I am going to be bringing you a new regular feature here at The Mad House, After School Fun (thanks to the Evil Overlord for making me a snazzy badge!). During the summer my boys who are seven and eight tend to play out after school. There is lots of cricket, football (soccer) and bike riding, but with the clock change coming and winter on its way more and more they need indoor activities to keep them occupied after school and to stop them fighting and to try and keep them away from the dreaded screens that they love so much!
They need things that can hold their attention, but do not need too much thought, especially come the end of term when they are running on empty. So I have decided to come up with #AfterSchoolFun ideas. I am going to blog them regularly and then once a month open a linky for other people to share their blog posts too. I would also love for you to hashtag any images you might have on Instagram or twitter and I will make sure I share them with my followers.
To start things off my boys have both been looking at shapes at school, so I thought we would make our own Shape Sticks and have some fun with them.
Materials:
- Lolly Sticks (we used coloured ones), but Jumbo ones would be great
- Self adhesive velcro dots (I had to cut ours in half (but they would be the perfect size for jumbo ones)
- A storage container.
Method:
I doesn’t get much simpler than sticking the velcro dot on the end of the stick and letting the adhesive stick for 24 hours before playing with them.
Things to do:
I think it really depends on the age of your children, but this would be a great way to introduce shoes by coping ones that you have already done and taken photographs of of even using certain colours to make certain shapes.
My boys are at the stage that they have been using them without an instruction sheet to make regular polygons and also to discuss and measure their angels. Math is fun has a great section on geometry. You can download my Regular Polygons sheet for personal use.
Other ways to use craft sticks
I adore these craft stick magnets, which Craftulate made. They really add another dimension to shape making and using your craft or shape sticks. You can use your craft sticks to help with maths like Powerful Mothering or put them in a Busy Bag and attach them with blue tac just like Baes in Deutschland did. I adore using them as a craft item and the idea of contact paper and craft sticks is fab.
There are lots of other sites with some great ideas for shape sticks including Rockabye Butterfly’s Montessori shape activities, Living on a Lattes Friday Activities and A, Bee C Preschool’s Building Shapes. If you want to make a set of shape sticks as a gift then Tried and True has a great free printable to make labels and worksheets.
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