DIY - ORGANIC HOMEMADE COMPOST

It's a very special moment to write my 300th post today. Colourful Imaginations , the space I started 12 years back to share our day to day happenings and crafts made along with my daughter. We shared many memories here right from scratches. 

Thank you for all my readers who take time to visit our page and share your valuable comments. To make this post a memorable one, we decided to share the process to prepare Homemade Compost, which we do in small quantities for our small garden. 

Let this mark the celebration of World Environment Day.

Revolution of Technology has made our life easy but we missed to protect our environment. Agriculture ranked first among all the occupations in India.

India ranks first in the produce of fresh fruits like Banana, Mango, Guava and ranks second in the produce of Wheat and Rice. Due to lots of economy changes and the Climate change, Agriculture has been ignored and neglected for quite long years. 

Whatever could be the reasons, in recent times, it is regaining its importance. People are facing or understanding the reality of unhealthy produce of vegetables and fruits. Many started the concepts of Organic farming and terrace gardening growing their own healthy produce.

Homemade compost is being practised in many households, without knowing the benefits it gives the environment. In our house, we have a garden, hence, we directly use the daily vegetable wastes digging the soil near plants.

We are sharing the basic procedure to make sample compost at home.

MATERIALS REQUIRED :

• Waste bin or a small basket or a bucket
• Vegetables/ Fruits wastes
• Garden sand
• Egg shells
• Crumbled waste wood or papers

STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED: 

STEP 1: 

STEP 2:

STEP 3:

Collect the tea wastes

STEP 4: 

Collect grounded coffee wastes

 STEP 5:

Collect Egg shells

STEP 6:

Mix all the wastes and sprinkle little water to keep them moist.

STEP 7 : 

Mix the wastes in layers with little soil and mix it up well. Leave it in your garden or balcony for almost a month or two months depending on the quantity. You can add dried stems from plants or any wood dust in it. Sprinkle water and stir it up daily to avoid drying. It has to be moist. After 45 days to 60 days, compost will be ready to use. 

Note: 

MESMERIZING TREES

Spring always brings happiness. Trees blossoms with colours. Sharing few pictures of trees in Pittville  Park, Cheltenham, UK. Looking at the movement of the leaves, feeling the gentle breeze will give us a good feel.

Couple trees, hugging each other !!

Beautiful to watch this tree only with pink flowers. 

Linking this up with #Thursday Tree love by Parul hosted on second and fourth Thursday of every month. 

HOW TO OBSERVE STRESS IN CHILDREN AND WAYS TO HELP THEM OUT -- DIY - TOY ROBOT

No school, complete lockdown for two months, no outdoor games, no cycling, bored of watching cartoons and movies, children will undergo a lots of stress than elders. We have to appreciate their understandings of the present situation and staying back in homes helping us. 

A simple child psychology is that they may not be able to burst out or express their stress, but yes there will be a moment we as parents can observe. 

Some emotions during their stress :

• Sudden outburst of tears with no reasons
• mood swings
• restlessness 
• distracting from their homework
• less appetite
• loneliness ; since they miss their friends in school, they try to talk with their dolls considering them to be their buddies . 

These may be observed that can reveal their stress. 

As parents, we can handle it , if we can follow these : 

• Let's not build their stress by questioning them, " What happened ?" in a firm voice. Instead, hug them tightly, comfort them and tell them, 'Let's play together'.
• Slowly, cheer them up and engage them up by reading stories, play with them or craft with them. They need diversions to get them involved. 

Crafting or any artwork can bring diversions in them. It is one of the best way to get children involved. Let them create art on their own. Creative play activties will be one of the way to overcome a stress. Involving them in an activity of their choice, they easily forget their stress.

Today, I am sharing an interesting DIY - TOY ROBOT created by our son for a play activity.

