Ideas for Toddler Group craft activities for the autumn term.

[Slubberdegullion]

I am newly appointed to the very prestigious role of Chair of our village toddler group. I am trying to come up with a plan for a craft activity for each week leading up to Christmas.

What I have come up with so far is:

Halloween activity (nothing decided on yet)

Bonfire Night activity (ditto)

Biscuit decorating

Something with leaves ..maybe...

Christmas Cards

ha ha....not very inventive is it yet .

So I am looking for suggestions for things you have done or organised at your Toddler group (or things that your DC have brought back from nursery).

The children that come are 3 and under, so things need to be fairly simple!

TIA

bonfire night - wax resist fireworks -

draw fireworks on white paper with wax crayon - do it very heavily - round and round scribble for catherine wheel, bold scribbles for rockets etc. Paint over with thinned black poster paint, paint won't cover the wax, so will show through. dead easily and very little preparation

excellent. Thank you Panda.

Bonfire night - tick

any more......

christmas decorations - candles

1 candle per child, yoghurt pot, odds and end of decorations - pipecleaners are good, bent into a coil.

secure candle into pot with putty type stuff, can't think of the name atm.

stick decs all around candle - can use sprayed twigs, odd beads tinsel etc.

Thats a good one too, and a bit different.

Anything for the endless weeks during sept & october. [pumps Pandas brain for info]

Put different leavestypes under paper, scrape over with side of crayon, cut out, then make a game of match the pairs, with the cut outs and the real leaves.

fun colour mixing

one hand print one colour - use primary colours

other hand print different colour

rub both hands together to mix colours on palms, do double handprint of new colour!

handprint fish

draw round hand on thin card and cut out.

draw eye on palm of hand, fingers are fins and tail.

decorate hand with shiny paper, gummed paper, glitter and any oddments

attach to a lolly stick for fish puppet!

can you tell I've led toddlers in my time!

potato printing, or cotton reels, old toy cars to make tyre tracks, paint with other sorts of brushes - toothbrush nailbrush etc for different pattern.

leaf printing - use reds oranges and yellows for an autumnal theme

How about hedgehog pictures?
Collect leaves one week then leave to dry. The next week, cut out hedgehog shapes beforehand and let the children stick the leaves on.

For Easter: Rooster handprints
Green background paper, white handprints, left and right hand with fingerpaints. Use yellow paint to make beak and red to make the comb of rooster. Does that make sense? If not, I can put a pic on my profile. This is really sweet and we used them as Easter cards.

I copied these websites from a post a few weeks ago, can't remember exactly where they were, you might find them if oyu do a search of old posts
:
TEACHING STARTING POINT INCLUDING EARLY YEARS
tre.ngfl.gov.uk/

SITES FOR IDEAS
www.first-school.ws/

www.abcteach.com/

www.underfives.co.uk/

ht tp://www.activityvillage.co.uk/

www.craftown.com/kids.htm

www.tlsbooks.com/presc hoolworksheets.htm

www.enchantedlearning.com/

www.make-stuff.com/kids/index.ht ml

There is loads of the net, once you know where to look.

clay hedgehogs

clay in ball, pinch a snout type shape

stick matchsticks all over for spines

another autumny idea - can read a Percy the Park Keeper with hedgehog in at storytime too

i run/manage a pre-school so here are some of the things we may be doing-if its any help...
make a handprint autumn tree...using reds yellows etc.
autumn feely boxes.
make hibernating animal puppets.
harvest festival foods...models with dough/draw etc.
food printing.
don't forget its diwali in november so you could make diwali candles/holders.
Other ideas to extend your play...
twigs and leaves etc in the sand and water.
draw and paint with twigs/leaves acorns etc.
prints of leaves in dough.
make snow using soap flakes...our kids love it.
add glitter to your sand and water nearer winter.

this is a lovely rainbow

Wow, this is all fantastic, thank you so much. Have 2 dd's with chicken pox atm so will be dipping in and out as whingy children permit

oh oh more ideas....
nearer xmas extend your role play or small world by adding a christmas tree to decorate or a small plastic tree to decorate in the dolls house.
also on the 13th sept Ramadan begins so you could link in some craft activities to this. or use it as a discussion piece.

make bird feeders.
make robins with collage materials.
bird finger puppets.
cut our zig-zag icicles-helps develop fine and gross motor skills!
make flags or pinwheels to see how they blow in the wind.

I do handprint Christmas cards

either - brown footprint with 2 yellow handprints at top each side above toes - fingerpaint red dot at heel (nose)and 2 black dots just under toes (eyes) = Rudolph

or

2 white/silver hanprints side by side (wings)
blue handprint on top palm slightly lower down than white ones (body)

fingerpaint pink or brown circle above blue palm for face

flesh coloured spot on end of blue thumb for hand - fingerpaint another arm on other side and add hand to that too

add facial features as you see fit - I do hair and halo

Really like all the leaf ideas, could make that a theme during october maybe.

Also bird feeder idea...I think I have a recipe for bird cake somewhere.

hang on i've thought of some more-
*rangoli patterns for diwali! these look really nice and the kids loved making upi thier own!

*make xmas decorations using bread cut into suitable shapes 9use cutters e.g. star) allow to go hard then paint with silvers and golds.

*make a snow man book: fold a zigzag book and make some sequence pictures of a snowman being build e.g. snow falling, body built etc etc. children have stick them in the right order and make their own book

Halloween activity - make masks/ decorations on paper plates

Bonfire night - those pictures where you scrape off the black paint to reveal pretty coloured wax crayon patters (I can explain better if you don't know what I mean)

In our toddler group, we did beading and made photo frames out of coloured lollipop sticks and a piece of felt. Might be good christmas presents from the LOs.

DOn't know where you are, but how about an apple day, if you have a friendly farmer or farmer's market nearby? Tasting different types of apple and drawing pictures of apples to stick on a carboard tree?

Apple day sounds great.

kinders link has some good ideas for holoween masks too.

I've got more ideas than weeks now

panda - love your rudolph handprint cards

rudolph cards pencilled in for dec 4th, cnadles for the 11th.

thinking about hedgehogs/hibernating things for sept.

leaves / hand prints in oct

apple day on sept 18th.

Oh my term planner is coming along nicely

For Christmas the children can make their own (ahhh, don't know the word) where they count the days off till Christmas. You need a lot of toilet rolls.

let them make a tree out of it and paint it. Stick the toilet rolls on top of each other to for a tree. And they can put a sweet in each holder for every day till christmas.
0
000
0 0 0
0000000
0 0 0 0 0
00000000000
000
000

If you can see what I mean.