Aluminium Foil Dress Up

Every now and again we make silly stuff out of tin foil. Makes a change from cardboard for me (people are beginning to think I am fixated with making things out of the cardboard I pilfer from Costco and I can't have them forcing me into therapy over it before I have built the international space station!). Like cardboard it is of course 100% recyclerific, especially so if you use the 100% recycled foil in the first place! Speaking of which, Reynolds had a deal on it's 100% recycled foil on earth day, where you could print out a coupon, buy the stuff and then post the recipt back with the coupon for a full rebate. Nearly FREE FOIL! Whooo!

I haven't posted about the foil before, because I've been dreadful at taking photos when we do this. I have a couple from last year when we made wands and tiaras and bracelets, but the pics are rubbish and the kids are in their PJs, because they wanted to wear it all to eat their breakfast the next day...

I did get a few pics from the hats we made last week though. The kids scrunched up a sheet of foil a wee bit and then rolled it flat with a rolling pin.Then we folded the circle in half and bend over the rounded edge to seal it like a calzone. Then they cut along the straight edge of the semi circle, to open up the Admiral Nelson style hat. I folded over the edges for them, so there was no chance of a sharp bit of foil nicking them. You can make bowler hats quite easily by scrunching a few sheets over a head or an appropriate sized bowl too.I give you this seasons fashion in anti government mind-probe-wear for the clinically insane. Très chic? Mais non!
While they decorated the hats with stickers, markers and punched holes in them to thread laces and pipecleaners with beads, I decided to try and make a sombrero for Cinco de Mayo. I laid out four strips of foil into a kind of nearly octagon shape and scrunched them down over a bowl, then we rolled the brim flat with the rolling pin and I shaped the head bit a little more by hand. My oldest decorated it with sharpie pens.

Both kids loved how humungous it was. It's still hung up in the kitchen. I am a little sad that it is too small for me. I really like how you don't really need anything other than a roll of tin foil. I mean there's no glue, no tape, no string required unless you want to decorate your creations. I want to scrunch some foil onto a couple of pairs of the girl's shoes to make temporary sparkly genie shoes with curled up toes next, and let them glue on jewels or pom poms or something. I'll try to remember to post a pic if we do that.

Packing tape movie reels

This idea came from when I was about eight or nine years old and my parents let me go to a kind of art class type dealio at the local art gallery on a saturday morning. It looks like they still do art workshops for kids all these years later. I must find out if there's anything on when we head back to visit the family! The workshops I went to were run for kids around 8 to 12 years in age and one of the projects that stands out in my memory for it's awesomeness was when the guy who ran the class and his girlfreind stripped clean a load of cinefilm and let us kids paint it with all sorts of patterns using what must have been some kind of translucent paint. After the class he took it all home and spliced it together and then the next week we got to watch our crazy abstract film, projected on the gallery wall. Very fond memories!

Well, I don't have cinefilm, chemicals to strip it clean, or a an appropriate projector for such a project, but...

I found this weird kind of projector at the local savers for $2. It's basically the projector part of this toy with none of the other stuff that it comes with, not even the base, but it works for what I want it for, because it's got a slot that I can slide a length of "film" through and out the other side.

The "film" was made by putting strips of clear packing tape back to back. You do get some bubbles, which could be avoided by using strips of Overhead projector transparencies or similar clear plastic strips cut from the windows in toy packaging, but we had the packing tape handy and the bubbles are kinda fun anyway.

The kids drew on their strips of film with sharpies and then I spliced them together with more packaging tape to make the movie reel.

We projected the movie inside the rocket ship, because it was the middle of the day and our curtains are rubbish at cutting out light. It was rather crowded in there with me as the projectionist and all six kids, but they thought it was cool, and now they have seen how it works, we'll likely do it again, but screen the next show after dark, so we have a bit more space to veiw it. Now they have seen how the movie threads through to project I suspect I can get the kids to use it as a story telling medium. Here are a few bits we managed to catch on tape...

Note to self: When cramming lots of preschoolers into a small space for more than five minutes, make sure everyone has been for a pee first.

Thank you and thank you and, ooh look, pretty flashy lights

Thank you!

