad. With the bradawl punch the pattern. Once it's completely punched, fold the sides of the cardboard so it can stand still. Light up the candle and... voilá!!

Presents (II)

2010-03-06T20:01:00.006+01:00

Remember these two bibs??

It's been quite a long time since I last told you about them, but I couldn't (and I shouldn't) delay this topic any longer...

Well, in that post I showed you the pair of bibs I had made a a present for a couple of friends that were expecting their first baby. And as just the bibs seemed quite a little present from me, I made this summer quilt with the same fabrics. I called it "summer quilt" because it has not batting. When I had the front and the backing, I sewed them right sides together.

It was my first quilt and you would see many mistakes for sure, but I'm really proud of it.

They really liked it (or so they said ^_^), and I'm waiting for the summer to come and check if it's really.... useful??

Class curtains

2010-02-16T19:48:00.005+01:00

When I sarted working with 1st grade children at my current school, I thought it'd be a great way to welcome them to make their own curtains for the class; this would make the class a little more "theirs".

And they were sooooooo easy to make!!! All you need is:

- A pair of curtains (or as many as you need). I got "mine" really cheap at Ikea

- Fabric paint.

- Children's hands.

and that's it!!

Merry Christmas!!

2009-12-30T22:22:00.004+01:00

A little late, but... well here in Spain Christmas holidays last until January the 7th which means we're almost in the middle of these days. Still a lot of things to do, parties to prepare and presents to buy (we celebrate the Three Wise Men better than Santa)... uff!!

Anyway, have fun wherever you are and I really hope you have the best Christmas ever!!

Love and peace

Presents (I)

2009-10-27T18:45:00.003+01:00

I made these two bibs as a present for a couple of friends that are expecting their first baby. They live in another city, so we decided to visit them and bring them our presents. They don't want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl, so I chose two unisex colours. About the pattern I took it from the wonderful site homemade by jill.

I know the first bib is a bit twisted, but it was the first try, in fact, I wanted to redo it but time's been running out lately.... And the photo is a bit dark because is my new camera and I didn't know how to use it yet... ^_^U

Back to school- Stencil tote bag

2009-09-08T14:36:00.009+02:00

My husband is going to start studying for a contest to become a Secondary teacher, so we decided to better get ready for long days at the public library and classes at the academy.
Yesterday we went to Ikea and bought a 15€ tote bag. As he wanted it to be something "personal" -and he really loves any kind of ape-, I decided to stencil a monkey and some flowers on it. You can see how it's made by following the instruction I gave on the post before this one. The patterns are too from Stencil 101 by Ed Roth.

It was quite difficult to keep it in place as you can see, there was some "low lines" and the paint went to them all the time even though I tried to keep the brush as dry as possible.... Now I'm trying to clean out the excess with cotton swabs.

Stencil T-Shirt (mixing colours)

2009-08-26T18:01:00.006+02:00

I made up this T-shirt from a very cheap one I bought at H&M. The quality of the fabric wasn't really good, but as it was a try I didn't care....

This technique is really easy but let's go step by step. You'll only need:
- A T-shirt.
- Fabric paint.
- Stencil patterns.
- Stencil brushes.
-Iron.

First, you stretch you T-shirt with a cardboard inside (this way you'll prevent painting through to the back of the T-shirt as well). Don't stretch it too much, just as if it was just ironed.

Second, you'll place your stencil pattern. The stencil patterns I used were from the Stencil 101 (by Ed Roth) book, but it can be handmade as well. So, you place the patern where you want it to be and secure it in place with weights, tape, spray adhesive (but wait until it dries)...

Third, you paint it, But remember that stencil is a quite dry technique, so don't overload the brush (or the foam). If you are going to use spray, be really careful to protect the T-shirt with papers so you don't spray outside of the stencil pattern.. For this T-shirt, I used an ashtray as a palette and mixed some colours (but not too much or you end up just with brown ^_^!). Then I started stenciling deciding which colours I wanted for each part of the picture.
Once it is finished, remove the pattern from the T-shirt.

Fourth, you have to iron the T-shirt if you like the result. If not, you just wash the T-shirt and the stencil disappears, but if you want to keep it, turn the T-shirt inside out and iron the area you painted for one or two minutes and 2-3 iron heat point.

Hope it's clear enough; if not, I'll write more post about stencils, so don't worry.

The itsy bitsy spider....

2009-07-06T20:44:00.004+02:00

....went up the water spout...

Nearly a year ago I went to an end-of-school trip with my 6th grade (12 year-olds) students. The trip was kind of a camp so the monitors let us almost nothing to do- but we did, after all, they were our children and wanted me and my colleague to have fun with them.

