Summer catch up post

For our last few weeks before the summer holidays, our songs were based around the topic of music and movement - the kind of songs that don't really fit in with other topics but are great fun to sing and move about to :0)

The songs I chose for this topic were: ainsi font, Sur le pont d'Avignon, enroulez le fil (wind a bobbin), dans mon chateau un robot vit and regarde les petits lapins (sleepy bunnies).  We also looked at the song petit papa in hounor of Fathers' Day.

Our crafts for this topic included making our own shakers, the children had lots of fun filling empty plastic bottles with rice, pasta, cut up straws, lentils and split peas and then decorating them with items from the craft boxes. And of course, they were a great musical accompaniment to our singing :0)

To accompany the song 'enroulez le fil' (wind a bobbin) we had lots of fun making patterns with paint by printing and rolling cotton reels on paper :0)

Our robot song required a robot craft and we used shapes to create our own robot pictures :0)

Ainsi font is a song about puppets (les marionettes) and so our craft had to be making puppets. These felt glove puppets were ready stitched for our little ones to decorate :0)

And what could possibly be better to make Daddy for Fathers' Day than a crown? Here are our fabulous creations :0)

Classes have now restarted for the autumn term and our new topic is "sous la mer" (under the sea).

Happy singing and crafting :0)

Les petites-bêtes weeks 3-6 - bug hats, worm painting, masks and snails

Time has once again run away with me and so I am combining the last 4 weeks of our mini beasts topic into one post in an effort to get back on track soon.

For our third week, we made our own hats either in the form of "une abeille" (a bee) or "une coccinelle" (a ladybird).  They were very simple for our little ones to create using a long length of stiff card, appropriately coloured collage materials and pipe cleaners for antennae.  The finished hats look really great and little imp still wears hers several weeks on :0)

In our fourth week, we let our toddlers get as messy and creative as they could with lots of colourful paint, blank sheets of paper and spaghetti "worms" (vers de terre) to paint with.  Their finished wriggly worm paintings were great :0)

In the fifth session, we made some mini beast masks:

abeille - bee

coccinelle - ladybird

araignée - spider

papillon - butterfly

For our final mini beast session, we made escargot (snails). We used long lengths of card, the same kind as we had used for our hats a few weeks earlier.  We rolled the card up to make a spiral shell and left a small piece for the body. The children then used the collage materials and glue and glitter to decorate their snail shells. :0)

We hope you enjoy trying out some of these mini beast crafts at home :0)

Our next topic is music and movement and has been fun so far, watch this space for the first blog post hopefully within the next few days!

In the meantime, happy singing and crafting! :0)

 

les petites-bêtes - week 2 - paper plate snails

Our second week on our mini beast topic we made paper plate snails.  A really simple yet effective craft that even the younger ones in our group could get involved in.

To make your own you will need:

A paper plate

Craft foam

Collage materials

A pipe cleaner

Glue

Glitter glue (optional)

First let your little one cut or rip up collage materials and stick them onto the paper plate shell.

Cut out a snail body from the craft foam and glue the paper plate shell onto it.

Add an eye and a smile and some pipe cleaner horns.

If you have glitter glue you can add a spiral onto the shell.

Here are ours:

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

les petites-bêtes week 1 - glitter bugs

 

After the Easter holidays we started our new topic "les petites-bêtes" (mini beasts).

The songs and rhymes that we are looking at are l'araignée gipsy (incey wincey spider), petit escargot, Monsieur l'escargot, 5 petits vers de terre and la petite chenille.

For our first craft I purchased some spider (araignée) and snail (escargot) pictures with peelable sections and lots of coloured glitter for our little ones to sprinkle on to create their own unique picture. They turned out really great and the children loved using the glitter! :0)

Happy singing and crafting! :0)

Le printemps - week 3 - joyeuses Pâques

For our Easter craft, we decorated bunny biscuits. I was lucky enough to find some lovely bunny rabbit biscuits in a local shop and the children had great fun with icing and sprinkles :0)

A gorgeous and delicious craft to round off the term :0)