Please Read: TinkerLab Update!!

rachelle — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 05:59:31 +0000

Dear Email Subscribers:

We moved things around on our site, and would love for you to continue following us. You should receive an email shortly, asking you to re-activate your “TinkerLab Email Subscription.” Thanks for your loyalty!!

Cheers,

Rachelle

Construction Zone

rachelle — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:38:52 +0000

We’re moving things around over here at TinkerLab, and promise it’ll be a better site before too long.

Click here to update your TinkerLab RSS Feed!

Ghosts (and the Emergent Curriculum)

rachelle — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:29:05 +0000

N is fascinated with Halloween decorations, and with every animatronic witch and 10-foot spider that we see around town she decides that we, too, need to own “that!”. We decorated with some cobwebs, pumpkins, and a 3 foot spider, but apparently that’s not enough! After seeing a ton of ghosts yesterday, followed by lengthy discussions about our spooky friends, with my daughter asking “how could we make a ghost?”, this ghost bonanza emerged. I’m not an early child educator, but I’ve taken an interest in emergent curriculum, which is planning a curriculum based on students’ interests, and the proof that this concept need not be relegated to preschools was in the HOURS of ghost decorating and play that followed.

While N was napping, I cut up some fabric for ghost-making.

The remains of the t-shirt I cut up for the Upcycled Circle Scarfs would become ghost heads.

I laid these out during naptime, and when she woke up she threw them across the room. Really! Anyone else have kids who wake up grumpy from their naps?

Once the dust settled and bellies were filled with snacks, we made our ghosts and hung them from a tree.

And had fun swinging at ‘em like a pinata. Pinatas are big around here.

We drew ghosts on the sidewalk.

Then we came inside and made more ghosts out of paper. I pre-cut them into blobby ghost shapes…

…and then N went to town.

The ghost family kept growing and growing. At one point my darling daughter proclaimed, “I’m making our house really spooky!” True that! Then N decided to embellish with stickers, sequins and pencil. After dinner, the ghost-making continued. I was truly floored by her commitment to this project.

What Halloween activities are you up to?

In what ways have you followed an “emerging curriculum” with your kids or students?

Spooky Marble Spider Webs

rachelle — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:45:37 +0000

We spent Saturday afternoon carving pumpkins at a local art studio and almost missed the craft table on our way out the door. And it would have been a BIG miss, because it was such a captivating activity that my daughter wanted to recreate it at home immediately and has asked for marbles and paint multiple times over the past two days. I noticed big kids messing around with this too, so if you have older kids this may be worth a try. We did a similar project back in July, but this here marble painting project was a much bigger hit.

At the art studio. Materials include: white tempera paint, a few marbles, a pie tin, and a piece of black construction paper cut to fit the tin.

This time with thick paint.

It’s a “spider web!” Kind of a stretch to call it a spider web, but if you’re in the Halloween spirit, why not?

After a shopping trip for pie tins and marbles, we got home and set up shop.

And rolled our little hearts out. Each piece took mere seconds to create, and I found myself cutting paper like mad.

Once the novelty wears off, interest usually fades, but not just yet for this gem of an activity. To keep the interest high, we traded black paper for white and messed around with purple paint.

One of these days we’ll get some friends together and make a super-sized marble painting like this!

Have you been painting with marbles too? What do your kids think of this activity?

Happy Halloween!

Printed Upcycled Circle Scarf

rachelle — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:58:21 +0000

I have a stockpile of t-shirts that no longer have a purpose, just waiting to be upcycled into other things. After leafing through Todd Oldham’s Kid Made Modern, I got just the inspiration I needed to pull this activity off. The set-up was a bit involved, but not too crazy. The fabric we used in this project came from a 2nd hand XX-large never-before-worn t-shirt that I picked up for 99 cents. Awesome.

I started by cutting a couple potatoes into diamond

and square shapes.

We chose four colors of paint and spread them thinly on paper plates.

A colorful toddler-selected palette. A trend-setting selection, that’s sure to catch the eye of designers for next season’s fashions.

I cut two bands of fabric from under the arms of the t-shirt, each one about 6″ wide. This is scarf #1, wrapped around a grocery bag so that the paint doesn’t soak onto the backside of the scarf or table. Let the stamping begin.

Stamping all over.

After experiments with stamping reached their pinnacle, painting on stamps and scarves was underway.

Then the request for fabric markers came in.

And finally, after adding some apple stamps on day 2, it was done!

After N wore this simple no-sew scarf for a bit, I could see that it wants to curl up inside-out, rendering the designs almost invisible. Bummer. So it looks like I may need to add a little stitching and a fabric backing to make it work better. Aesthetics aside, this was a fun activity that made us feel good about repurposing fabric and veggies into art.