MATERIALS REQUIRED :

Empty cans/bottles ( We used empty salt and actimel bottles)

Pimpom balls

Glue

Colours

STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED :

1. Collect the empty bottles and clean them well. Remove their label wrappers 

2) Glue the bottles with the glue to form a robot. Small bottles for legs and hands. Salt bottle to form the body. (Please note : He used fast settling super glue. If guided by parents, you can use them or use kids friendly glue)

3 ) Robot is set. Allow it to try completely. We allowed to dry for a day.

5) The next day, paint and decorate the robot using colours, pompon balls and pipe cleaners for antennae.

Allow it to dry. Toy Robot is ready to play with. 

Happy Crafting !! Happy Parenting !!

SIMPLE POP UP CARD

Today, I am sharing a surprise card made by our lil one. Happy and feeling really great to see his creation on his own surprising us. At times, such memorable gifts from our children has to be treasured. 

It gives a feel of pride and honour as parents. Adding this to our parenting moments. 

Always appreciate and motivate children for any simple activity created on their own. It gives them more happiness and will develop their confidence to try many creations on their own. By this way, we are developing their creative thinking skills, boasting their confidence, training them to be independent to work their projects on their own. It's one of their milestone in their developmental skills, forming a part of their learning activity. 

Happy Parenting !!!

EARTH DAY ACTIVITY

Earth Day is celebrated on April 22th. It is observed as an awareness day to save the nature earth. We can teach children in general about the goodness of nature, our environment and what more we have lost due to modernisation, what can be done to save our Earth.

It's always fun and more effective, if we teach children about any lesson by means of visual activities involving them. Once such activity is Earth day activity. 

We are sharing our activity for this year 2020. 

Things Required :

Any old transparent lid/ or paper plate

Acrylic colours

Circle cutouts

Steps to be followed : 

1) Rub little water in the plate. Mix Green and Blue colours in it.

2) Place the circle cutout and press gently the sides of the paper so that the colours are equally observed.

3) Take the paper carefully and allow it to dry completely. Earth template is ready.

WHO AM I? FIND ME - FUN PROJECT WITH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Hi ,

Greetings of the day !! 

Are the kids bored of playing toys and watching cartoons all through the day during a long vacation? 

Managing households and engaging children at home is a very challenging work for parents. My children loves solving puzzles and riddles or any quiz in education websites. 

We looked up and thought for a while, Why don't we create and play an activity. To start with, I designed this simple and easy fun project . Find the names of Vegetables or Fruits from the hints given.

Steps we followed to design the project:

Make a chart with Fruits and Vegetables pictures.

Some hint questions for the children to find, read and write the name in the blanks.

Answers:

DORY AND NEMO - UNDERWATER LIFE

Hi,

Today, I am sharing my 8 yr old creation after reading and watching Finding Dory.

Children love to watch animation movies  with their favourite fantasy characters from the stories read by them. When they read books, they would definitely visualize the story line by line. They would bring life to the pictures shared in the book.

Some children would re-collect the visuals from the movies or pictures shown in their favourite story book . Either they prefer similar character toys to play with or draw them to depict the story.

Re-collecting the visuals of the characters and bring them to life back in the form of art is highly appreciated. It's a kind of child's development skill, it shows child's observation or concentration or their memory .

As a parenting moment, let's encourage our children to read books and write the book review.

He painted on A4 sheet, pencil waste Nemo and Dory fishes, balloon whale, transparent sheet jelly wish and mixed coloured octopus cut out.

Happy Parenting !!

What is the colour of water ?

Hi ,

Greetings for the day !!

Today we are sharing you a simple project - What is the colour of the water?.

What is the colour of water? Why the sea is in blue colour? Who painted the sea blue?
These are FAQ's of children in the age group 5 yrs -10 years. Let's explain them by a diagram.

When white light travels through water in Ocean,
* Red, Orange and Yellow colour of the light has low energy levels gets easily absorbed by the water.

* Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet colour lights has high energy levels, they still penetrate deeper into water than the other colours. All the colours slowly fade off except blue. The blue light reflects back giving Blue colour to the ocean.

* After 1 km, the light cannot penetrate, hence the sea is darker.

PINWHEEL FAN

Spring is one of the most awaited season be everyone. Wind breeze, Trees getting their new leaves and blossoming colourful flowers, chirping of the birds, bright sunny day and lot more to enjoy. 

We have crafted this pinwheel fan, to keep in our garden welcoming the Spring !!!

Things Required: 

Colour papers 

Glue

Old earring

Paper straw

STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED: 

1) Cut out 8 triangles of the same size. 

2) Glue the triangles to the circle cutout as shown in the video.

3) Turn back and glue the triangle sides backward.

4) Fix the earring in the centre of the wheel and the straw on the back.

STRING DOLL PUPPET

Puppets are in general attracts children. They love and get amazed by watching puppets show. Puppets play an unknowingly vital role in child's communication skills. A Soft toy or a doll acts as a puppet for children. Most of the children love playing with soft toy. They think and consider them to be their best buddy and starts to speak with them, either they use them to convey their parents or play with their friends.

I still remember playing with a soft puppy doll, naming the doll, feeding it and carry it wherever I go. Sometimes, playing and talking alone with soft toys will bring emotional disturbances in them. 
As parents, we should observe them and be aware of all their stories carefully. Not all children will have such disturbances. May not all parents get time to play and speak with the children because of their work schedule. Better you communicate with your children everyday not to let them trapped by such disturbances.

In a smart way, we can take care of our children. We can teach them how to use the puppet or play with it. 

Puppets can be used as props for story telling, use them to teach daily lessons to your children. Anything delivered in an interesting way, help children to remember the concepts. Puppets are vital teaching aid/tool in preprimary education.

Let's make everything interesting for our children to learn concepts naturally. 

Instead of playing with a gifted toy or a puppet, their happiness doubles if they create their own puppet. How will they miss the fun while designing their own puppet. 

Let's roll on our sleeves and create our puppet.

Materials Required:

Any old wooden beaded bracelet or a necklace.
Decorating pipe cleaners or strings
Old bangle and threads.

Steps to be followed:

1) Cut out a pipe liner of your desirable size. Add beads to them to design a doll.

2) Attach strings to the hands of the doll and tie the strings to the bangle.

3) String doll puppet is ready to share you a story.

EASTER EGGS

During Easter, children love to go for Easter egg hunting. They play games for egg hunting. Creating their own Easter eggs is one of their fun activity during Easter. 

We also played Egg hunting. This is what we hunted for this Easter.

Materials Required :

A4 Sheets
Colours
Glue
Egg shells
Craft scissor
Pim pom balls


Steps to be followed :

Draw and cut out egg templates using craft scissor. We decorated our Easter eggs with finger prints, pim pom balls, painted crushed egg shells and Nail polish brush paints.

RAINBOW - SYMBOL OF GOD'S MERCY

Rainbow - a colourful and amazing sight, gives happiness. During this crisis of pandemic spread, there is a complete lockdown of life across the world. The Whole world is praying to save and hopefully waiting for the God's blessing to end this pandemic. 

Every nation follows their own belief to offer their prayers to God. Here, in UK, the Queen expressed her wish to display Rainbow in all the houses, as a stand together to overcome this crisis. In General, the sight of a rainbow is said to be a blessing, thanking god for promising us to protect from all the trouble. Rainbow symbolises God's mercy and the promise made with the mankind not to destroy the world in such a way again.

We all should stand together irrespective of our roots to fight against this crisis and bring back our standstill life back to normal with a welcoming smile. 

Today, we are sharing a Rainbow activity created for a cause. Let all our prayers flatten the curves and saves life. Stay Home Stay Lives.

Materials Required :

A4 white sheets
Crumbled tissues
Acrylic colours
Glue
Craft Scissor

Steps to be Followed :

1) Draw the online of Rainbow in a sheet.

