Drawing diagrams of trains and keeping carriages in order

My three year old likes to have his train built in a certain way. He can get very upset when it is broken or when we have to put it away. I had been thinking of a way to help him with this and came up with a matching and sorting activity. We have a wooden train with 13 carriages and engines of four different colours. Using paper and crayons I showed my son how we could draw a diagram of the train and record how the carriages are positioned.

Boy with train carriage

First we organised all the carriages according to colour. B loves catagorising things at the moment and enjoyed seeing them all lined up neatly.

Then we counted them and drew the right number of boxes on a piece of paper.

Diagram ready to be coloured

Then B built a train. Together we coloured the boxes, well, I did most of the colouring. He prefers line drawings at the moment. I decided that the idea of the activity was to talk about diagrams, and colouring was a secondary and less important skill at this moment.

Finished train

Then he decided to make a little change. So we drew the boxes again and coloured them accordingly. He was very pleased.

Two slightly different trains

I hope to add to our list of trains in the future, if he builds different trains. But at the moment, he likes them in this order, so in this order they go!

It was lovely to talk about the differences in the carriages and how they should go together.  I’m sure my little boy developed some important skills as we

• talked about colour, shape and size
• created a picture diagram of something real.
• matched carriages as we built a train.

He also get less upset when the train is damaged as he knows it can be easily put together again - in the same order!

Little Red Caboose and Dad Playing Guitar

Making the Perfect (Simple) Paper Plane

When looking for something to do which requires little or no preparation, I often reach for a huge stack of paper that is always in the corner of the cupboard. Paper can be made to do lots of things and this day I thought I’d show B an amazing flying plane. Only the first one I made wasn’t amazing. This led me to find out how to make a really good plane from just one piece of paper. I found a lot more than I had bargained for.

The first plane I made for B was met with a blank face and “that wasn’t very good, Mama”. It was a bit of a let down as we’d had fun folding paper together. I hadn’t told him what we were making and I thought I might get at least an “oo” from the first flight., but no. The paper plane flew about 2 metres heading steadily down to the floor.

So I did a little research and found this wonderful site called paperairplanes.co.uk with lots of different ways to make airplanes. There are many to choose from, some complicated and some simple, all with instructions in video form and step by step diagrams. They all fly a little differently. My favourite is the Rapier as it is quick and easy to make (and to remember).

Instructions (these are very basic and might only be understood if you know how to make a basic school child plane!):
1. Take a piece of paper and fold it lengthways down the middle. Open it.

Folded Piece of Paper

2. Fold the top edge over about one centimetre. Then fold it over again, and again and again, about 8 times.

Paper with One Fold at the Top

Paper with Top Fold Folded Over

3. Then take the top outside corner (with lots of folds) and fold it down to the middle. Do the same to the other side (like you do for a traditional basic plane)

Corners Folded Over

4. Then fold along the middle crease again.

Middle Crease Folded again

5. Lastly, fold the lower corners (now joined in the middle flat against each other) down to create the wings.

Wings Folded Down - The Finished Plane!

There is an instruction video for this plane if my instructions aren’t adequate, and diagrams when you scroll down. And through this link you will find more plane which will no doubt keep an older child happy for a long while.

If you have lots of time and patience, you might be interested in this complicated paper plane. I can’t vouch for its flying ability though, there are 35 steps and I didn't have time to finish it. I'll have to try again when my son is able to follow.

Testing different paper planes was a lot of fun and it gave us lots of opportunity to use words for describing the way they flew and how well they flew. We also:

• Practiced folding - great for fine motor skills
• Ran around and followed the planes - whole body co-ordination and dodging doorways and furniture!
• Experimented with the concept of motion
• Watched a simple plain piece of paper take on new dimensions and almost a personality as it zoomed through the air!

Do you have a favourite paper place design? Comment to tell me about it.

Making Mini Jack-o-lanterns

We collected so many chestnuts over recent weeks that we’ve been able to do lots of different Autumn crafts. One of our favourite was making mini pumkins. My son loves pumpkins, they are his favourite thing this time of year. We wanted to try to cover chestnuts in wax to use in our crafts. We used chestnuts, wax and cocktail sticks to make some of our chesnuts into mini jack-o-lanterns.

We used hot wax. Please supervise all children if you do this.

To coat the chestnuts in orange, we needed a fair amount of wax. We made a mixture of candle wax and an orange crayon which we melted in an old jam jar in a hot pan of water. Then we put the wax pot  in a large plastic tub, we stuck cocktail sticks in the chestnuts, dipped them in the wax and set them on kitchen paper. 

Dipping the Chestnut in Orange Wax

Adding the Second Coat of Wax to the Chestnut

We found the wax gave a lovely smooth finish once dry, especially when we gave the chestnuts two coats.

Contrasting Chestnuts

Mini Jack-o-lantern waiting for a face

 

Then we drew faces on the chestnuts with a permanent marker. They look good enough to eat! Although this is a disadvantage when around small children, I‘m hoping they‘ll look less appetising as part of a candle or wall decoration.

Mini Jack-o-lanterns sitting in a row

Tip: when you take the cocktail stick out, twist it first so that it doesn’t take all the wax with it!

This can be quite dangerous as the wax is very hot. All children need supervision. With care and patience children learn many things about wax, shape and temperature. I loved the result and am looking forward to trying this again with other colours to suit the changing seasons.

Do you have any ideas for coating other things with wax? I’d love to read about them, and try them. Please comment and/or leave links to your blog.

Autumn Leaf Decorations that last more than a day.

Autumn is one of my favourite times of year. I love to walk through the park as the leaves fall and the sun shines through bright seasonal colours. I often collect leaves and imagine all sort of decorations for the home. Unfortunately they crumble quickly in the central heating and are left forgotten, broken and brown on the balcony. So this year I decided to find ways of keeping the memory of autumn leaves in my home longer.

I have been playing around with wax in recent weeks and we thought it would be fun to try to coat the leaves with wax. Unsure of what the result would be, we steamed ahead with an improvised candle melter. We put white candle wax in an old jam jar, put it in a pot of hot water on the cooker and watched it melt slowly. Then we put the hot wax in a litre sized plastic bucked to do the dunking.


We carefully dipped each leaf and lay it on cardboard to dry. This is quite dangerous and needs lots of supervision.

Dipping a Leaf in Hot Candle Wax

Then we simply tied the leaves to a piece of string and hung them from a lamp. Lovely.

Even a few days later the leaves look great and aren’t falling apart. They look like they may last all year.


On another day, we spent some time looking at the different shapes of the leaves and we drew around a few different ones on coloured paper. We cut them out, folding the paper a few times to make the process quicker. Then I stuck them to string to hang by the windows. The result is a simple paper decoration to cheer the windows up on dreary days.

Paper Leaves Cheering up my WIndow