Imaginets

I am starting to put together ideas for my youngest one during next years school season. Right now I set our table up with mini-stations for him to work through while I do lessons with my daughter. He has enjoyed these stations but as we re-use the same materials over and over his attention span is slowly dwindling. He is getting a bit older to where I will put our a bit more art, basic science exploration and letter work this year -- he is ready for it.

One new learning activity I recently picked up is called Imaginets. It is a wooden case with a magnetic white board and colorful wooden shapes that are magnets. He can free play with it or use the cards included to create shapes, things or animals. There are very easy cards that we will use to start and much more challenging cards he can work up to. I have let him try this out a couple of times now and he loves it! I love that it is very well made, thin for storage, age appropriate but will grow with him and can even work for travel in our trailer. It should make for a great addition to our home and learning table!

Mini-Weaving Loom

This week for Camp Fire we are looking at textile arts and trying our hands at a few projects that fall under this category. I hosted a small weaving project with our troop. It is a very simple project requiring very little in materials yet a great little project that is easy, colorful and as Holly has informed me - a bit addictive!

She did one yesterday at our Camp Fire meeting and then came home to make one more and this morning asked to make even another. It is artistic, requires focus, patience, hand eye coordination and good fine motor skills - all great skills to use!

To create a small loom I hot glued four popsicle sticks together to create a square. Then I tied on a solid color of yarn and wrapped the loom about five times and tied off. You now have a very simple loom! With a great assortment of yarns, scissors and little fingers - you are set to create! Tie onto the bottom corner thread and weaving in and out, back and forth. Change yarn by tying it off and keep weaving. When you are all finished you tie off on the last rows final thread. Trim and tuck all little knots you have.

A sweet, simple mini-weaving project!