Let’s go for a walk outside and see what we can see! Any day is a great day to get outside, but may we suggest heading out on April 5th? That’s National Walking Day! You already know we love going for walks from our song Let’s Go For A Walk Outside, so you might not be surprised to learn we have a scavenger hunt printable based on the song to go along with your walking adventure! We also created a printable viewfinder to highlight all the things you find on your walk! 

Giving little ones something specific to look for during a walk can make the activity more engaging, fun, and educational! So let’s grab the things we need and go for a walk… outside!!! 

Things You’ll Need

• Scavenger Hunt printable
• Viewfinder printable
• Scissors
• Pencil, or something to check off your list!

Steps

Print out the scavenger hunt and viewfinder printable. Using scissors, carefully cut out the heart shape of the viewfinder.

Now you’re ready to head out and see what you can find! 

Can you find a flower? 

 A leaf? 

Maybe even a butterfly! You can take pictures of your findings with your viewfinder framing what you’ve found, or just use your viewfinder to capture the moment. Make sure to check each item off the scavenger hunt list as you go! Can you find everything on the list? There is so much to see and do outside! 

We’d love to see what you find on your walks outside! Happy hunting, friends! 

If you love this activity, be sure to check out the Let’s Go For A Walk Outside storybook from Scholastic! Find it in our shop!

Looking for more fun activities and crafts inspired by the outdoors? Find all our nature-related content in one place!

The post Let’s Go For A Walk Outside Scavenger Hunt appeared first on Super Simple.

The bubble snake is a super fun and simple way to up your bubble game! It’s easy to make, using items you probably already have around the house, and it provides tons of fun for little ones. You can use the bubble snake outside, or try using bath friendly soaps for an exciting experience during bath time! See the bubble snake in action in the Caitie’s Classroom episode Staying Clean & Healthy – Caitie shows us how the bubble snake makes bathtime so much fun! 

Things You Need 

• sock 
• dish soap (for outside use) or bath friendly soap (for bath use)
• small dish with water 
• rubber bands 
• small empty water bottle 
• craft knife 
• scissors 

Steps

Using a craft knife, pierce a hole at the bottom end of a water bottle. Cut into the hole with scissors, and continue cutting around the bottom until it comes off. 

Pull a sock over the bottom opening of the bottle. Make sure you have about 2” of sock from the bottom of the bottle, and cut off the excess. Secure the sock in place with rubber bands.

Mix some dish soap with water in a small dish so the soap is diluted. Dip the sock end of the water bottle into the soap mixture. Blow out through the mouthpiece of the water bottle to make your bubble snake! 

Have fun! How long can you make your bubble snake? Can you make it slither like a snake in the air? Try it in the bathtub for extra bubble fun! 

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Welcome to the old oak tree, where our Treetop Family lives! The squirrels, sparrows, raccoons and mice have lots of lovely adventures out here in nature, and we’d love for you to join in, so we put together a list of ten Treetop Family activities for you to enjoy. These activities are perfect for when the seasons are changing, or for any little nature lover or fan of Treetop Family. There are lots of crafts, games, and learning opportunities in the old oak tree, let’s take a look! 

Match The Leaves Memory Card Game

This memory card game is lots of fun and a great learning opportunity to talk about different kinds of trees and leaves, and also their colors! Our Treetop Family friends live in an oak tree. Can you spot the oak leaves in your favorite episode of Treetop Family?

Treetop Family Coloring Pages

We have over 95 Treetop Family coloring pages for you to enjoy. There are six coloring pages for each episode, so you can color in scenes from your favorite one and color them in for a relaxing activity with Treetop Family playing in the background. 

Make A Rainbow Worksheet

Our Treetop Family friends learn all about the colors of the rainbow in the episode After The Rain. Make your own colorful rainbow with our Make A Rainbow worksheet! This is a great opportunity to talk about colors and weather with your little ones!

