Hi Helmar Followers,
It's Krisy back today to share a project that you can get the kids involved. My theme this month was Children's Musical Instruments. Another random topic, I know! I thought about this one for a while and then decided it was best to create something simple that my kids would enjoy and even help make.
My eldest daughter has recently started kindy and my son has not adjusted very well to being without her. So I have had to make special efforts to find things that he enjoys doing to take his mind off her. He is very interested in my Craft room but tends to get bored with the things on offer to him. So, on the day I put together this project, I made it all about him. I was making these for him to show his sister when she got home and he could help glue and cut and even take my pictures. The whole making process only took about 20 minutes with a bit of trial and error. Just long enough for him to feel like he really made something and not lose interest.
Today we made Castanets. These are a basic early childhood activity that can teach children important skills. I will go into that later. Let's get making….
Here's what you will need:
- Some Cardboard
- A ruler
- a pen
- Some Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive
- Bottle caps or champagne caps (Note: different caps make different sounds so a variety is good.)
- Some paper for decoration and maybe some ribbon
Now, at this point, I think I should note…I had an idea and not really a plan. I set about cutting my cardboard to lengths that I thought would work but I didn't take into consideration the depth of the caps so I started again.
First, you need to cut your cardboard to size. I used the length of my sons thumb and forefinger as a guide. The castanet sits in these fingers to make them work with a pinching grip so cut them to whatever length is required.
Ours were about 4 and a half inches long and about 2 inches wide. You need an extra bit in the middle to make a double fold to take into consideration the height of the bottle caps once they are glued in place. You can see the spine in the next photo, this was my first failed attempt it actually had to be a little wider probably more like half and inch.
Once you are happy with your cardboard base, you can now decorate the outside. We used one of my daughter's 20 paintings she has brought home from Kindy and she is only on her third day! We just trimmed it to size and glued it in place. We also added some tassel trim ribbon just because we could. To stop the ribbon fraying we added a little Helmar Fray Stop to the ends. Oh, and we added some wood veneer initials too, so there is not fighting.
Then we just used a fair amount of Helmar 450 Quick Dry to glue our bottle caps into place. It is not pretty but it is nothing a coat of acrylic paint couldn't fix. Now for the hard part…Waiting for it to dry.
In all honesty, we only waited a few minutes. Who has time to wait until things are fully dry!?
And here are some close ups of the finished products.
This is a great little project to include little people. It is also a good project to help develop Pincer grip which is important when kids are learning to write and need to grip a pencil. In todays' day and age with technology, this is a skill that is getting used less and less. I often hear my husband (who is a high school teacher) complain some kids still don't know how to hold a pencil properly.
Thank you for stopping by today, I hope to see you back next month.
Krisy xx
