DIY ideas for Christmas jumper day

As you may have realised, a recent phenomena is almost upon us. I am talking Christmas Jumper day, a day that Save the Children have deemed a charity day. I think the raising of money is a good thing- Christmas is a time that children in need really need to be thought about and helped. But, I was talking to various friends and colleagues, some of who (myself included) don't really like how it has sort of become another money spinner for clothing businesses and how you have to spend money on a jumper to get involved, it just feels a bit commercial. If you don't join in, you feel a bit like a Scrooge. I LOVE the Christmas jumpers around, don't get me wrong, but I don't want it to feel like yet another commercial thing that I've been sucked into, nor do some other people I talked to.

Therefore, I put together some ideas for two colleagues (and anyone else) who want to get involved in the charity side of it but don't really want be sucked into buying a jumper just for Christmas. I suggested customising a jumper in some way, but then again, you have the problem of something that can only really wear at Christmas time, so I thought you could construct something temporary in the vein of the ideas I've offered.

I do actually have one I have bought, I ended up buying one before I thought of this but I hope others can benefit from these ideas:

The only thing you will need is some safety pins and some decorations of your choice.

Flat decorations work really well and I found this set of three woodland animals in Tescos for £3 which I am really pleased about as we would probably hang these on our walls all year round and  if you aren't as fond as woodland decor as we are, they could just go on your tree afterwards.

All I did was find a plain red jumper I already own and I laid it flat to line up where I wanted the decorations to go and hung them in a line pinning them from the inside with safety pins- be careful where you place them as you don't want to look like you are hanging them from your er- chest!
This would work well for children even better who don't have a feminine shape to contend with for the animals to hang well.  You might even find some way of reducing the ribbon length too to make these hang better.



The second idea, I wore to our school Christmas fair on Friday.

I knew I'd be very hot running around on my stall, so I simply took 5 mini- mirror-ball baubles (came in a box of 12 from Poundland) and I hung them around the neckline of the top.  My children were apparently mesmerised in the afternoon as after the lesson they all asked me if it was a necklace or a top.  Again, I laid them out on the flat top and then pinned to the inside. Ok, so it's a bit gaudy but excuse me, Christmas jumper day??? And why not team it with something else glittery?  I have worn this sequinned skirt at school at Christmas every year for at least the last 6 years!


There are dozens more ways you could create a temporary Christmas jumper-
want something cheaper?  How about pinning cotton wool balls all over a plain sweatshirt for a snow fall? Or all round the neck?

I have some flat star ornaments in rainbow colours that I planned to pin to a black top but they were all sadly in the loft and CBC hasn't managed to get them down for me.

If all else fails, why not pin tinsel all around the neck and sleeves of a plain jumper or cardie, am sure that would work equally well and look very glam!

Linking to:

Monday Parenting Pin with Romanian Mum blog, hosted by



Tuesday's In and out link party with Cynthia Ladrie  at FeedingBig


You're gonna love it Tuesday with Kathe with an e


Creative Mondays with Claire Justine



Brilliant blog posts with Honestmum.com

Craft and surreptitious maths investigation!

It was Sunday at 1pm and we had to be at my sister's for 2pm for my niece's 5th birthday party, half an hour drive away.  Problem was, I hadn't made her a card and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES would a bought-card be tolerated in that household, my sister would be really disapproving/disappointed in me as would I. In myself, I mean.

Thus, I decided to do create a quick fun card I had been thinking about as an idea for a card that children could make for their friends' or relatives birthdays.  It would be a sneaky fun way that parents could get their children to do some maths investigation,  whilst having craft/making fun.  It was based on something that my Father-in-law and Brother-in-law write in cards to each other.

The idea is, you take the age of the recipient and try to make that number in as many ways as possible.  This of course will vary, based on age.

To support your child doing this of course, particularly if they are younger, you can provide cubes or marbles/multiple objects. 5 for very young children (just addition) or 10 or just a whole bag, so they can count out the objects to make the sums.

Image from TTS group

You can choose to use one operation, e.g. adding or all four: multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.  Fractions or decimals could be involved for Year 4-6 children (8-11 year olds)

You will need to make it fun then by providing either a set of wonderful coloured pens (CBC has these delicious Staedtler fineliners that I used) OR you could use number outline stickers OR  stamps OR funky-foam numbers

Staedler fineliners from Hobbycraft*

Clear Stamps from Hobbycraft*

Anitas outline stickers From Hobbycraft*

Yep, also from Hobbycraft*- pretend they are numbers...

Once you have sourced your 'fun element' then get said child to try and find ways to make the number. (might want to try on scrap paper first)  As you can see, I tried to make mine in a way that my 5 year old would understand.  Don't forget encouraging/leading/extending words such as 'How about trying to combine more than 2 numbers?' or 'What about subtraction?'

For even younger/lower-developmental stage children, you could just get them to draw/stamp five objects together, e.g. 5 hearts, 5 stars, 5 footprints.

To finish mine off, so it didn't look SO much like a 5 year old did it, I added gold outline stickers round the edge to give it a border and some dots.  And just so you know, I drew a HUGE multicoloured 5 inside but it was messy so you don't get to see that.

And there you have it, a card that can be made for anyone of any age, that gets your child investigating numbers along the way.  Also would make a possible man-card.  WOMOTM, My father-in-law , you know what you're getting next year....

My Father-in-law would expect something like this though... Eeek, genius child eh?!

Image borrowed from bodysmartinc.com*

Hope you like this idea.  Let me know if you try it out.

Best wishes,

Kezzie


xx

*Disclaimer:  the large number of references and links to Hobbycraft does not mean I was bribed/sponsored/endorsed/paid by Hobbycraft to write this post, I merely wanted to find a way for them not to sue me for stealing all their images by making you all go shopping there as method of appeasement! Rather like offering a goat to the gods/totem pole.

