In case you're a person who is studying for your cert 3 in children's services (australians) this series of articles is actually the basis of a new resource file that I am putting together - my old one went missing at a centre i worked at and i am in the process of making a new one. As far as I remember, if you want to use any of these, the information required for each experience was

• Developmental domain
• age group
• list of resources needed
• extensions

So if by any chance you are looking for experiences for your resource file, get in touch and i will try to do them more according to that model, and put in developmental domain etc.

NOw back to my collage stuff, this is very very simple and it's something i love to get thechildren doing for themselves. A word of warning though, it is very messy and because we are going to use food colouring some of the little ones will get covered in it so it is deffinitely a good experience for outdoors and old clothes. If you're doingthis at home, nudity would deffinitely be acceptable! If you do it at daycare, either old clothes, a smock, anything like that. Some people like touse rubber gloves - it's not really necessary because the food colouring comes off hands with soap and hot water, and also it takes away the sensory element.

Rice is the least tricky.

Give your children a plastic bowl, and place about 1/2 a cup of rice in it. Arborio rice is beautiful, but very expensive - i tend to use the ceapest homebrand rice i can find.

The children will want to play with the rice, and thats ok, let them feel it and tell them they are going to have to be gentle so they dont spill it. You'll need to show them.

Next, get the children to choose what colour they want to try and give them a really good slosh. You'll find it goes quite a long way but you'll need to experiment . Get them to mix the rice and the food colouring with their hands until all the rice is covered. If the rice goes sticky and there is excess food colouring, just add a little more rice.You will see that this is really worth the mess, the children really enjoy the experience.

After it is nicey mixed, just leave the rice in a sunny spot to dry. If you want a brighter result, you can bake it in a very slow oven for I suppose around 3 hours, but i find the children want to use it in collage sooner than that and i think that's the way it should be .

To collage you will need PVA glue, colored or plain, it's up to you. If you want a shiny finish, dry their work then get them to come back to it and paint over with PVA - actually they tend to enjoy the fact that the PVA goes on white and dries clear; it's a little bit of magic for the children so dont forget to demonstrate that. They also think its magic the way colored PVA dries the colour that it is, but white PVA dries clear.Rice also looks very petty with a bit of glitter mixed into it, and don't forget that if posible it should be used on a heavier weight paper or card ( but i regularly use ordinary photocopier paper)

To dye eggshells and pasta is exactly the same process.

• Eggshells will need to be thoroughly washed and dried then smashed first - and if there is someone in your group with an egg allergy you won't be able to do it. Also, don't do too much eggshell, it doesnt last all that long.
• Pasta you have to watch because it can become soggy. It's quite important to dry it in a flat container. You can also dye pasta for threading. Something quite amusing is when the children make themself a lovely pasta necklace, you will inevitably find someone who just feels like a lovely snack and eats theirs before you have a chance to stop them - it will be obvious from the rainbow colored face, mouth and tongue. It's not poisonous so dont get too worried, and remember the mouth is a sensory organ : children learn a lot by putting things in their mouth.

I store all of these things in clear lidded plastic takeaway containers, the sort you buy in the supermarket, about 5 for $2.00 - and i don't label them so that it will be easierto reuse them later. If you have scraps on the table or floor after using it, pop them into another container  so you have one container of mixed colour (and depending on what you're doing it will be mixed media - a bit of pasta, a bit of rice, a bit of eggshell etc. It comes in handy when you just want to put out one container with lots of choices in it), and then the single colours in their owncontainers.

Next time: food collage on wood offcuts

 

OK I have really seen about enough of my lovely young daughter and her foul mood swings as i want to see in this lifetime. What is wrong with teenagers?It seems like people think it's just ok for kids in this age group to swear, wag school, abuse their parents, demand large amounts of money, expensive gadgets : and they just seem to think they don't have to do anything to get it! Last night i got so desperate I got on every charismatic catholic revival website and put her down on their prayer lists! And me too. And then she got up this morning, quiet as a lamb ( didnt  to school, mind you. That would have been nice) and apologising for yesterday. So in all my years of experience, the only technique i have found that can help is prayer. Not my prayers alone, mind you. Mine dont work! Theirs do!

I'm really glad about this. I'm grateful. I cant quite relate the feeling of peace I feel about it. This is not the first time i have requested prayer for her and there has been an immediate change. I have had a very difficult time with her over the past two years : school refusal, violence, suicide attempts, police, the qld department of child safety (and if you have ever experienced them you'll know they really are completely deserving of all the media attention they get, and worse). .... and with all those experts and all my training in behaviour management I am amazed to say - try prayer and when yours are not enough try the prayer of a group of upstanding people. Remember "when two or more are gathered in my name"

It just might work.

