St. George's Dragon

I found this neat idea on Activity Village for St. George's Day - this could very easily be turned into a mobile and give you a classroom of swooping dragons! If you use the clear nylon thread with this it really will seem as if they are flying.

This wooden spoon dragon is incredibly effective and much simpler to make than it looks! It will keep older kids busy for a while and give them a craft to be proud of, too.

You will need:

A wooden spoon
Green paint
Green craft foam
Scraps of red, yellow and orange craft foam
Green glitter glue
PVA glue
Wiggle eyes
Black permanent pen

Instructions:

Paint the spoon with green paint and leave to dry.

Fold the green foam in half. Draw a wing shape with the bottom along the fold. Cut around the wing shape. Unfold and decorate the wings with the glitter glue.

Draw around the bowl of the spoon onto green foam. Cut out and glue to the spoon at the base of the handle (this is the lower part of the jaw).

Glue the eyes to the back of the spoon, and draw on the nose with black pen.

Cover the middle of the wing piece with the glue and wrap it round the spoon (you may need to tape in place with low mask tape to hold it while the glue dries)

Now cut an arrow-shaped tail from green foam, decorate with glitter glue and glue to the end of the spoon.

Finally cut a flame shape from yellow foam, a slightly smaller one from orange foam and an even smaller one from yellow foam. Glue them together in a pile and stick to the bottom of the dragon’s mouth.

Leap Into Spring!

If you're planning a Lifecycles or Rainforest theme then these frogs will surely want to hop into your display!
FROG 1:
1) Take a paper plate and fold it in half.
2) Using a red crayon colour the inside red.
3) Using green paint cover the outside in green.
4) Cut 4 green card rectangles 1" x 7". Concertina the card in inch squares to make bouncy legs.
5) Cut a red card arch for the tongue and glue it slightly off-centre on the inside of the mouth so the tongue sticks out.
6) Cut 2 1" white circles and 2 1cm black circles for the eyes and glue on.
7) Glue / staple the legs 2 on the left and 2 on the right.

Voila! One bouncy frog that can hang from a ceiling / tree bough or be attached to a wall.

FROG 2:
1) Paint the outside of a burger box green.
2) Follow same steps as above for legs and eyes.
3) For a bit of fun give the lady frogs red lips. Poke short pieces of black pipe-cleaners through the box and curl at the end for eye-lashes.
4) Gentlemen frogs can add a bow tie to the box to jazz them up.

Hope you have a 'hopping' good time making these!

Pretend Stained Glass Mobiles

These mobiles are ideal gifts for Mothers / Fathers Day, simple to make and beautiful to look at. Follow the link to see how to make them at http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/Stainedglass.shtml.

You will need:

• wax paper
• crayons
• crayon sharper (or a knife- to make crayon shavings)
• scissors
• any flat objects (like glitter, dried leaves, stickers, paper scraps, pictures from magazines, etc.)
• an iron. You'll encase the flat objects and crayon shavings in waxed paper, iron it, and then hang your masterpiece from a window!

Education Show Seminar

On Friday 27th March I gave a talk at the Education Show about the different aspects of display. I had a great time doing it and it really reinforced for me how much I love this subject because once I got talking about display any nerves that I had vanished! I thoroughly enjoyed meeting everybody who came to the seminar and as promised have put the notes on my blog as a downloadable PDF for people to use. It was lovely to be able to help some people with ideas and suggest resources - I am always happy for people to email me if they need some help with display ideas for a project or a starting point for their display.

5Th Wall Display Notes