SMMART ART: Felt or Paper Shape Art

(Color and Shape Recognition)

You can use either colored pieces of felt, cardstock or construction paper for this activity. You may wish to use a full piece of felt or cardstock as a canvas background to build on.

Many rudimentary drawings begin as simple shapes connected together to form a picture. The shapes are the backbone of the artwork. (Circles, Semi-circles, Squares, Triangles, Ovals, Rhombus, Rectangles, Crescents...)

(Your child can draw little faces onto the people in the bus with a marker-cut out some felt hair and an eyeball to get really fancy.)

This activity engages your child in working with shapes and colors. Your child will be placing shapes together to form familiar pictures. Ask your child about the shape names and colors as he creates.

Cut out simple shapes that your child can lay onto each other to create a familiar picture. For example you could cut out a red circle and a long, thin brown rectangle to create a lollipop picture. You could cut out a yellow circle and little triangles to place around the circle to create a sun picture.


Organize each picture in a separate plastic bag. You can draw a simple example picture of the shape art to keep with the shapes in the bag. You could even snap a photo of the shape art and keep that with the shapes as reference.

If there are several repetitive shapes, you can use these to practice addition and subtraction. For example, you can count the number of triangles in the sun picture or the number of petals on a flower, then take one away as you ask your child: “5 minus 1 equals, how many petals?” Be sure to use correct math language as you work on math skills.

Cut out several random shapes from all different colors of paper or felt. Keep these in a separate bag and let your child layer these shapes to build his own shape creations.

As an aside, for even more felt fun-you can create felt "paper" dolls with clothes and accessories to dress the doll...felt food that your child can arrange onto a felt plate...or check out this flower power ring activity: http://thislittleproject.blogspot.com/2009/04/make-some-flower-power.html

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If you would like the patterns for some of these projects, please e-mail me at SMMARTideas@hotmail.com and I'll be pleased to send them to you!

Lisa

WATCH "GOOD THINGS UTAH"

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I will be presenting a few SMMART Science ideas on "Good Things Utah"

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AUGUST 28th

10:00 am

abc4

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Be sure to watch!

SMMART MUSIC: Moist Music

Lay a towel on the floor and place a large bowl of water on the towel. Let your child experiment in making different sounds with the water.

What does the water sound like when you splash, when you swirl. Does it sound different if you swirl the water with a large spoon vs. an egg beater?

What does water sound like when you pour it from a cup into an empty bowl or into a bowl full of water?

Listen to the sounds as you drop ice cubes into the water. Now swirl the water with a spoon and listen.

What else can you do to make water sounds?

Lisa

SMMART MATH: PUDDING MATH

Make up a batch of pudding with your child’s assistance. Have your child pour the milk into a bowl and whisk at it for a while...

OR

...I just discovered the easiest way to make boxed pudding mixes! Take a plastic salad dressing tumbler and fill it with the needed amount of milk (so easy, since the measuring lines are right on the plastic tumbler-I picked mine up at a dollar store). Empty in the powder packet and SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE! The directions said to stir for about 3 minutes or so, but I only shook for a little over ONE MINUTE and tah-dah! Done! One container that got messy...no messy utensils and now just pour out the pudding into serving dishes or onto a cookie sheet for this activity.






Let your child smear the pudding over the surface of a cookie sheet. Encourage your child write numbers into the pudding with her finger and then smear the pudding surface smooth again with the back of a spoon. You can even write the pudding numbers and let your child trace your numbers with her finger, if she needs a little direction. Works great for letters too!


Help your child become familiar with math notation. Write math problems into the pudding and help your child solve the problem and write the answer.

“1+1=2”

Lisa

SMMART SCIENCE: 40th Anniversary of Neil Armstrong's Moonwalk

What a great topic to share with your child this week. I'm sure you'll see some media coverage, but here are a few sites to watch together...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMINSD7MmT4

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090716-1969-moon-landing-video.html


Check out these sites for some fun moon activities:

http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-moon/moon-activities-for-kids/

http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/education/activities/index.htm

"One small step for man...One giant leap for mankind."

-Neil Armstrong 1969 (At 02:56 UTC on July 21 (10:56pm EDT, July 20)

Lisa

SMMART TIME-OUT

Boy do I need a time-out! Wouldn't it be great to send yourself to time-out for a few minutes just to sit down and take a breather...and then continue on.

We just had our new arrival, so I'll be taking a breather for a few weeks, but I'll be sure to post soon...so stay tuned!

SMMART SCIENCE: FOOD GROUP SORTING GAME

This activity will help your child learn about the foods their bodies need to consume from the basic food groups (http://mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html).

Write the name of each food group onto paper plates. Talk about what foods belong to each food group and let your child draw foods onto each plate that corresponds with the correct nutritional food group.

Gather several food items from around your home and place them on a table next to the food group plates. You can even gather the exact number of food items to show how many servings we need to eat every day from each food group. Help your child sort the foods by groups and place them onto the corresponding plates.

If more than one child is participating, make two sets of food group plates. Your children can compete to see who can correctly sort the foods the fastest, while pulling from the same food supply.

Alternately, you can use a stopwatch to time each individual child as they sort the food and compare their times to see who is the winner.

Lisa

CHECK OUT THE SMMART Art Segment on "Good Things Utah"

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Be sure to link onto:

http://www.abc4.com/content/about_4/gtu/featured_on/story/Colors-and-Shapes-Recognition/3Df4uT3n006QZSEMofeX2g.cspx

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...to check out the SMMART segment video that abc4 has posted for a limited time. You can also find details about the segment on this link. I'll be posting the actual activity on my blog later this month.

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Thanks for your support and for reading this SMMART blog!