Tuesday 29 July 2014

Dinosaur fossils





Dinosaur fossils are great fun and  simple to make. They can be used to entertain in so many different ways. Hide them around the garden or sand pit for little explorers to find. Crafty kids can paint and decorate their fossils and make gifts, garden ornaments or jewellery out of them. You could even make a puzzle game and get the kids to match the dinosaur figures to the correct fossil.


We made our Dinosaur fossils using this simple Salt Dough recipe.

1 cup of plain flour
1/2  cup of salt
1/2 cup of water


Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl


Add the water a little at a time until the mixture starts clumping together like the picture above. You may not use the whole amount. (the mixture should not be soggy)


Squish the mixture into a ball the same as you would when making cookies. The dough should not be sticky. If it is add a little more flour.


Flatten a bit of dough with a rolling pin or your hand.


Use some toy dinosaurs and squish them into the dough to make a imprint.


Put your fossils onto a try and bake in a oven at the lowest temperature for 3 hours. Alternatively pop them in the microwave for 3 minutes. If they are still soft pop them in for anouth 30 seconds and repeat until ready. For best results I would recommend using the oven.



Monday 28 July 2014

Phonic Daisies




Phonic Daisies is a little activity I made for my daughter to practice her phonic knowledge.  I wanted a little activity that would help her recognise the different spelling of words that have the same phonic sound. This is something that she sometimes finds tricky. 


I cut out a pile of yellow circles and a pile of white petals. 



I wrote a phonic sound on the yellow circle and used 5 petals per circle to draw pictures related to the sound. Additional petals can be made for each sound to expand vocabulary and change it up each time the game is played. 


I choose to start off with the ee/ea and ai/ay sounds.
We concentrated on the separate pair of sounds individually  before grouping them together as a four. I gave her the two sound circles and scattered the ten petals across the table for her to assemble into pretty phonic daisies 

ai vs ay 


ai words: snail, train, nail, rain, paint   
ay words: spray, ray, say, tray, hay 



ee vs ea 


ee words: green, bee, three, tree, sheep
ea words: tea, sea, pea, seal, meat


I used a empty icecream tub to store our daisies and each week a new set of  phonic daisies with new sounds will be added.