Those days, specially one that was raining, we did a lot of crafts (some of them I'll show you someday ^_^), but the craft I'm showing you today wasn't one of them. The thing is that the trip coincided with my colleague's birthday and the monitors decided to prepare her a craft as a present. I guess they thought it was rude not to give me something too (???) so, the did this lovely spider I still keep in my guests' room.

It's soooo easy to make, that I decided not to make a tutorial of it. You'll only need:

- A styrofoam ball

- Two funny doll eyes

- Some pipe cleaners (eight in different colours for the legs and one more for the hair).

- One barbecue stick/skewer

- One felt-tip pen.

- A little imagination and that's it!!

Mother's day

2009-04-30T15:40:00.005+02:00

We've just finished our Mother's day craft... I'm soooo tired!! But it was worthy.

Well, we did two things actually: a poem-book and a recicled flower bunch (see photo above).

About the book...well I'll show it page by page someday but I couldn't keep a sample since my children had to take them home.

And now, let's talk about the bunch: I found it on the internet time ago, but I couldn't put it into practice till now. I got the idea from here. You just need a toilet paper roll, a pair of scissors, school paints and a stick (BBQ skewer). It's really easy and you can do it really fast (you have to wait for the paint to dry though). The pencil holder/ vase was a colleage's idea made with coloured card.

Hope you like it.

Saint Patrick's day mobile

2009-04-29T20:28:00.007+02:00

I know it's a bit late, but I never know when I'm able to write so I've decided to write the posts as they come to my mind. I'll tag them afterwards and that's it!
So.... let's do a Saint Patrick's day craft!
This craft is aimed to a 6-year old class. First, you have to look for some colouring St. Patrick's drawings. I choose these: shamrock, leprechaun and rainbow. After a little explanation (so they can understand what they're doing) I show them the mobile. This way, they could see what I wanted them to do and they do their best to get their mobiles exactly as their teacher's. I've never thougth I'm very good at crafts but these children just make you get your self-esteem back!!

Well, after colouring the pictures, you cut them up, glue the rainbow to a cardboard and with a sheet drill you make a hole on both the "characters" and three on the rainbow.

To finish up, you tie three threads (I just made a tongue twister!)and that's it!

Rose Window

2009-03-03T14:43:00.005+01:00

Here I go again. Sorry, I'm a bit lazy and I've been really busy last month.... I'll try to post more often.

Today I'm going to explain how to do a rose window for Primary School children. We did this craft at our craft seminar (course, if you prefer) when dealing with European crafts.

For this craft we needed card paper, pencil, glue, scissors and this kind of paper - I don't know its name- that is transparent/translucent, shiny and coloured. As you can see the materials are really easy to find in a school.

To start with, I googled a rose window pattern and printed it. We coloured it, cut it up (the holes as well) and turn it upside down over a newspaper. The, we started to glue pieces of this shiny and translucent paper I told you about before, the more colours, the best.

More African crafts

2009-02-02T15:58:00.014+01:00

Some days later than what I'd have liked, I will show you more pics about African crafts. I think they're so easy to understand that words are useless. Most of them are suitable to do with 4 years-old children, but they would be very easy for children older than 11-12.

-Bottle covered with a string: using glue. You can colour it afterwards.

- Papier maché objects:

-Doll made with a mop:

-Picture made with coloured salt (coloured with chalk)

African mask

2009-01-21T21:23:00.018+01:00

Well, let's go!

Last school year the teachers had the chance of carrying out a crafts course aimed to work with it across cultures, you know to help integration. Well, the subject is so huge that we decided to separate crafts by continents.

The day we worked on Africa we did a lot of crafts but one of my favourites was the mask. It was very easy, but I recommend you to work on it from 1st grade (6 years aprox.) on. We took some photos so it would be easier for us to remember the process.

First of all, on a big black card we drew a mask we found on the Intenet and we decided to focus on the eyes, nose and mouth. These woud have cotton glued on them fitting the shapes.

Then, you cover the cotton with a bit water and glue-wet crepe paper (is a kind of solf paper, like a hard tissue but coloured). The colours depend on how you want the mask to be.

To finish, once the glue is dry you can aply a coat of veneer (varnish).

Hope you enjoy!

Introducing myself

2009-01-20T17:03:00.004+01:00

Here we go!!

As I say in the subtitle, I'm a Spanish teacher. I live 30 min. by car far from Madrid, near the mountains. I teach and I study as well: Social and Cultural Anthropology at university and Finnish language at Madrid's Language School and as far as crafts are concerned, I guess I always thought about it but I didn't start practising till last year...so now I'm "in search of lost time"

I planned this blog to show wherever you are what I'm doing (or at least trying to do). And, as my mother tongue is not English I'll surely make linguistic mistakes so please, forgive me. You will see that if I'm not sure if a word or sentence is right I'll write it in italics font.

I hope you enjoy and please, if you have any questions, suggestions...let me know emailing me diylearner@gmail.com