A simple sewing work + activities for fine motor skills

Sewing beads onto material with thread. Frida loved doing this today. This was absolutely process art: there was no outcome in mind, just some exploration using two materials she knows well (sewing materials and threading beads) in a new way. After she had finished she wanted to display her finished piece next to some of…

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Art corner age 3.5

I mentioned recently that I feel like Frida has had a developmental shift lately. As part of this, she’s much more interested in art materials. Colouring, cutting, using playdough, sewing – these are all things she is choosing to work on regularly at the moment. For now, we are taking an unstructured approach to Frida’s…

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Exploring Nature With Children: Grasses 

We have recently started using the Exploring Nature With Children curriculum. It’s a brilliant resource with weekly nature walk inspiration, extension activity ideas, and a list of secondary materials including poems, art works, fiction and non-fiction book lists, and classification information. We are unlikely to follow it strictly every week, but it’s a brilliant source…

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“Is she dead?” Discussing art with young children

Talking about art with young children is a wonderful thing to do. Not only does it encourage critical thinking, understanding of others and the world around us, observation, and expressing emotions and feelings, but it is simply joyful to spend time discussing something beautiful together. Time and again at the moment, I keep coming back…

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In praise of good quality art materials: Stockmar and Lyra review

Art is an important part of our daily rhythm at the moment, with Frida choosing to work with her paints, pencils, crayons and modelling clay most days – sometimes more than once. She has free access to paints, water, pencils, crayons, paper, and felt tips (you can see our current set up here), and tends…

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Laying the feast

“We spread an abundant and delicate feast… and each small guest assimilates what he can.” – Charlotte Mason Charlotte Mason was writing here about the need to provide our children with a rich, diverse, interesting, tempting, beautiful education. An education which invites them to consume diverse ideas and stories and concepts, tempting them in with…

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Toddler art activities: modelling clay 

We have recently introduced Frida to modelling clay! I have such fond memories of using modelling clay (I think we called it plasticine?) as a child, and so was really looking forward to getting some out to use with Frida. Although I could have made a batch of playdough and mixed up all different colours,…

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