First thank you is to Mary Anne at Thrifty Craft Mama, who gave me a blog award a while ago. It's called the "Premio Dardos" award. Premio Dardos means “Darts award” in Italian, so I guess I shouldn't be calling it the premio dardos award, because that would be the darts award award. It is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing and I fear the previous sentance I typed just made me exempt from the literary aspect of this award. Hey ho.

So thank you Mary Anne, and in slacker style as per usual I'm going to ignore the protocol of passing this along to 15 other bloggers. I do want to take the opportunity to send you off to a totally awesome site though. I found this site by David V Williamson not long ago and was so excited by the wonderful things that the he had made with such simple everyday bits and pieces. I really want to try making some, no, a LOT of this stuff. The kids will be enthralled with so many of those projects and I'm overly optimistic about being able to build some of that stuff together with them too. I'll let you know how we get along obviously.

Thank you!

The second thank you is for Marie at Makes and Takes for making Filth Wizardry blog of the week over there last week. Hopefully some new folk have come through to us and will join the messy mayhem as we go along.

Oooh, look! Pretty flashy lights!

I've been a bit slow posting things lately. Cute man I live with had all his wisdom teeth out amongst other events, so I'm playing catch up with getting projects we've done onto the blog. He's had some sedentary whilst high on pain killers time available to start his own blog, which is cool, because he's been meaning to chronicle his adventures into electronics for a while now. He's got a few posts on there about kid projects if you fancy a gander...

You can find his stuff at Fangletronics.

Question is now, do I have it in me to upload some of today's kid projects, or is the Himalayan-esque pile of laundry calling my name?

Nails and screws and cardboard boxes

For this activity we used old cardboard boxes (sturdyish ones like wine boxes or diaper boxes), some largish nails that we had left over from making batteries out of lemons and potatos (I'll get around to posting about that one day), some old wood screws (the nails and screws were put in the yoghurt pots, so every kid had his or her own stash). screwdrivers (phillips) and instead of hammers, because a)we only had one and b)it was bloody heavy, we used rocks from the garden for hammering. By the way, yes, everything is covered in dried sidewalk chalk from earlier play(the rocks, the floor and even the outside walls in a later picture, not to worry though, it hoses off) I marked a load of dots in the tops of the boxes and the kids used the rocks to hammer the nails in on the dots, then they pulled the nails out and used the holes as a guide to start screwing the wood screws in. Both my girls have used screwdrivers a lot recently with different projects and the lads loved this activity too. They all got the clockwise to screw in and anticlockwise to screw out thing by the end.

They stuck at this with minimal interference from me for what must have been approaching two hours. My job seemed to be merely fetching more nails and screws. They were so into it that we ran out of screws and I had to resort to giving them a box of white plastic coated hooks that had screw ends to keep going with.

As usual, the combination of being allowed to play with two things that they usually aren't (rocks and nails) meant that this was a very popular activity. I think they inadvertently got a lot of skills from this though and it was free because we had all the stuff lurking in the garage. Yay free! I'm just going to pile the boxes in the garage and if they ask to do it again tomorrow or next week then I'll turn the boxes upside down and give them some smaller screws and nails and see how they do with something a little more fiddly. Mwah ha ha!

Recycled baby tights

One of my friend's little girls has had to undergo some pretty darn serious talipes treatment right from birth. She's already had several casts and surgery and is now fitted with some hardcore boots and mini snowboard contraption that bolts to the boots to continue the treatment. Cutey little lass is only a couple of months old. The snowboard (I have no idea what it is called medically, a brace maybe?) has to be worn with the boots 23 hours a day at the moment, so diaper changing is understandably not as easy as it should be. My mate has cut the feet off sleepsuits so far in order to be able to use the snaps openings.

I mentioned Babylegs to her and we've got her a few pairs to go in the mail this weekend. There are loads of tutorials out there on the web showing how to make home made babylegs from pairs of adult knee high socks by the way.

I had some pairs of 18 month tights around that had hardly been worn, so I thought I'd try and make some babylegs with those. I cut up the tights into the legs, pants, heels and feet.

