The itsy bitsy spider....

....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

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

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

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

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)