How to make a handprint dragon

Despite yesterday's paint disaster 'The Fairy' was very keen to do some painting, so we decide to be festive/patriotic and paint a dragon. After seeing Red Ted's amazing A-Z  of hand prints I fancied giving some a try.

We don't normally celebrate St George's Day but 'The Fairy' is currently into dragons so I thought she might enjoy the story. And she did!

We made the basic hand print. I love how the extra (not on purpose) smudge of yellow looks like it could be a hand. Added a thumb print face and finger tail and leg.

Added some spikes and other details (it looked quite dinosaur-ish before we added the 'fire').

Then 'The fairy' got stuck into some free painting!

Language Focus
Vocabulary: hand, paint, brush, dinosaur, roar, colours

Ice ice baby

In our house we love sensory and messy play. We also love sparkly things, so a while back we decided to take advantage of the chilly weather and make some 'ice suncatchers'.

We filled a bun tray and a tupperware tray with water...added some sparkly bits... I put in a few bits of wool to hold them up and left them out on our balcony to freeze. 

Like magic in the morning, we had some beautiful solid discs to admire, touch and hang up to catch the sun.

And after nap time they were gone.

This activity was great for developing concept vocabulary as well as more difficult verbs.... pour, tip, full, cold, hard, chilly, freeze, melt, drip, gone, disappear (as well as the names of colours and shapes of the sparkly bits). 

You could do this activity when the sun was a bit warmer by putting the water in the freezer rather than outside.