Make A Tree – Four Seasons Worksheet

When the seasons change, special things happen to the old oak tree. Color each oak tree as it would look for each season to practice seasons! If you aren’t sure what a tree might look like during each season, find some clues in episodes of Treetop Family!

Make A Tree

You can also make a big oak tree look any way you like! Little ones can get creative with this one, maybe even adding in some of their treetop family friends or trying to draw oak leaves. You can also try leaf rubbing: put a leaf underneath the page and use the side of a crayon to rub on the paper overtop of the leaf to see the leaf’s patterns and shapes appear on your tree!

Treetop Family Mobile Craft

The sparrows from Treetop Family are learning to fly! Test their wings with this lovely Treetop Family mobile craft and watch fly round and round.

Stand Up Tree Craft

This awesome tree craft is used with a cardboard tube for the trunk and stands up! You can make one to create your own Treetop Family scene, or make a few of them to make a whole Treetop forest! You can enjoy it on its own, or use it to act out your favorite Treetop Family episodes!

Tissue Paper Tree Craft

This is another great tree craft that is perfect for little hands learning their fine motor skills. They can practice putting all the tissue paper leaves on the tree one at a time. You can make green leaves, or try using autumn colors to make a tree in the fall time!

Mother Nature’s Paint Brushes

Our Treetop Family friends use things around them to make lovely gifts for their loved ones in the episode Simple Gifts. We can use things we find in nature to make something new too, a beautiful piece of art! Try our tips and ideas for using things found in nature to make your own paintbrushes! 

Foraging Animals

Things found in nature can also be used to finish an interesting picture. Print our complete the animal worksheets and take them outside. Can you find things around you in nature to complete the picture? You can use leaves, rocks, sticks, flowers… anything you can find to make your animal. Try making a whole new animal – maybe one of your Treetop Family friends, like the squirrels or mice! 

Want some more? Check out all the episodes of Treetop Family and more Treetop Family activities.

We also have lots of great activities, songs and crafts for every little nature lover.

Thanks for visiting the old oak tree! We hope you come back soon! 

The post Ten Treetop Family Activities appeared first on Super Simple.

Bumble Nums Inspired Popsicles

Summer is the perfect time for popsicles! These popsicle flavors are inspired by the delicious delicacies our friends The Bumble Nums have made. Yum yum! Find the recipe here.

Bubble Snake

This homemade Bubble Snake made from recycled materials makes some seriously impressive bubbles! It’s easy to put together and will truly elevate your backyard bubble game. 

Frozen Dinosaur Ice Eggs

Watch the dinosaurs emerge as your ice eggs melt! You can include your little one in the process of making the Dinosaur Ice Eggs, or keep what is inside a surprise! A great activity for hot days – the hotter the weather, the faster your dinosaur will hatch! 

Walking Through Time Activity: The Age Of The Earth

This is a great activity for a little active outdoor time that is also a learning experience on the history of the earth. Grab some sidewalk chalk and head outside to walk through time!

DIY Cardboard Car

This craft activity is inspired by Carl’s Car Wash! Using recycled materials, make and decorate your very own car! You can even pretend to take your car to the drive-in theatre, a favorite summer pastime, to enjoy some episodes of Carl’s Car Wash! This is a big craft – it’s great to do outside, perfect for summer! 

H2Whoa! Painting With Ice Cubes

This art activity is so fun and colorful – it’s the perfect summer time art project! It can get a bit messy as the ice cube paint melts, so it’s a great one to do outside and paint a beautiful summery scene! Find everything you need at: H2Whoa! Painting With Ice Cubes.

Make A Volcano

Summer is a great time for activities that are a bit more messy, like an erupting volcano! You can make your mess outside and maybe use the hose to help clean up afterward!

Make Your Own Bird Feeder

This simple homemade bird feeder is made with recycled materials and makes a lovely addition to a summer garden. Keep the feeder stocked with bird seed to keep the birds coming all summer long!

