Making Rain Shakers

We are following a Noah's Ark theme at the moment and last Friday's rainy weather couldn't have been more appropriate for the activity I had planned for the children - rain shakers!  I have seen various ways of making "rain shakers" or "rain sticks" on the internet using clear plastic containers which enables the child to see the contents of the rain shaker at the same time as shaking them, but I decided to experiment with the sound of the contents against a tin container instead.

A little while ago I was given two tins of posh biscuits which (once consumed) I saved for the purpose of making into rain shakers.  I sourced the contents to be added to the containers from things I already had in the kitchen and put them into a tub for the children to scoop out and empty into the tins as they wished. Apart from benefiting from the rainy weather that day, we also benefited from doing the activity in the conservatory where the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the conservatory could be heard loudly. I encouraged the children to listen to the sound of the rain and to compare that to the sounds of the various items they were scooping into their tins.  We tested out the sound of the pasta against the table and compared that to the sound of the rice and the lentils etc.  Wugs realised that the pasta made the loudest noise so he took a handful of it and put it in his shaker.  Dooey seemed to focus closely on how to scoop the contents into the tin, which ones required a scoop and which ones required him to use his fingers.  

Once the boys had finished filling their shakers, I put the lids on.  Wugs asked to test out his shaker before asking me to re-open it so he could add in some more items (!).  When they were finally sealed, they asked to decorate the tops with some shiny tape (which I helped them with - making sure the lids were fully sealed down) and then they spent all afternoon decorate their shakers with stickers.

Last Friday certainly felt as though we were in the ark watching torrential rain from the comfort of our conservatory and then re-creating the sound of rain inside of it.  

What we used:
Two tin biscuit tubes (a Pringle tube would also work well)
A tub
Red and green lentils, pasta shapes, spaghetti, rice, black peppercorns (beads, paper clips, toothpicks, any small objects would work)
Spaghetti
Shiny tape
Stickers

Please click here to see our other Noah's Ark-related activities.

"Snow and Ice" Salt Paintings

The recent bout of snowy and icy weather we have been experiencing lately has been fascinating for the boys as they experience their first ever winter in the UK.  I thought it would be great to capture the different textures and colours of the season through some artwork using a technique called salt painting.

Ideally a salt painting is made by sprinkling salt onto a watercolour painting whilst the painting is still wet.  The water from the paint absorbs the salt and sticks it to the painting.  (In our case, I misread the watercolour paint chart and accidentally purchased white watercolour paint instead of  blue!) I improvised by watering down regular blue Crayola paint which seemed to work just as well.

I set out the watercolour paper on the table and let the boys paint for a couple of minutes.  Whilst their paintings were still wet, I presented them with two small bottles: one containing fine salt and the other containing coarse salt.  After sprinkling salt on his picture, Dooey was pretty much done.  Wugs wanted to continue, so I brought out the white watercolour paint (that I accidentally purchased) and he happily painted away talking about "snow" and "wind" as he did it.  Later both boys added a sprinkle of glitter which created a nice effect.  

What we used:

Watercolour Paper

Blue Crayola Paint (watered down) (Blue watercolour paint may have been better)

White watercolour paint

Fine and coarse salt

Silver glitter

Rain Art

It is the start of the monsoon season here in Singapore and I thought we would celebrate by trying some rain art. 

I gave Wugs the felt tip pens and let him colour in the paper plate.  Once he had finished, we went out onto our balcony and placed the plate in an area where the rain would reach it.  We stood back and watched as the rain water blended the colours together to give this beautiful effect.

What we used:

Paper plate

Washable felt tip pens/markers
Rain!

Sun Suncatcher

I have been trying to build our activities around particular themes this year.  This month we were focusing on the sky and the weather.  As Wugs has just learned the word for “sun”, it felt appropriate to create a sun-shaped suncatcher. 

What we used:

Contact Paper

Coloured Transparent Paper (red and yellow)

Coloured Tissue Paper (red and yellow)

I cut up the paper into large squares and put it into the tub.

When we attempted this activity previously (see here), we attached the contact paper horizontally to the table.  This time I attached it vertically to the balcony glass door.  This worked much better as it reduced the chances of Wug’s hand and arm getting stuck to the contact paper.  I put the tubs of coloured paper on a chair near the balcony door and left him to play.  He engaged with it straightaway sorting out the tubs of cut up paper.  Although I offered him both yellow and red (anticipating that he would stick both to the contact paper and overlap to create orange) he seemed quite specific about only wanting the yellow coloured transparent paper on the contact paper.  He added to the contact paper over a number of hours (without any instruction from me) until his bath time when I took the paper off the door, backed it with a large sheet of tissue paper and cut out a sun shape.