gardening – Page 2 – KidsChaos.com

crafts, create, FREE printables, gardening, gardening with kids, google+ hangouts

Fairy tale crafts reward chart

Who would have thought we would be making a fairy tale craft tonight – Fridays are usually our ‘film night’ after a full-on week at school.

HOWEVER, I was taken to one side by my son’s teacher on Thursday to discuss his behaviour – and we between us to set a reward system in place… sigh, just when I thought we were getting somewhere!

So, the plan is, a thumbs up from the teacher = one reward point. And so the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale craft reward chart was invented. And he is really engaged with it so far – we found an old wooden shelf I’d been hoarding since our kitchen cupboard makeovers (11yo wanted me to write that if you don’t have a piece of board, a sheet of paper or card will do), and found a wiggly stick on the way home from school – and got busy!.

To get started, cut out your leaves – If you use the FREE printable here – gently stick the sheet to another blank A4 sheet with a low tack magic tape, and cut around the leaves. This gives you a printed leaf, and a plain white leaf. Place the plain white leaves in position on the board, and using them as stencils, put a little paint on a scrunched up piece of kitchen paper, and dab around the edge of the paper leaf to reveal a leaf shape.

Glue the branch of the fairy tale craft beanstalk onto your board (oh yes, I DID use a glue gun), and pop the green leaves somewhere safe. We used a CD sleeve, which we glued to the top of the board to make a pocket to hold the leaves. And rewarded the boy with his first ‘thumbs up’ leaf at the foot of the beanstalk – here’s to a completed beanstalk for Jack to climb up by the end of the week… Also on the blog today – how to make the Snow White Mirror.

If you’d like to see the finished fairy tale craft article, click the youtube link here, I got together with Missie Lizzie who talked magic beans, Anthea with her elves’ shoes, Kelly talked Rapunzel, and Maggy at Red Ted Art (talking three little pigs) who hosted a Fairy Tale Craft google+ hangout.

Oh, and I’m on twitter and Instagram is my new favourite thing, I also blog at incredibusy.com, and Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

crafts, create, gardening

Create a leaf wreath with old books

Ever the recycle queen of green, I LOVED working with the kids on this one… and a great way to use up old unloved books.

This is very easy to make, the boys’ now have quite a short attention-span for crafting, yet really rose to the challenge – creating templates using REAL Autumn leaves of different shapes which we cut up, several pages at a time for speed, from the pages of this aged book – folding a crease down the centre of the “leaves” to create a more realistic 3Dimensional effect.

We had in preparation, wrapped some lovely string around a shop-bought wreath, however, we have previously used a cereal box to good effect.

9yo thought to add the pine cones – a bit of mixed medium eh?!

We glued the leaves on with our trusty glue gun, overlapping and building as we went along….

Our front door is quite sheltered, so it should be OK for Christmas – looks nice eh?

Equally, the ‘leaf wreath’ would look lovely on an interior door during the holiday period, and we’ll be taking this one down to Granny’s care home for the door to her room this year.

Want to see me talking about this project and other leaf crafts (including our hammered leaf printing and a bubble wrap leaf lamination inspired by Lizzie’s fabulous post)… Click the link and photo left, to watch via youtube…. Maggy Woodley from Red Ted Art hosted a fabulous “Leaf Craft Ideas’ on Google+.

Maggy talked us through some lovely ideas, including leaf bowls whilst wearing a rather attractive leaf crown! More links to follow from Anthea at zingzingtree, thefairyandthefrog, some cute leaf fairies from peaklepie, missielizzie’s decorating pumpkins with leaves and herecomethegirlsblog with their reward chart.

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x LIKE IT? Pin it!

gardening, gardening with kids, kids, life

Out in the garden…compost treasures

Chaos writes:

Out in the garden this morning before school, grabbing some compost for the little Papier–mâché seedling pots pictured below.

And look! (actually, look away now if you’re squeamish about worms… oh, too late…)

There was a potato growing deep at the bottom of the hotbin compost bin! I’ve pulled him out, and re-planted the little spud, how exciting – looking forward to harvesting them later in the year 🙂 #composttreasures

To read more on our gardening adventures click here to see where we got our delicious compost for our seedlings.
To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.

and how to make an indoor watering can here!

Are you on Google+ Follow me here, and say hello, and I’ll add you back to my circles.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!
Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com

crafts, education, gardening, gardening with kids, kids

Gardening with kids – watching the seeds grow

Chaos writes:

So, you may have read my previous post about the lovely @soggywelly sending us some random seeds and beans? Well… look how they are shooting up!
my Mother used to make these newspaper planters (and, having shot the video of lovely Maggy Red Ted Art demonstrating how to make them).

Really simple to do with the kids, and to involve them with planting the seeds and beans. We also made some cute little labels – thank you Life at the Zoo for the inspiration!

And along with the toilet roll tubes, these can be popped straight into the earth in the garden – although, it’s so cold here at the moment, I think we’ll keep them on the window sill for a little longer!

We’ve popped these on the sitting room window sill, it’s only little greenhouse, and keep a little plastic milk bottle beside the seeds, with a few holes punched into the lid so that we don’t forget to water them… something 8yo feels proud to ‘be in charge of’ – and excited every day at their growth rate!

To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.

And find out how to use your toilet roll tubes to make bird seed feeders too.

Are you on Google+ Follow me here, and say hello, and I’ll add you back to my circles.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x

crafts, gardening, gardening with kids, key stage 2

Let’s Get Planting

Chaos writes:

It’s that time of year again! March is here at last, the sun is shining, and I cycled to the Post Office to pick up a parcel, which could not be delivered as the sender had not put enough stamps on the envelope! Mustn’t grumble, as it was a parcel from the lovely Sue at @SoggyWelly (a new friend – through the gorgeous Georgie @TheFlowerFarmer, go follow them both!) with some seeds she wouldn’t be using (oh, how I love twitter).

Love how she addressed me on the envelope, ‘Veg Lady’ – that had them giggling at the Post Office!

We’ve got some delicious compost from our compost bin! We wanted to wait three months for the compost to “develop” and we still had our old ‘bee-hive’ bin which had been a birthday pressie from WigglyWigglers SOME time ago (wow, I hear you say, your family really know how to treat you on your special days!). The kids are really excited about getting stuck in! Wellies at the ready….

This new compost bin, and therefore the compost…. though, woah, it’s GOOD!

It’s a *HotBin* and can achieve hot composting between 40-60 °C, which means it’s producing a rich compost faster.

It has a little thermometer on the top, which satisfyingly tells you how HOT your compost is!
As hotter temperatures can be achieved we can recycle more types of household waste including food waste, grass cuttings, shredded paper etc. So great for land-fill-avoidance. And fascinating for the kids too!

The website is brilliant, with informative PDFs and videos. We have had great support from their team, for example they sent us a new filter through the post, and emailed a link to a simple ‘how to’ video…. Fantastic Customer Support!

We’ve got rocket, tomatoes, salad leaves, and more – I’ll be back tomorrow with news on our planting, will let you know how we get on! 🙂

Click here for a delicious recipe with Rocket and click here if you’d like to read our quick and easy Pizza recipe.

To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.