Play Ice Cream Dough

Ice cream is a favorite summer treat to eat, and this homemade Play Ice Cream Dough will make it a favorite summer sensory activity too! Best of all, this ice cream never melts!

Foraging Animals Printable

When summer is in full bloom you can find lots of things to forage for this activity. Flowers, green leaves and other nature discoveries you find in summer will build super colorful and impressive animals with this free printable.

Those are our top ten favorite summertime activities! Have a happy Super Simple Summer filled with learning and fun!

The post Summer Activities from Super Simple appeared first on Super Simple.

Dinosaurs and play dough. The perfect combination for a whole lot of play! Sometimes getting the play dough out with your normal tools is enough to keep your children occupied… and sometimes it’s not! Children without a doubt require some sort of sensory play on a week to week basis. It allows them to switch off from the world around them and concentrate on what is right in front of them. How things feel, look and smell. By adding a few simple items from your house and nature, you can easily make a themed sensory activity that will keep them occupied and fill that ‘need’ for the week.

This week is all about dinosaurs! So come and join us to create your own dinosaur inspired invitation to play. It centres around dinosaur toys and play dough, sprinkled with sensory items that can be collected from your kitchen, garden, woods or parks. If you want to inspire your children further, why not scatter a book about dinosaurs nearby or watch a dinosaur related film afterwards to keep the theme running through the day. Either way, I think it’s going to be a roarsome day of fun!

Creating your Dinosaur Themed Sensory Tray

What you will need:

• Small plastic toy dinosaurs
• Play dough – shop bought or homemade
• Shells
• Grass/weeds
• Sticks
• Soil/sand
• Twigs
• Mini Trees – toys or broccoli
• Sorting tray/normal tray/ baking tray/ different bowls

Instructions:

1. 1. First of all one must have decided what they will be putting all the items on/in. We used a sorting tray, with lots of different sections. It is however, not necessary to have one. Any normal tray or small bowls are perfectly fine. Your children won’t be looking at the tray when they see what is put in front of them!
   2. If you have decided to make some homemade play dough then do so now. You can find the ingredients and instructions below. If you are using shop bought ones then take it out of the pot, roll it into a ball and place it centrally on your tray.
   3. Place your toy dinosaurs in a huddle or a bowl.
   4. Now you will need to decide what other items you are going to put with your themed play. This part is entirely up to you. Ideally you should gather together items that all feel different to touch. For example, something that can slip through their fingers. You could use rice, sand, soil or grains for this. Next something coarse and rough, we used shells. You could use something like rough rocks or instead glass pebbles for something smooth. Items from nature and the garden are fantastic editions, such as grass and twigs. Lastly we added toy trees. Why not add some fresh broccoli for little trees?

1. Once you have placed all these items in either their own piles or in separate bowls it is ready to be played with.
2. When you show your children the tray, don’t give them any rules. If you are worried about mess, do it outside, in the kitchen or with a large tablecloth on the floor. The fussing about mess will interrupt their play and could very likely shorten the time they want to play with it.
3. When they have been playing with it for a while, why not consider adding normal play dough tools? This will extend the play longer as something new has been added and new options of play have opened.

What You Will Need To Make Your Own Play Dough

Note: This makes two batches enough for two children. If you want to make a smaller batch, half all the ingredients.

• 2 cup plain flour
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 Tbsp Cream of Tartar
• Half a teaspoon gel food colouring (any you fancy, we used green)

Instructions for play dough:

1. In a big bowl pour your flour, salt and cream of tartar and combine.
2. Dissolve your food colouring into your cup of warm water. This is important if you want to get an evenly spread and smooth colour throughout your play dough.
3. Slowly pour your coloured warm water into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix slowly. It should come together quite quickly.
4. Once it has all stuck to itself and combined into one big ball, take it in your hands and knead it onto a surface until it is all combined. It should not be sticky. If it is, add a touch more flour to absorb the extra moistness.
5. It is now ready to be used!

