Rainbow craft, motoric skills,activity with colours

Today on our way to the nursery Karolina and I saw a huge rainbow. So bright, and so close. At the beginning it was from one side of the car windows, then we turned and it was just opposite us. We were driving towards the rainbow. It impressed Karolina a lot and she remembered how one of her favourite cartoon characters Minnie Mouse was talking about rainbow. Karolina has a book about it as well and the thematic of her 2nd birthday was just about Minnie's rainbow colours (with balloons). So, my little gem was laughing the whole way and speaking sth on her own language as I understood it was kind of her description of it.

All what's happened insipired me today for one craft work with Karolina. We decided to make our rainbow, improving knowledge in colours and motoric skills while working with scissors and scotch band.

I prepared example in advance that she could see what we were going to do. And by that sample I asked her to repeat which colours are in rainbow and to find them from the majority we have.

For this craft we needed:
1) blue card board (for the sky)
2) cotton balls (for clouds)
3) pipe cleaners of different colours
4) scissors, glue, scotch band

First Karolina glued the surface of the cardboard to stick the cotton balls.

Then she chose pipe cleaners of each colour in a correct order, and started to stick them with a scotch band. Here it was the most exciting part for her to cut the band and then to stick it.

After she finished with pipe cleaners, she decided to put additional clouds around... as didn't want to finish the craft-)))

And here is the result of a hard work

Looks a little bit abstract but very cute, I guess. And what do you think???

Thank you for reading:-) Stay with us...

Pinata- How to..- Minnie's Mouse Birthday Party

As I told before to make a pinata is a lot of fun, and joy from creativity process, it is not so difficult to do but it takes lots of time...
So, to make it shorter I will start my post from the...

- MATERIALS, I used to create the Minnie Mouse's Bow Pinata
- Hard cardboard (box from toys, nappies, etc)
- crepe paper
- tape
- scissors
- glue

and THE WAY I DID IT:

1) I drew a shape of bow on the cardboard (2 pcs), cut it out.
2) Then I cut out the stripes from the same cardboard, not so wide, and bond, rubbed them along the edge of the table, in order to make them more pliable. These stripes must be not hard and go well along the main cardboard in the shape of bow.

3) Attaching these stripes, one side at a time, I taped them around the main part. Tip: don't stick tape too close, piece after piece, leave some space, that kids could break pinata without difficulty. Here I did 2 holes and put in kind of key rings that later we could use ribbon to knot it. Then I finished attaching  the other side of pinata with a stripe and left a small hole, which let me fill in pinata with sweets.

4)  I glued the surface of the bow cardboard and covered it with crepe paper (if you have tissue paper of the same colour, it could be a better variant as stamps from glue would be not so visible).  Then i did the same with side of the bow, here put 2 layers. After I covered the entire surface of the bow again with a crepe paper to avoid stamps of glue.

5) Each part was getting drying rather long time, as crepe paper is very thin and absorbs glue easily. Being assured that its dry, i continued with the most interesting for me part...

 6) I was covering the pinata with spiral  of the same crepe paper. Started from the edges, going slowly to the centre of the bow, then I made small "polka dots" from crepe paper of other colour (to make it a little bit more colourful and not monotonous). When one layer is done, I went on with  the next one, overlapping it a little bit.

And here is the result of the work:
                                                  
                                                  
                                                           
There are different variants of how to make pinata, I hope you liked mine and would be glad to read your comments if you do -)))

Birthday party preparations

     Last week my little girl turned two! Time passed very fast...I didn't expect it even. With all preparations which I started before the BIG day, it seemed to me double fast. From the beginning I knew which theme for the birthday party I would choose, the only thing was how to combime it together - Minnie Mouse character (one of Karolina's favourite one) and balloons (which makes fun for toddlers always). So, I decided to make Minnie's Rainbow Balloons Party which includes both parts I was thinking about.

Actually in this post I would like to share  some ideas with you which I used for decorating the party. Some items were bought in the shops, and some were made by myself.

1. The Invitations:

I found Minnie Mouse silhouette in internet, cut it out from the black cardboard, stuck the pink bow- one of the main accessories of Minnie, wrote text on a white cardboard and voila. I chose Walt Disney font for the text and left the name of the party to be coloured with rainbow colours. 

2. Garlandas

From cardboard of different colours (which exist in rainbow) I cut out the flags and hung them on the thread, decorating with Minnie Mouse or Daisy image stickers, and with some phrases

3. Pinata

One of the  entertainment of the party was Pinata which i decided to make myself as well. I should say it was a big fun to make it and then to break it with the kids (I did it quite strong, I guess, and our plastic hammer was broken first, lol. But anyway, we got sweets from it, you can try to guess how). I realised it is very simple to make pinata, but it takes really lots of time. So, if you decide to do it, you need to have 1 week minimum. The steps how to make pinata you can read in the next post.  

 

4. Meeska, Mooska, Mousketeers... 

      

  The idea with these words which almost every child knows from the cartoon (at least the first two words) I took from one post about Minnie Mouse Birthday Party and actually which I found very interesting. I like that from the beginning and the very entrance of the building our guests can catch the atmosphere and spirit of the party and it was kind of "welcoming part".

5. Balloons decoration

As the one of main topics of the party were balloons, we decided to make it full with balloons in all meanings-))) We found videos in You Tube how to twist balloons, how to make dogs (which we gave to each little guest when he/she came), flowers and rainbow (as a table decoration) from them, or balloon colomn, and enjoyed prepation time a loooooooooooot. My husband was very operative and skillfull to twist balloons, make knots, and again twist-))) After the 5th dog we already understood how to choose length of dog legs to make them not tooo long or toooo short, lol. With the colomn we worked in different ways but both were stable more or less till the end of the party, even after children were jumping on them like in bouncy castles-)))

6. Food name cards

I managed to make small cards for the name of the food with decorated with stickers of Minnie Mouse, Mickey, Donald, Daisy, Pluto or Goofy. It looked quite sweet.

7. Table decoractions
I wanted to make tables very bright, that kids could really enjoy the colours of the party, its yellow, red, green or blue colours. And additional to rainbow balloons I put Minnie's theme there as well: each set of fork and spoon was wrapped in a napkin with a ring around where Minnie Mouse welcomed them.

  But not only decorations were the main part of prepations. We had a great entertainment, a great Party show on our celebration.

Catherine Beger - a mum and an artist- knew exactly what to choose for Karolina's birthday. She prepared a very nice story "Good night, Minnie" which caught all attention from our guests.  Party girl liked it a looooooot. The perfomance was done wonderful, and the way Catherine plays is amazing. Kids love her!!!I definetely want to recommend Catherine for your child's birthday party. Here is the link to her Facebook page, if you live in Cyprus, then you are lucky to try it-)))

And of course kids birthday party cannot be complete without sweets...

My friend Kateryna created a rainbow castle cake in honour of Karolina's birthday, which everybody was impressed by. The sizes and idea of it were great!!!! and it was verrrrrrrrrrrrry delicious!!!!!!!! Kateryna is a real magician for such kind of things, her page in Facebook even called like that: Sweet Magic. Try her magic, and you will fall in love with it-)))