Squarehead Teachers: Straws and Connectors Giveaway!

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Head on over to Squarehead Teachers and complete the challenge to win a FREE box set of Straws and Connectors! Contest ends December 16, 2014 at midnight.

The Straws and Connectors set is an awesome gift to give your kids or classroom of students this Christmas! Build and design beautiful structures or new shapes. You can learn more about the Straws and Connectors in our recent post at the link or visit the giveaway on SquareheadTeachers.com for more details!

The giveaway post features a full detailed description about the Straws and Connectors with gorgeous photos of various constructions! Check out the full post for contest details.

Are you stumped on where to find lesson plans for your grade-school classroom? Covering a specific unit and can’t find any ideas for it? Be sure to check out Squarehead Teachers! Besides providing you with a variety of amazing FREE PRINTABLES, you gain access to a wide range of subjects for any occasion. Use the resources for any educational space; learn at home or in the classroom with inspirational ideas.

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Thank you to Mindy @ Squarehead Teachers for hosting this giveaway! 

Images © Squarehead Teachers

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Guest Post: Straws and Connectors, Autumn Leaves Paper Bits and Dry Erase Classroom Tunics

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Here’s a sneak peek at a few ways our creative crafters used some of our products! All these photos were sent in to us by people who would love to share their ideas. So take a look around, and get acquainted with some projects you could use in your own educational space!

Our first few photos show how the Straws and Connectors were used for building large and tall structures that the kids could climb inside of. We provide each kit of Straws and Connectors with a reference guide for building these kinds of structures and more! Use the diagrams as a basis for designing your own creations.

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We used the Straws and Connectors structures as the inner designs for our Color Diffusing buildings. We painted large sheets of Color Diffusing Paper with watercolors. Once the sheets were dry, we wove them in and out of the gaps in the design. Check out the beautiful photos of this project at the link!

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These gorgeous wreaths were made with our Autumn Leaves Paper Bits! The clever design used a card wreath cutout. The crafters then glued the leaves on top. Alternatively, you could use a paper plate and cut out the center to use as the wreath base.

The video below shows a basic project you can try with the Autumn Leaves. This simple craft uses construction paper and the leaves to make a 3D-looking tree.

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Finally, our last photo reveals what this teacher decided to use her pack of Dry Erase Classroom Tunics for! Although the Classroom Tunics can be used for temporary notation–such as using dry-erase markers to write numbers or letters on them–there are many other uses for them! For instance, this teacher laminated circles in different colors and pasted them onto various Classroom Tunics. Using a story about introducing the colors of the rainbow, she had several of her students act out the storyline while wearing the tunics. It’s a great way to engage the class on multiple levels–learning literacy, colors, order and sequencing, and group collaboration!

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Thanks to our subscribers for sending us photos of their work! If you would like to send us your photos in order to be featured in our next Guest post, please contact us through the contact form! We’d love to hear from you!

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Light Cube: Glowing Art by Twins At Play!

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Kristen from Twins at Play is featured in another great post about the Educational Light Cube. In this edition, she gets her twins to play with neon tempera paints and black lights on the Light Cube!

To see the full post, please view HERE!
Kristen says:
“My twins had such a blast with this activity!
We used:
 
neon tempera paint, 
and printer paper
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With the Educational Light Cube remote control, we turned the light cube to on one of it’s blue hues.  We switched around between blues and purples. We also turned on a few black lights. I put one of the Educational Light Cube trays from the accessory pack on to the light cube, then squirted some neon tempera paint right on to the tray. After that, I gave my twin boys paint scrapers and let them make designs, then they pressed printer paper on to the paint, gently pushed down and gently lifted the paper. They ended up with very pretty Art prints!
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We did this before bed, there was very little clean up.
This can be done in daylight with regular colored tempera paint too!”
Thanks to Kristen @ Twins at Play for putting together this awesome post!
Images and Text © Kristen from Twins at Play blog

To see more about our R59601 Educational Light Cube, visit here!

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Cassie Stephens uses our Japanese Carp Wind Sock Kit!

This art teacher helps infuse so much inspiration and creativity into her students’ work… it’s zany!! We LOVE the Japanese Carp Wind Socks Mrs. Stephens’ class made and we’d want you to have a look and share in the wonder!