Making your own play dough is entirely optional. We have found however that unlike shop bought stuff, we can make triple the amount of play dough with ingredients just from our kitchen cupboards. It is also more ply-able and you can choose whatever colour you want without having to go hunting for it!

For more fun dinosaur themed activities, watch Caitie’s Classroom episode all about dinosaurs! Happy learning and playing!

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By studying rocks, scientists have figured out how long the Earth has been around. And the answer is: a long, long time.

The earth is four billion, five hundred and forty million years old, and in that time, it’s been through a lot of changes. By contrast, people have only been around for two or three million years, a tiny portion of the Earth’s vast history.

Numbers this big are hard to imagine. So here’s an activity that will help.

You need:

• Sidewalk chalk
• A long sidewalk (You’ll need about 760 feet, so probably two city blocks. Do it in a park if you can, so that you don’t have to cross the street.)
• A grownup helper, if you do need to cross the street (You can also make this an indoor activity by drawing with a pencil on a ten-foot-long strip of paper. Instead of “pace,” substitute “centimetre”.)

In this activity, you will take a walk through time. You’ll see just how old the Earth is, and all the things that have happened over those many years. Every step you take will represent fifteen million years. Fifteen million years is already an unimaginably long time, but as you’ll see, it’s nothing compared to the age of the Earth.

At one end of the sidewalk, use the sidewalk chalk to make a mark on the pavement. This represents the beginning of the Earth’s history, 4.54 billion years ago, when the Earth formed out of clouds of gas and dust. The early Earth was very different from the way it is today. It was incredibly hot, there were no oceans, the air was poisonous, and there was no life.

Starting at this mark, walk seven paces along the sidewalk. Sometime around here, another planet crashed into the Earth, kicking up debris that eventually combined to form the moon.

Walk another three paces. Now the Earth’s surface has cooled down enough that water in the atmosphere turns to liquid and falls as rain. It rains for hundreds of years, forming the oceans.

Walk another twenty paces. This marks the beginning of a long period of asteroids (space rocks) hitting the Earth.

Walk another twenty paces. The long period of asteroid impacts has now ended.

Walk another twenty paces. This is the earliest point in time that everyone agrees there was life on earth. At this time, life only lives in the ocean. These early living things are far too small to see, and they’re made of simple cells, like bacteria are today. But we know they were there, because their growth caused tiny pieces of rock to form into big layered mounds called stromatolites.

Now for the longest walk yet: Walk another seventy paces. One group of living things, the cyanobacteria, has figured out how to get energy from the sun (like plants do today). But this process has a side effect: it produces a large amount of oxygen (the gas that we breathe). This is a huge change in the makeup of Earth’s atmosphere, and it’s the first time that living things had such a dramatic effect on the planet.

Walk another three paces. All that extra oxygen has now caused an extremely long ice age to begin: in fact, it’s possible that the entire Earth becomes covered in ice during this period.

Walk another twenty paces. The ice age has now ended.

Walk another twenty paces. Sometime around here, the first complex cells appear – the kind that plants and animals are made of.

Walk another sixteen paces. Sometime around here, these complex cells group together to form multicellular organisms – living things made of more than one cell. Notice that all life was single-celled for a long, long time. Even today, single-celled life is much more diverse than multicellular life. We just notice multicellular life more because it’s bigger – and because it includes us!

Walk another twenty-four paces. Up until this point, living things have made babies by making copies of themselves. But now, some living things have figured out how to make babies by combining their genes with each other. This is what people do: you’re not an exact copy of your mom or your dad; you’re a combination of the two. This is called sexual reproduction, and it makes evolution move faster.

Walk another forty paces. The earliest fossils of animals are from this time – a type of sea creature called sponges. And from this point on, things get action-packed.

