Toddler Group Tuesday

Well, I almost wasn't going to Toddler Group today. It was supposed to be the Small Person's Sports Day at school, but it got rained off.  Mr Bogert's Mum normally helps out t Toddler Group, but she's off gallavanting on holiday again :)

The Mums who had offerred to help out and cover our absence had put a craft together from left-over bits from other sessions, which they found hiding out in the filing cabinet and cupboard. The created an underwater scene. (This would be really great to follow on from reading Tiddler and other Terrific Tales by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler.)

For the underwater scene, you will need:
- Blue and Green shades of tissue paper
- Glue
- Felt
- Shiny paper
- Scissors
- Glitter
- Pencil
- A4 sheet of paper or card

Rip your tissue paper into rough strips.
Cover your sheet of A4 with glue and arrange your blue strips horizontally for the sea. (you can use a bit of yellow for the sea-bed too, or even a strip of sandpaper).
Glue your green strips of tissue paper vertically on top of the blue to form seaweed.
Draw and cut starfish and seahorse shapes from your card and stick onto your picture. (A tip if you're not that confident creating your own shapes - Find a book with a suitable picture and trace the outline, or, print off clipart to use as a pattern piece. Alternatively, just stick to the simple shapes. A group of shimmery fish is just as effective as a whole range of creatures.)
Cut fish shapes from the shiny paper and glue into place.
Finish with a little sparkly glitter to add some shimmer or bubbles to the water.

Don't they look lovely all finished?

I had also prepped a craft because I realised I'd forgotten to ask anyone (but they are wonderful and just did it anyway!). So we also made summery ice cream cones.

To make ice cream cones you will need:
- Glue
- Cotton wool
- Plain card
- Brown or cream card
- Scissors
- Red paint/glitter glue
- Glitter

First of all draw a triangle the size you would like your cone to be. Draw a semi circle on top of the cone (where the ice cream would go).
Cut this out. This is your base.
Cut a second cone shape out of your brown/cream card. You can leave this plain, or you can draw or stamp a patttern on. We have stamped ours with bronze ink and a plaid patterned stamp.

Glue this to your plain base.

Glue cotton wool to the semi circle of the base.

Paint red paint, or squeeze red glitter glue (actually, the Smaller Person is using pink here) onto your cotton wool ice cream for sauce.

Whilst the paint is still wet, sprinkle with glitter.

You could substitute glitter for actual sprinkles, but may need to add a little glue to your red paint before you paint it on, to help them stick. If you want strawberry or banana flavoured ice cream, you could get pastel coloured cotton wool balls (we didn't have any!), and you could a red button for a cherry or a strip of corrugated card as a chocolate flake. If you're lucky enough to have some brown/cream textured card or wallpaper you could use that instead for the cone, or even use brown collage scraps to create your own unique cone.

Happy crafting :)