The basic wind sock shape was used as the base for students to draw their designs on with markers.

Once students had finished their designs, they were instructed to put up their hand to get Mrs. Stephens attention. Mrs. Stephens would then spritz their designs with water to get the colors to mix around, much like the effects produced with our Color Diffusing Paper!

The windsocks were then wrapped and secured together with tape. The students hung them from the top edge of a window overlooking a beautiful courtyard. The image is astounding, but you’ll have to click the link to Cassie’s blog to see it!! Hint: It’s the perfect backdrop for this craft!

Thanks to Cassie for putting together this amazing project! See the full blog post here.

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Guest Post: Kristen from Twins at Play and the Educational Light Cube!

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Kristen from Twins at Play has written up a wonderful guest post about her twins learning and playing on the Educational Light Cube! Check out her brief overview of all the things you can do with the cube. 

Please visit Kristen’s blog at Twins at Play and see more great ideas for light table play! To view this particular post in its entirety, please visit the link HERE!

Exploring colors on the Educational Light Cube is a lot of fun. My twins have really enjoyed setting up items on The Educational Light Cube and then using the remote to change the color and see how everything looks in the different shades.

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They also enjoy choosing items that are all of one color and setting up an activity that is based on a certain shade that the Educational Light Cube makes. I love how the great variety of colors that it can change to. The color options really are quite fantastic! The Educational Light Cube really does stand apart from any other light play source.

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With the adaptability to move to any location and operate without any batteries or cords, it really makes the possibilities of it’s use endless! You just need to have it all charged up overnight and it will be ready for use! You could potentially organize a light play themed children’s birthday party and have it set up with a variety of translucent building toys and sensory materials. The lovely glow of the Educational Light Cube really does draw in and fascinate children of all ages.

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The Educational Light Cube makes an excellent rainy day or sick day play item as well. With it’s ability to make play so magical, boredom is seldom an issue. You can find items from all over your home to place on the Educational Light Cube. You can also pick up items from Michaels craft store and the Dollar Tree. You would mainly want to collect items that are translucent, but colorful.  Most retail stores and educational stores have items throughout their store that could potentially be light table materials.

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There are any companies that make toys that are meant specifically to be played with on a light source, or in sunlight. However there are so many everyday household items that work brilliantly as well. There are really no limits, as long as you use safe materials. You can find many items at the Roylco store online, check it out HERE.

Find the Light Cube and accessory pack with removable messy play trays HERE.

Thank you to Kristen for this awesome post!

Images and text © Kristen from Twins at Play

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Guest Post! The Museum uses our Rolly Scrolly Paper!

THEMUSEUM in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada hosted their amazing “Unwrapping Egypt” exhibit this summer. Museum-goers could visit the exhibit and become immersed in the culture and beautiful history of Ancient Egypt. We at Roylco were lucky enough to participate in some of the children’s programming with our Rolly Scrolly Paper! Check out this special hieroglyphics project with a written commentary from the senior education interpreter!

Brent from THEMUSEUM gives his impressions of the project below! All photos are courtesy of THEMUSEUM unless otherwise noted.

To view the full blog post at the museum’s website, please visit the link here!

Brent says:

“Our current exhibition, Unwrapping Egypt, features a complete reproduction of the artifacts found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. They’re adorned in marvellous colours and, more importantly, feature hieroglyphics, the pictorial symbols of the written ancient Egyptian language. To connect what campers have seen in our exhibition space, we decided to put their transcribing skills to the test using Roylco’s R15406 Rolly Scrolly Paper…

There are cool things written on scrolls, and they can be rolled and unrolled in such a way that is relatively unique. While children this age may have difficulties reading and writing, they are quite adept at applying intuitive thought processes to emulate what scripts might look like. Roylco’s Rolly Scrolly paper is a perfect medium to allow children of this age to express intuitive thought.

Our campers from 7-9 are able to recognize patterns with symbols more readily, and are intrigued by the discovery of novel patterns connecting what they’ve seen in the exhibit space.

This activity was a tremendous success in achieving our goal to awe, enlighten, and inspire our campers.”

Visit the whole blog post here!

Thank you so much to Brent for providing us with this awesome commentary!