Walk another four paces. Now an event occurs called the Cambrian explosion, in which many major groups of invertebrates (animals without backbones) appear at about the same time. These include members of the clam family, the insect family, and the starfish family. A bunch of really weird creatures appear around this time too, like Opabinia, which had five eyes and a long trunk with a claw on the end! (You can use the sidewalk chalk to draw pictures of some of these creatures if you like.)

Walk one more pace. Now the first backboned animals appear: fish without jaws. The first members of a group of insect-like sea creatures called trilobites appear as well. All animals and plants still live only in the oceans; there is no life on land.

Walk another four paces. Now the first land plants begin to appear. At first, they’re all small, like mosses.

Walk another two paces. Now some invertebrates have followed the plants onto land, to eat them. In the sea, the first jawed fish appear.

Walk another two paces. The first true insects and the first sharks appear, and so do a group of squid-like creatures with spiral shells called ammonites.

Walk another two paces. Now some backboned animals have followed the invertebrates onto land, to eat them. They would have looked like big salamanders.

Walk one more pace. Some plants have now evolved to grow from seeds, which have a protective covering.

Walk two more paces. At this point, all the world’s continents have fused together into a single supercontinent, called Pangaea.

Walk one more pace. This is the time of huge forests of trees, teeming with giant millipedes and dragonflies. When these trees fossilized, they became coal, which we still use for energy today. At the same time, the ancestors of reptiles and mammals developed eggs that could be laid on land, so that they no longer had to return to the water like frogs do.

Walk two more paces. This is the time of creatures like Dimetrodon, which looked like a big lizard with a giant sail on its back like a ruffled potato chip. Dimetrodon is often mistaken for a dinosaur, but it’s actually more closely related to you and me! Besides, dinosaurs hadn’t appeared yet.

Walk two more paces. This is the time of the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth, which was caused by volcanoes. Lots of groups of animals died out, including the trilobites.

Walk two more paces. The world has recovered from the extinction event, and the first dinosaurs appear.

Walk one more pace. Now the first mammals appear: animals with fur who feed their babies with milk. You’re a mammal!

Walk two more paces. The supercontinent Pangaea is starting to break up.

Walk one more pace. This is the time of giant long-necked dinosaurs, like Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus. At the same time, a group of small feathered dinosaurs learns how to fly. Today, we call them birds.

Walk two more paces. The first flowers appear.

Walk four more paces. The dinosaurs have continued to dominate through all this time. Now it’s the time of Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex.

But walk one more pace and everything has changed. A giant rock has fallen out of the sky, causing another major extinction. All dinosaurs except birds have died, and so have a lot of other creatures, including ammonites. Now that the big dinosaurs are out of the way, mammals are diversifying like never before. And now that ammonites are out of the way, bony fish are diversifying like never before.

Walk one more pace. India has crashed into Asia (I say “crashed”, but it was far too slow to see), pushing up the Himalayan mountains, the tallest mountains on Earth.

Walk one more pace. The climate has gotten cooler and drier. Forests are giving way to grasslands, where herds of hoofed mammals roam.

Walk two more paces, and that takes you to now. (Make a mark with the sidewalk chalk.) So much happened in that last step you took! The first people appeared. The Earth went through another ice age. People learned how to use fire, and spread all over the world, and invented writing and the wheel and the electric nose hair trimmer. In the grand scheme of things, we only just got here. And yet, we’ve already had an enormous influence on the Earth.

Look back. Can you still see the mark you made back at the beginning of the Earth? This is the biggest lesson the rocks have to teach us: The Earth is really, really old, and people have only been around for a tiny part of its history.

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A few months ago I wrote about Circle Time, a great way to keep a group of kids entertained and/or focused. I gave you three Circle Time games to try the next time you find yourself with a group of kids and now I have three more to share!

Counting Circle

This game is great for creating calm, focus and teamwork in a group of children and can be played with as little as three or as many kids as you’d like. It’s best for slightly older children who are conformable with their numbers.