I intend to make scratch mits from the wee feet bits to go with a hat and the leg warmers. These are probably all going to be a bit too small for my freind's baby, or will only fit her for a few weeks at most (although she is on the dinky side), but my friend also has a little girl who is almost three and adores baby dolls, so they will make a nice matching ensemble for her baby to wear next to her little sister wearing the genuine Babylegs. Got lots more tights to make other little matching outfits and some of the tights are 24 months, so they might work out larger. I need to get some elastic to finish the scratch mits for the dollies though.

Make believe

It seems like my kids have an ever increasing capacity for living in lalaland. They feed off each other and the make believe fun is so awesome to behold. Truth be told, I kinda like joining in when I'm not going to cramp their style.

It's pretty fun to help them start off with a few props that are sitting around the house and watch as they quickly get carried away and lost in the make believe. All the pirate-superhero-mermaid swords and hats we made for my four year old's birthday party were still in use months later and the rocket ship is still going strong after nearly three months of constant preschooler abuse. It's well worth the effort to be a facilitator for make believe I have found.

An easy one for my youngest daughter, who is newly potty trained and loving her superiority over the diaper wearers, was to give her the empty Kandoo butt wipe box (we used one box and a refil as a bit of a trial before I figured they weren't really needed) to use as a potty for her doll. Now that she is wise in the ways of the bowels, she can have fun imparting her knowledge to her dollies and high fiving them when they c**p in the can.
Last week we the peddle barbie corvette that we got for $5 in a yard sale last spring was pronounced dead, following a collision that rendered it's stearing unfixable without welding gear. On the weekend the kids got to play at being mechanics in the sun while the grown ups were taking apart other scavenged electronics for parts for future projects. They spent a good two to three hours unscrewing all the screws on it, some whilst lying on a skate board under the car like the real mechanics do. Later that evening my four year old daughter says to us "after dinner, can we go outside and screw again?" You try not laughing. FAIL.Monday heralded an experiment in home dentistry. Both the kids are interested in the dentist after a trip a couple of months ago, the younger one was quite nervous about the genuine dentist's trip though, so I thought maybe some playing at being dentists with her sister would make it less scary. Turns out a four year old's booster seat makes a great make believe dentist's chair, and an old blue dress shirt of mine that had already been used to be a nurse worked out as the costume. They decided they needed goggles too. We got a cup of water and a bowl to spit the rinse in and they brushed each other's teeth and counted each other's teeth and my older daughter took great pleasure in telling my younger daughter all about how to look after her teeth. The best ones are when you get to just sit back and watch the crazy unfold. This month the kids have been obsessed with volcanos (we did the classic volcano science experiment a while back). They have on several ocassions lately, declared there to be "a volcano in twenty minutes!" and then crammed all the stuff from their bedroom into the home made space rocket to escape/evacuate. The most recent volcano wasn't nearly so troublesome because aparently "the aliens say that we can stay with them for a while". One of the previous volcano evacuations was hampered by someone being stuck in a tree full of mice (I swear this is the stuff I deal with daily and I am going to be so sad when it inevitably starts to subside with age). In the mean time, we need volcano insurance.








What make believe fun do your kids go for?

Chalk and water painting

This happens a lot at our house. The kids never seem top get bored with it. We just keep running out of chalk. I had a delve through my photos and found pics from a few different occasions that we'd done this to post.

All you need to do is wet the floor outside (we have a concrete yard, which is great for this) and then give the kids some sidewalk chalk and some brushes. The colours are so vibrant when the chalk is wet that the kids just love it and it washes off with a quick hose down so easily.

It's a good way to teach colour mixing too. Letting them create blobs of colour next to each other and then using the brush to mix them on the floor.
We are super classy here and my kids love to splash about and paint each other with watercolour blocks in an under the bed storage box. I did briefly entertain the idea of getting an inflatable paddling pool until I realised that it would last approximately five minutes after the two hours that I would spend inflating it, and they are more than happy with the storage boxes anyway (we actually had eight kids playing in and around two of these boxes full of water today with the chalk).MaryAnne of Thrifty craft mama posted about using these storage boxes with the lid as a dinky and thrifty sand pit, so we got ourselves set up for the summer with one of those this weekend too. It's great! I chucked in a load of treasure (beads) and a couple of seives and the kids are happy as Larry. Hopefully the lid will prevent the local cats from leaving us their little bum trinkets. I just have to remember to put the lid on it now. This I suspect is the weak link in the plan.