Image and original post © THEMUSEUM

We’d love to see more ideas like this one! If you’ve got a brilliant craft idea or have made a version of one of our crafts that you would like to share with us, send an email to us with photos, descriptions or a link to your work. We will create a feature post and link back to you with full credit. Contact us through the contact form for more details. We’d love to hear from you!

Mosaic Play!

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Our R15639 Spectrum Mosaics were featured in a project at a local daycare! Here’s a few photos of the projects these crafters put together!

R15639 Spectrum Mosaics come in a variety of different colors and are double-sided, so kids will get surprised at the color they see on the opposite side.

imagejpeg_12These mosaics were used to decorate the bug cutouts with a bit of glue. The colors are bright enough that kids can separate them or sort them into groups.

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The aim of this project was to paste the mosaics on the bugs in order to decorate them, but you can take it a step further by focusing on covering parts of the cutout with a certain color. This gives it a uniform mosaic look.

The Spectrum Mosaics package comes with beautiful practice artwork on which children can paste the mosaics. This will help them build puzzle-solving skills while exercising fine motor skills!

Thanks to Janice for sending us these photos!

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Caution! Twins at Play Introduces our Colorful Educational Light Cube!

For several years, the Caution! Twins at Play blog has garnered huge following for their experimental light table play. With the release of our newest Educational Light Cube, Kristen and her twins couldn’t wait to try it out for themselves! See what their preview post featured at the link here!!

This post was made on the Caution! Twins at Play blog which can be reached here. This blog is a huge educational resource for newcomers to light table play as well as a source of ideas for light table play veterans.

The benefits of light table play are varied and vast:

• Develop fine motor skills.

Explore sensory play.

• Integrate special needs learning.

• Count, sort, describe, experiment, combine and mix materials together to create gorgeous light effects.

• Engage children with learning disabilities.

• Versatile usage.

• …and so much more!

Kristen shares more of her experiences with the Light Cube here and will be updating her blog with more upcoming Light Cube activities.

Here’s a quote from the blog post:

Not only is it compact and portable but has a surprising amount of surface to play on. What’s great about the light cube is that you can play on the sides of it too! You can drape play silks over the side, or whatever else you can come up with.

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The possibilities are endless for learning and play. The fact that you can move it around or take it with you somewhere makes it a really great item for any teacher, homeschooler, or any parent!

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We can’t wait to see what’s in store!! We will even be featuring Caution! Twins at Play as a future guest poster so stay tuned for more light-play filled posts!

The new Educational Light Cube will be a feature of our special upcoming series on Light Table play. Check back in September for a new blog post day every Thursday on Light Table Play!

Thanks to Kristen from Caution! Twins at Play for her wonderful post!

Original photography and text © Caution! Twins at Play

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2 Flowers Learn use our Heart Mosaics!

More fun with heart mosiacs

What’s a colorful and beautiful paper mosaic set that you can use for just about any project? Our R15367 Heart Mosaics! To see what kinds of projects you can do with the Heart Mosaics, visit the post at 2 Flowers Learn in the links below!

The post is entitled, “More fun with Heart Mosaics” and was posted on March 6, 2014. View the full post here!

The post demonstrates just how versatile these mosaics are. Use your imagination to come up with a variety of different images by overlaying the mosaics at different angles.

The mosaics also come in several shapes and sizes so you can create more things! View the project idea guide here for more information.

In addition, you can use our artwork guide to make your own characters from combining the Heart Mosaics. Here are a few images of what you can make!

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See more ideas and step-by-step instructions here!

Thanks to Chris @ 2 Flowers Learn for the post!

Image and original post © 2 Flowers Learn

This post was not sponsored for a review. At LittleFingersBigArt, our mission is to present to our readers and viewers the newest and most creative craft ideas that fans of Roylco have made on their own. Our goal is to allow you and other educators and parents to reuse our products in fun ways so that children always get the best educational experience from them!

We’d love to see more ideas like this one! If you’ve got a brilliant craft idea or have made a version of one of our crafts that you would like to share with us, send an email to us with photos, descriptions or a link to your work. We will create a feature post and link back to you with full credit. Contact us through the contact form for more details. We’d love to hear from you!