To play simply have the group stand in in tight circle with their shoulders touching. Everyone should bow their heads comfortably, close their eyes and together take in a deep breath and let it out. Then begin counting to ten. The trick is only one person can say each number. If two or more people speak at the same time the group must start again from one. Remind them it’s not a race, they can take as long as they’d like to count to ten as long as only one person speaks at a time. The game is about listening, connecting with the group and finding a mutual focus. If they do reach ten you can up the difficulty each time the game is played by increasing their goal. It can be done! I was once part of a group that made it to 117!

Zip Zap Zop

This is a classic theatre game for those who recognize it but I find it great in any group who needs some energy but still require focus so as not to devolve into chaos. The game is about following a pattern, finding and maintaining eye contact and being energized while staying focused.

To play have your group stand in a wider circle so there’s a bit of space between each person. The starting person points at anyone in the circle and says “zip”, the person they pointed to then repeats the action to anyone else but this time says “zap” and then that person repeats the action one more time but says “zop”. The pattern then repeats with the next person saying “zip” again and so on and so forth without leaving gaps between each pass of the action and word.

Some things to consider while playing this game:

• Think of the action and word as passing energy. Many iterations of this game use a more energized action instead of pointing, like sliding one hand over top of the other toward the person they’re passing to, or throwing a “ball of energy”. Keep it simple and direct but animated!
• Try to make eye contact with the person you’re passing to before you pass. Don’t let it slow you down though. Everyone should be nice and open to receiving a pass so it shouldn’t be hard to find someone to make eye contact with.
• Don’t speed up too fast. There’s a tendency to get fast quite quickly with this game but don’t let your group do so too early. They should get the hang of it first and then try for speed.
• You can raise the stakes by having elimination rounds for mistakes such as saying the wrong word or hesitating too long.

Human Knot

The Human Knot is a fantastic team building game common among many age groups. It does involve the holding of hands and being in close quarters though so you may want to avoid it during cold season or have a quick hand washing session before.

The game is playing by having everyone stand in a tight circle. Each person extends their hands out and takes the hand of a person who is not beside them and makes sure they’re not holding both hands of another person. Now the group must untangle themselves without letting go of their hands. Remind everyone to take it slow and be gentle. This is a great exercise in listening and being respectful of others while they work together on a solution.

The post More Circle Time! appeared first on Super Simple.

Who doesn’t love a good bubble bath? For little ones, bubbles may be the highlight of bath time, or the reason to get into the bath in the first place! For them, bath time isn’t always about getting clean, but about having fun in the water. And why not? These days, with a great variety of bath toys and bath activity ideas available, bath time can be fun, productive and educational to boot! Win-win-win! So why limit all the fun to when it’s time to get clean? With this colourful foam, you can make a bubble bath sensory experience that is great fun any time. Kids will love to get their hands on the foamy bubbles! Try out some of our suggested activities to add in some practice with colours, too. Fun and educational? That’s another win-win!

• Make a two different colours and see what happens when they get mixed together. What new colour did it make?
• With a few different colours, ask your little one to identify each one. You can also call out a colour, and they can blow some bubbles of that colour into the air – flying foam!
• Gather a few bath friendly items and get them give them a bubble bath in the foam! You can even ask your little one to match the colours of the toys to the right coloured foam, like we did in the Bath Time episode of Caitie’s Classroom!

Have fun!

Materials

• food coloring – liquid or gel
• water
• dish soap
• measuring cup
• hand mixer
• tablespoon
• large bowl

1. Add two tablespoons of dish soap and cup of water to a large bowl.

2. Add a few drops of food coloring into the bowl.

3. Mix with hand mixer on high speed of a couple on minutes.

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Alexander Calder (American abstract sculptor, 1898-1976), was a pioneer of Kinetic Art and is considered by the art world as one of the most important figures of American 20th century sculpture. Born into a family of artists, his grandfather and father were both sculptors and his mother was a painter. From studying mechanical engineering at university he became interested in producing and studying art.