2) Cut 7 strips for VIBGYOR colours using Craft scissors. 

3) Paint the strips of VIBGYOR colours. Allow to to dry completely. Fold the strips to create pattern as shown. 

4) Take a sheet, glue the strips to form a Rainbow.

5) Glue, crumbled tissues to form Clouds. Our Rainbow is Ready for the cause.

SOLAR SYSTEM

Greetings for the day !!

Learning about the Solar System? .

Yes, today we are sharing a fun filled activity for learning solar system. Each and every child have unique way of learning styles which makes them different from the other.

- Some children, read the book, understand the concept and learn, write the concepts thoroughly.
- Few loves only to read and learn the concepts but doesn't show interest in writing.
- Few will only love to write down their learnt concepts, doesn't show interest in telling or explaining or reading loudly.

  and there are many more learning approaches or unique styles.

Classroom observation or attending the whole session without distraction plays an important role in child's learning process.

- Some children will observe the teacher teaching in the class. Try to make notes or points to remember, read the learnt concepts back in home. Encourage such children to work more on making journals of their regular classroom activities to support their learning style.

- Few may not able to recollect the learning in the classroom, they don't remember the concepts. It doesn't mean that the child is having a learning difficulty or disability. Some of these children will be able to understand the concepts when taught through visuals of the concepts either by a drawing or videos or pictures.

In general, whatever may be their learning style, hands on experience activities by themselves will definitely make children to remember things better.

My son painted the Solar System, using finger prints and recollected the concepts thought in his class. He was able to rightly label the planets in order, spoke about the planets and galaxy. Here, comes how he created the solar system.

Materials Required :

Waste transparent snack box case
Poster colours

Steps Followed:

Clean the case. Dry it out. Draw concentric circles. Colour mark the planets using finger prints and decorate the system with stars.

Allow it to dry for 20 minutes and then label the planets.

Solar system is ready to study. Recreate your solar system and share your experience, how much you enjoyed the activity.

COLOURS OF DARKNESS

Today, we are sharing a scratch paper work created by my daughter with the theme Colours of Darkness for an art competition. 

She came with this art depicting Music, Stars in the sky and Sweet dreams during Night. They form the colours of darkness. Happy for her creation. 

Happy Parenting !!

HOLIDAY FUN ACTIVITY FOR KIDS - VIKING COSTUME FOR BOYS

Hi all,

With the current lockdown situation, to keep the children engaged, we scheduled their time with lots of fun activities. We are spending more time with them to have more quality moments. Excluding their online school classes, here we tried to have one such fun activity, dressing up like Viking Pirates. 

Our young kid is learning about Vikings in their Social/ History class, he speaks more about them, he crafted his own armour and axes at home. Today, I am sharing his virtual learning concept and crafts designed by himself to look like a Viking Pirate.

Materials Required :

Waste cardboard

Folder sticks -2

Drying cloth clips

Origami Sword

Hairbands

Horn Cutouts

Simple costume at home

Boots( Long Rain boots)

Steps to be followed :

1) Painted the cardboard to craft armour or shield.

2) Attach clips to the File sticks to shape axe.

3) Dress up your child in the costume. Viking Pirate is ready.

Happy Parenting !!!

ADJECTIVES PROJECT - ENGLISH PROJECT FOR PRIMARY YEARS

Art integrated Activities or Projects with children are always fun. Today, I am sharing an interesting activity for learning adjectives. This is an activity designed by me for my daughter in Class 2 for her English Project . Fixing the correct adjectives for the parts of an Elephant ....a really fun activity for kids as Long Trunk , Soft Eyes , Fat body , Small tail , Heavy legs , Sharp and big tusks , Big ears .