Next time, back to my craft trolley : dying rice and pasta and eggshells

My dear friend cornflour, where would i be without her? Before i go any further on the art activities, I need to touch on a wonderful sensory experience - goop. This is how i do it .

Give each child a largish bowl. Put into each bowl a cup of cornflour. Give each child a squeezy bottle with about 1cup of water in it (250ml).

Have the children slowly dribble water into the flour and mix with their hands. It is ok to refill the bottles if they desire, but i like to first mix the cornflour into a dough very much like playdough, then play with that a bit. Then sit it in the bowl and start adding water again. See what happens.

You can add extra sensory elements to this experiment with colours, smells ( again, in the baking section of the supermarket are essences with strong smells, don't bother with essential oils or anything costly), or adding things like rice, chickpeas, marbles.

Make sure the children take some time just feeling the substance - they can shut their eyes and feel it....also, make sure they get it on the backs of their hands because this is an area of the body that gets very little sensory stimulus. I have often heard children say they can feel it all the way up their spine!

Some children may not like this, but others get right into it- I have done this with primary age children and even teenagers. If they don't like it, that's ok because some people are naturally more kinesthetic or tactile than others and it is generally speaking the kids who tend to be that way, who enjoy this experience.

I am sorry Minties - that old man time has caught up with me again and i have been too snowed under by the general busines of managing two children and an old mother, to get on to the next part of this, but here iam back just in the nick of time!

The most important thing about these activities is that they are very cheap. Instead of shelling oput a lot of money for paints, i make mine ..

I use food colouring from the supermarket, you need the bottles that cost anything from 80cents to a dollar - they come in green, blue, pink, red, yellow and sometimes you can get coccineal and black. I dont tend to use the coccineal, and the black is good when you can get it. You mix them to get other colours :

red + Blue =purple;   red+yellow = orange; blue and yellow =green shades - 

If you want pastels, you can just add your food colouring to white paint - probably poster paint but i just buy a litre of whatever is cheap. I find I can never get a really good purple either, so i like to keep purple paint, but some workers i have known do perfect purples so just experiment.

If you want watercolour paint, you can use food colouring straight : it turns out very dark and intense. It works better to mix it with water, and you'll need to experiment to see what dilution you want on the day.

If you want hard, shiny, vibrant paint, mix food colouring with PVA glue : This is my absolute bestest favourite because then the children can stick stuff on to it and build up layers. It takes a bit of mixing, but it will keep in tightly lidded pots or bottles (as will water paint), indefinitely and it won't need refrigeration. I suppose PVA is my big extravagance because it has so many good uses - it costs be about $20 for 5 litres from a wholesale educaional supplies company - the prices seem to go up and down. I have also found KMArt quite reasonably priced for smaller quantities ( half the price of places like mitre10 )

Now for a paint that is also great ( I love it but a lot of people dont!) CORNFLOUR PAINT : this is a reliable recipe. It keeps for up to about ten days, tightly lidded in the fridge:

1/2 a cup of cornflour

1/2 a cup of cold water

4 cups of boiling water

small lidded containers for your paint

andof course food colouring

1/. mix your cornflour with cold water

2/.stir in boiling water (it will go very thick) Leave to cool - if it doesn't thicken, put it in a saucepan and stir it until it thickens.

3/. when cool, spoon into containers and mix in food colouring.For more intense colour, add more colouring. If you want a thinner paint, stir in cool water.

They say that if you want a glossy finish you can stir in a little dishwashing detergent, and if you want a matte finish stir in liquid starch - i have never had really good results doing it that way. If i want it glossy, I get the child to go back to it when it i s dry and paint over it with neat PVA glue.

You can also use cornflour paint as glue, with or without the colour added. It isn't a strong glue, but it will past piecs of paper together with no problem at all.

Just a note about brushes

Lots of people will tell you there are all sorts of age/stage appropriate rules for paint bushes. You can toss a lot of that out the window. Think safety: If it is a long skinny brush, a lot of toddlers might be tempted to poke it somewhere it shouldnt be poked, or to poke someone else in the eye just to see what will happen. A baby is probably better using fingers or sponges to paint with. ou need a wide variety of painting implements, and the less safe, the higher will have to be the level of supervision.

Don't just leave it at painting, offer a wide range of other materials: crayons, felt pencils, scraping implements and some collage stuff. Let them experiment.

Supervision

Sorry mum, but this word doesn't mean you watch and the child plays : If you dont engage with the experience, you will always have trouble engaging the child. You need to be working alongside your child, getting your hands dirty and all that. I have even got it in my hair from time to time and i regularly get it on my hands, face and clothes.Dont worry, that's what showers and washing machines were invented for.