Moving to Paris in 1926 he enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He and his fellow students used to sketch pedestrians in the street and underground for fun and he soon became known for his skill in depicting movement in an image from just one unbroken drawn line. This soon evolved into Line Sculpture.

In 1931, he created his first non-figurative moving sculpture. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) another famous artist (commonly linked to Dadaism) and friend of Calder, names his work a ‘mobile’.

A mobile!

From the depths of each baby’s nursery room around the world, where little mobiles hang to soothe them when they cry, they actually hold a piece of art history. These mobiles were once at the height of the avant-garde art world. That means they were the most contemporary thing out there, going against the traditional, working on the fringe. Bet you won’t look at them in the same way again!

Coming from a mechanical engineering background, means it is no surprise that the first of these sculptures were motorized or hand powered. By 1934 the novelty had apparently subsided though and Calder begins to make non-motorised pieces. While Duchamp calls them mobiles, Calder calls them his, ‘four-dimensional drawings’.

He describes them saying:

A mobile in motion leaves an invisible wake behind it, or rather, each element leaves an individual wake behind its individual self … In setting them in motion by a touch of the hand, consideration should be had for the direction in which the object is designed to move, and for the inertia of the mass involved. A slow gentle impulse, as though one were moving a barge, is almost infallible. In any case, gentle is the word.

What are they made of?

Thin suspended wire and painted tin shapes. They were light enough that even the slightest air current would make them move.

How much do his mobiles sell for?

In May 2012, Calder’s ‘Lily of Force’ sculpture set a record selling in a Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Evening Art sale for a whopping $18.6 MILLION. Wowza!

Do all of his sculptures move?

No. After the second world war, he turned his attention to creating vast steel structures for public and corporate spaces. These ones that don’t move are called, ‘Stabiles’. Literally stable, not moving. Many critics called him out at the time, claiming he had sold himself out to big cheques instead of the pursuit of art.

Did he only create sculptures?

No! He was very prolific and his creative juices flowed strongly. He was a painter, printmaker, miniaturist, illustrator of children’s books, political poster creator, theatre set, jewellery, tapestry and rug designer.

Create your own Kinetic Nature Mobile

What you will need:

• String
• Scissors

Supplies from nature (some examples):

• Sticks (varying sizes)
• Conkers
• Pinecones
• Feathers
• Leaves
• Acorns
• Berries
• Flowers

Instructions:

1. Use the biggest stick you have and cut some string long enough to tie a knot around the middle of the stick. Leave the other end for now, this is the end we will be hanging the mobile with outside.
2. As you create this with your children, talk to them about weight. Explain a little about scales and how each side will need to have the same amount of weight on them for the top stick to stay horizontal. Show them with two objects of different weight, for example, a feather and a pinecone. From standing up, drop both of them to the floor. Ask them which item hit the floor first. Does that mean that the pinecone is lighter or heavier than the feather?
3. Cut two more lengths of string. One longer than the other. On one side of the main stick, knot one of them. Do the same to the other side of the main stick with the remaining string.
4. At the bottom of both these strings tie a stick.
5. On the lowest hanging stick, cut some more string and start to choose what to tie to it.
6. On the shorter hanging stick, cut some more string and knot it on to it. At the bottom of this string tie a smaller stick.
7. Now with the remaining string being to decorate your mobile structure with your nature pickings. Your children may need help with the knotting but they can instruct you where they would like to place everything.

TIP: This part of the process is easier if you hang your mobile up on a door handle so everyone can see how it is hanging and adjust what goes where according to weight.

1. When everyone is satisfied with their mobiles, find somewhere outside to hang it. Just like Alexander Calder’s kinetic mobile structures, you will see how the air movement of the wind will move it. It may twirl or sway in the wind, it may even make some noise!

The post Alexander Calder and Kinetic Art: Creating Your Own Nature Mobile appeared first on Super Simple.