Six-year-old Johnny thought that two-year-old Anna’s torn paper collages looked like fun last night, so he built some of his own. Being older, he took it to another level, creating several 3D sculptures. This one was my favorite – it reminds me of Arches National Park. I thought that this would make a great paper building challenge for kids: pick a landmark and make it out of paper! You could also give kids access to several different types of materials (play dough, straws, craft sticks, pipe cleaners, colored paper, and more) and let them use whatever they liked!
The Educators’ Spin On It, Boy Mama Teacher Mama,
Mama Smiles, The Measured Mom, Planet Smarty Pants,
Relentlessly Fun Deceptively Educational, This Reading Mama
This was a mellow after school week. One of my kids is really struggling to adjust to school this year, and figuring out what to do about that is taking up a lot of time. The kids spent their afternoons playing outside (it’s still pretty warm in California – t-shirt weather!), reading, making Christmas gifts, and playing with wooden blocks. Here are some activities that were linked up last week that I thought were neat:
- DIY Pocket Window Curtains for Exploring Light from How Wee Learn
- Fingerprint Science for Kids from Edventures With Kids
- Make Your Own Advent Calendar from Mothers Madness. I love how this advent calendar was created using matchboxes, but is decorated so that you would never know!
- Make a Paper Winter Village from Planet Smarty Pants
- Clothespin Manger Nativity Scene from Christianity Cove
What after school learning and fun will you share this week? Note that by linking up you give the linky hosts permission to feature your post and to pin it to our After School Activities board on Pinterest. Thank you for sharing!
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
This is wonderful! It’s so important to take inspiration from our own children! I like your idea of transforming this into a landmark project.
I think it makes a great whole-family art activity!
Finding ways to remember trips is really important with kids, it’s amazing how quickly they can forget. Hmmmm I wonder how they kids can recreate the building in DC and NY from our trip this summer?
i love doing torn paper projects with my kids. You learn so much about them while doing them!
It’s a great open-ended art activity!
This sounds like a fun idea. We are way too busy after school, but this activity would be fun to try on the weekend. Thanks for sharing. Have a terrific day!
I just love how creative your kids are. Such a fun child-led project!
I love seeing the projects they come up with!
I really like this. New Kid brought home a similar type project from school and it’s one of my favorites. Shhh, don’t tell the kids I have favorites when it comes to their art.
Haha, I do too (but don’t tell my kids either!)
This really does remind me of a Utah rockscape! Very cool. Love the way the shadows make it look more realistic.
Paper sculpture! What a cool idea! I can see my boys building a whole city with tunnels and bridges.
Wow 3D! :) My son does this too, and yesterday we got him a new pack of glue sticks so he has been going crazy gluing stuff!
We haven’t done much 3-D art lately, I really should get back into it soon.