Australia Map

A good idea for learning geography. Requires some drawing skill, a big table and a small number of kids to start off with. Kids work together to draw native animals and land marks they know about. They also use an atlas to locate and name the capital cities. This activity can be transferred to any country!

New Book

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Paper Owl

Materials

• Coloured Paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Circle to trace

Method

1. Trace a circle on coloured paper.
2. Fold two edges inward to make a sort of shallow 'V' shape, these are the wings-DO NOT GLUE
3. Get a different coloured piece of paper and cut to fit under the wing, decorate  to show feathers or use glitter.
4. Now glue the 'wings' down.
5. Using coloured paper add detail such as a beak, eyes and legs.
6. One idea is to trace three different sized circles, to make three different sized owls, and make a mobile. This is what I initially wanted to do but I ran out of time.

Toilet Roll Space Ship

Materials

• Aluminium Foil
• Toilet Roll
• Glue
• Paper- Coloured
• Markers/Pencils
• Cardboard from cereal box

Method

1. Cut out wing flaps, these will go on the sides of the rocket, from the cereal box card. Also make a cone to go on top from the same material.
2. Cut slits on the toilet roll to fit the wing flaps into.
3. Cover the wing flaps, the cone cover and the toilet roll in aluminium foil.
4. Make sure you cut the aluminum covering the slits in the toilet roll before you insert the wing flaps.
5. Decorate with windows and rocket fire.

Relay Games

Relay games can be a lot of fun and you can make them as interesting as you want. Making the 'baton' can be an activity in itself.


Below are two examples.


Suit Case Relay


What you need:

• Cardboard
• Tissue/Crepe Paper- Brown
• Glue
• Scissors

We did this relay in conjunction with an Olympic Games theme day. 

1. We got some old cardboard boxes, sketched and cut out some suitcases with easy hold handles. 
2. Cutting out some tissue/crepe paper we glue it all over the suitcases.
3. We stuck some travel stamps and stickers we found on the internet over it to give it some authenticity. Have a look here.
4. Most of our suitcases didn't last the race as some of the competitors were quite 'passionate'.

Rocket Relay

What you need:

• Different coloured paper
• Cello tape
• Scissors

We did this relay on a space theme day.

1. Roll some paper into a cylinder and stick it together.
2. Cut out a small circle and create a cone, this is for the top of the rocket.
3. Cut out some triangles for flaps on the side of the rocket.
4. To make this one a bit more interesting I put a hula hoop 'planet' at the end and the runners needed to orbit the planet three times before going back to home base.

Musical Planets

We held a space theme day at the vacation care I am working at and I made up this variation on Musical Chairs.

• Put out some hula hoops spread out over a large area. The number doesn't matter at the moment but make sure there is enough.
• Play space related music and encourage  the children to run around like spaceships between planets. 
• When the music stops they have to go to the nearest planet.
• You can change the game by introducing rules such as planets can only fit so many people or a planet might blow up once in while.
• We played for at least 40 mins and the kids ran the whole time.

Artist's site

Paper Chain Snake

This activity is a simple and old one. While some children might find it fun chances are that many will find it boring. To change it up a bit we did some research. We discovered that the record for the longest snake in captivity was about 7.3 meters (24 Feet), you can read about it here. While there were many sites claiming all sort of different sizes we decided to go with what Guinness World Records said.


So we decided to recreate this snake in paper chain form. It created a great team atmosphere as well problem solving, the kids had to work out a way to measure it. The snake is now hanging in our room watching over us, the kids love it!


Materials

• Coloured Paper
• Scissors
• Glue

Dot and Line Animal Pictures

Dot and Line Animal Pictures

Materials Needed

• Animal Outlines
• Different Coloured Paper
• Markers
• Glue

Method

1. Either draw or print off some animal outlines. A simple Google search should let you find some. I imagine the animals you would use would be country specific so I wont post any links.
2. Using different colours fill in the pictures with lines and dots that give the animal definition. (see below)
3. Cut this picture out and glue it on some coloured card.
4. Create a nature scene surrounding it using the same dot and line method you used to fill the animal in.

This activity of course doesn't need to be limited to animals but can incorporate a large number of themes.

God's Eye

God's Eye

This one is not something I have made up but it is a great activity for children, especially on a rainy day.

For full instructions go here:

http://www.makingfriends.com/godseyes.htm

Here are some that the children made the other day