*  Disclaimer no. 2: Regretably, Bodyincsmart.com didn't sponsor me either, but go and look at all their pretty sums- maybe you can buy one to save me once again....

****



Linking to:

Monday Parenting Pin with Romanian Mum blog, hosted by



Tuesday's In and out link party with Cynthia Ladrie  at FeedingBig


You're gonna love it Tuesday with Kathe with an e


Creative Mondays with Claire Justine



Brilliant blog posts with Honestmum.com


The Pink Elephant Challenges "Anything goes"

and...

Top shaker

I have finally created a junk instrument (apart from the Smartie panpipes) that actually sounds relatively good!!!! I am a music teacher and I embrace and adore children exploring sounds they can make with anything but from a personal point of view, do not enjoy junk-instrument making on  grand-scale with lots of children simultaneously.  Whole-class junk instrument-making is usually awfully hard to teach.  It used to be a Year 5 Design and Technology project that was horrendous to teach and elicited not the best of results. The trouble is- most of the things they want to make might look cool but from a musical point of view don't make the best sound- which is surely the point of an instrument.  Ok, shakers are ok- they usually make a good -sound, BUT I've tended to find that the DT element of this seems to be, to be generally lacking- in the case of shakers- it's not really designing, it's kind of copying since I tended to find the children just wanted a quick result rather than thinking really well about the design and sound! That's fine if you just want to make a junk instrument but from a teacher having to teach DT and really covering the designing point of view- less good! The rubber-band guitars would just collapse, not be robust enough, sound too quiet to be of much use and the straw panpipes would be impossible to play unless you were a flautist like me.  There are probably good teachers who would teach this better than me and yield good results, but with 30 children having to design their own instruments, it's always just been a case of AHRGH! I think the process is a good one to try for children, I just find it hard to do with 30 children at a time!


Anyway, for anyone who'd just like to make a funky junk instrument with their kids, here's an idea:

For a while now, I've thought that plastic bottle tops, particularly those from milk-bottles had a really nice timbre when you clicked them together and have wanted to experiment with making an instrument with them.

Now, I was saving up bottle-tops to make a bottle top snake which I must have seen in the same craft-book as Ang as she posted a piccie of one and I bemoaned the fact I'd lost my stash and snake when moving and the sweetie that she is, she sent me a 'DIY Bottle-top snake kit' in the post for me to recreate it!!! I was so touched and laughed lots at the ingenious and sweet idea! However, I haven't got around to making mine yet.  But in the meantime, I nicked a few bottle-lids from the kit which I will replace, in order to try out my instrument idea in my mind.

I figured this one be a great instrument for a kid to copy and make if they wanted some sound-makers.  So, to make my BRAND NEW instrument- THE TOP SHAKER, you will need:

• Bottle tops that are thin plastic (too thick and you won't be able to do this with my equipment)
• A safety pin or other sharp-needled device.
• An old biro that doesn't work anymore
• Nice solid thread- I used cotton thread here as it doesn't unravel (it came from a charity shop)
• A kitchen roll tube
• Scissors
• Coloured pens

1.  Gather about 9-10 bottle-top lids (you could choose mixed colours but I stuck to semi-skinned Green)
2.  Using a safety pin or old-biro, press the needle or biro into the middle of the top until it goes through and makes a hole (don't do on your nice tablecloth, just in case...). Do the same to all of them.
3. Now fetch a kitchen roll tube and make equidistant holes all around the circumference with a safety-pin (or needle). I supported the tube at the top with my fingers so I didn't rip it.
4.  Now get your biro and go through these holes to make them larger.
5.  Cut lengths of cotton-thread of about 15cm each, enough for each hole and bottle top.
6. Thread the cotton through the hole of the tube and then through the bottle top and tie them in a knot- double and triple up the knot.   Do the same with each one.
7.  Check you are happy with the length of the string by letting them all hang down and give a little shake. Make shorter if you wish. Trim the ends off when happy.
8. Hang downwards to check if tangled.
9. You could leave the tube blank or you could decorate like I did.  (Alternatively, it might be best to do this before you begin??? You could even cover it in wrapping paper though it'd be harder to make holes)


10.  Finally, play your Top shaker to your heart's content.  Or get a band together.

Here's it in action. I like the sound- reminds me of these African seed shakers we have in school- or the sound of pebbles crashing together at the sea side!

Here are some ideas you could do with your children with this:

Get a whole party of friends together (outside preferably, to save your ears) and they can either all bring their Top shakers, other junk instruments or miscellaneous instruments and then get them to make a piece together
You might want to share some ideas to structure it to start them off to avoid them just making a racket such as a) each play a pattern or solo one at a time round the circle b) all learn certain patterns or rhythms (you could even use words for these such as 'Top___ sha-ker, Top___ sha-ker" or "Shake the, shake the sha-ker"   c) play the order backwards. d) start with one person and then all join in, one at a time when the conductor shows them, e) have everyone playing, then one person does a solo, then everyone, then someone else does a solo.
Then, you could use an app on your phone or on the computer so they can record it- they could then use Windows Movie Maker to put pictures with their recording for their 'hit'!

For more ideas for BRILLIANT junk instrument ideas, go to www.nyphilkids.org

I was really pleased with this so I wanted to share it with lots of other people!


Sharing with Creative Monday with Claire Justine



Monday Parenting pin with Romanian Mum blog  and hosted by Diary of a Frugal mum this week as I think this would be a cool holiday craft for kids!

With Cynthia at the In and Out link party at Feeding Big




You're gonna love it Tuesday with Kathe with an e