Materials Required: 

Thermocol board - 1
Tooth picks
A4 white sheet

Steps to be followed:

1) Draw an outline of an Elephant and mark their features.
2) Glue the adjectives to the tooth picks.
3) Paste the drawing to the thermocol board.
4) Start to play the activity, by asking the children to fix the correct adjective and fill the blanks in the drawing.

This is really a superb fun activity for the children. Feel free to share your comments.

Happy Parenting !

DIY - COW COSTUME FOR KIDS

A simple DIY - Cow costume which can designed in few minutes.

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

Cow face mask
Black coloured paper
White fleece jumper/sweat shirt and white track pant.

STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED :

1) Glue few round shaped pieces of the black coloured paper to the white jumper and the white track pant.

2)Make the kid wear the cow face mask.

A Simple 5 minute DIY Fancy dress costume is ready.

OZONE DEPLETION PROJECT FOR KIDS

Hi all ,

I am sharing an interesting and simple Science project for primary school Children, explaining Ozone depletion on the occasion of Earth day awareness week

As a part of parenting, scheduling our time with our children is the most important responsibility of us. Creating projects on their own will help children to gain knowledge about the theme taken, they would explore more and it's a practical way of learning. When children are involved in doing their school projects, they remember things in a better way or learn the concepts easily. Generally, projects are hands on experience activities for children.

Here, we designed a simple DIY model explaining the reasons or causes of Ozone depletion.

Learning process :

1) Explain the concept taken for the project. 

Our project is about Ozone depletion. Explain the children about it, by reading out the concept from textbooks or any articles. You can show them some videos as well. Make it like an interactive session.

2) Help them to write or make quick notes on what they have learnt.

3) Ask them, how they want to present their projects. Make their collective ideas.

4) Tell them that they should do on their own with the support from us.

5) Help them to get the required resources or materials for the project.

6) We ended up in doing a simple display self explanatory model. I involved children  to collect the pictures of various sources causing depletion like Refrigerator  (emitting Chlorofluro carbon), Factory(emission of CO2), Pesticides, Fire extinguishers, CO2 from vehicles, Forest fires and Deforestation.

7) We did a paper collage of earth surface. We used 4 kebab sticks, tooth picks and a thick base board.

8) We drew Sun and cut out the template.

9) Glue the pictures of Refrigerator, Aerosols, Air Conditioner, Deforestation to the tooth picks and pin it to the base board.

10) Design the model of the factory using play blocks, use a toy car, we used corn fibres for forest fire remains, small tins as Pesticides can. Glue it to the base board.

11) Glue 4 kebab sticks to the corners of Earth College with Sun paper cut in the centre piercing a ray of UV through Ozone layer because of depletion.



This model conveys and help the kids understands what are the toxic emissions that causes hole in ozone leading path for the direct UV rays from the sun.

3D PUZZLE ACTIVITY - 8 YEAR OLD'S CREATION

Puzzle activities is one of the fine choice of game for the children from 3+ years. Starting with jigsaw puzzle till 3D puzzles, many interesting themes are created for the children to learn about. If your children are having more screen time, get them more such activity to focus on. 

Puzzle solving focuses on child's shape/pattern recognition, hand & eye co-ordination, concentration, fine motor skill development, visual perceptual skill, memory, sense of judgement, creative and problem solving skills, reasoning and sense of pride, boast up the confidence and cognitive skills.

The End product of their creation will give them happiness, satisfaction and whole lot of achievement. 

Solving puzzles will always be an interesting learning programme for children. 

Recently, we got these 3D puzzles for my 8 year old to boast up his confidence level and to observe his problem solving and reasoning skills. 

We are happy to see the outcome of the puzzle activity by him solving it all alone without any support from us, following only the instructions booklet. 

Each creation has nearly 150-200 pieces. He completed all the three creations in a week's time. We truly adore his efforts, his timely act when something goes wrong or any mistakes done. He has proven his skills once again and makes us feel proud parents in teaching and giving them activities which focuses on his development.

Happy Parenting to all the lovely parents !