Natasha, from Norfolk, sent in this great idea. Let’s take a look at it…
What did you do?
After seeing a similar activity done on @the_doctormum I felt inspired to recreate it for our letter M whilst doing #theletterlane and it went AMAZING!
Let’s be honest, we all see ideas and plan to do the same, then the result is something completely different. I had no idea how the original was done so it wasn’t even worth attempting! I didn’t even know the phases of the moon myself and had to look it up!
I glued an off-white/cream coloured paper circle on a navy piece of card to create the ‘full moon’. I then took another piece of navy card and cut out the shapes that only allowed part of the moon to be seen. When cutting them out I left an extra piece of card attached to create a tab. I layered 3 flaps on each side leaving one for the top. To attach the flaps to the card I sliced a hole in the paper for the tabs to poke through. To begin with I used glue on the back to hold them in place how ever it didn’t seem very sturdy so I added cello tape to make it more secure. Finally I used a gold pen (I didn’t have silver) to add stars and the names onto the moon as well as a title.
This activity was more time consuming to make than I had imagined. I thought it would be a quick, throw-together, last minute activity when in reality it took a decent amount of time. This was probably partly because I made it up as I went along instead of having an actual plan to go by!
I also assumed that my girls would be a little young for it and not overly interested – viewing it as nothing more than ‘just paper’, but I was WRONG! Lola (almost 4) was so interested in learning the names and copied them all. She looked through several times then turned it into a memory game, seeing if she could remember each one randomly! Lehnaiyah (1.5years) looked through multiple times and kept going back to it not only through out the day but each day she’s continued!
Do you have any other projects planned?
We have 101 activities on our to do list. Since starting @abc_activity the list is forever growing and I save multiple ideas a day! We attempted the sugar density rainbow in a glass experiment however we failed multiple times so once the girls went to bed I done everything I could think of until it eventually worked! Now I’ve figured out what went wrong I’m hoping to do it with the girls using a LOT of colours!
Tell the Housebound With Kids community a bit about yourself…
I’m Natasha, mum of 2 from England! I have 2 daughters. My oldest is Lola, she will be 4 in a couple of weeks! Crazy how quickly they grow isn’t it?! My youngest is Lehnaiyah (or Larni as we say 90% of the time) and she is 1 and a half years! I worked in a few nursery settings before my family began to grow with Lola so helping children learn and grow has always been a passion of mine! I feel so lucky and grateful to be able to do this with my own children now!
@abc_activity
How are you finding being housebound so far?
I see so much negativity about this whole lockdown experience and I feel like I’m the only one that can say I love it! Don’t get me wrong, not seeing friends and family is a great shame and we miss everyone so much! Nonetheless I love the fact we haven’t got to rush around to get ready or go out here there& everywhere daily! We’ve probably had more family time than we’ve ever had before and we’ve massively benefitted from it!
Do you have any tips for other parents?
Kids can be such hard work and sometimes it all becomes overwhelming. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that one! Personally, I think positivity is key! Thinking negatively causes unhappy feelings. Majority of the time you can flip a negative to a positive therefore changing a bad mood to a good one! For example, when our rainbow in a jar experiment failed I was a bit gutted, then I thought that it’s still a lesson – a great one at that. It didn’t create a rainbow, but it helped Larni with counting, we had fun mixing and pouring, we had colour-mixed. It was also a life lesson that just because it didn’t go as planned it doesn’t mean it was bad or wrong, it was simply different!
Has this website and community helped you?
I looked on the Instagram page and LOVED it! I saw so many amazing ideas, some that have now been added to my to-do list!
