Making Mondays: Some fun things to make with Baba

Hello!  How was your weekend?   We had a sweet time - busy on Saturday and then a quiet day on Sunday because Yashar was unwell :(    It meant some time for indoor activities though which was fun - you can really see how the light has changed here in the photos - such a grey and rainy Autumn here.

I know that my husband Senol has been wanting to spend some more time doing things with Yashar, so on the weekend I prepared a couple of little fun things for them to do together.   Firstly - remember the woodpecker from Made By Joel that I posted about last week?   We made it and it was a hit!

You can find the instructions and the template to print out on Made by Joel here.  It was really easy!   It is basically a cool little bird that pecks its way down a rubber band. - you can see the blur in action here.

While Yashar was sleeping I printed out the template and Senol cut it out.  (the cutting out would have been too hard for Yashar - who is almost 3- but older children could easily do the cutting out too.)  Then Senol and Yashar made the rest of it together following the instructions over at Made by Joel.    Once it was made - it only took about 5 minutes) then Senol taught Yashar how to make it work - by holding the rubber band stretched out and letting the woodpecker peck its way down.  It took a little while for Yashar to get the hang of it but once he did he was loving it!    The photo above is my favourite....

But this photo is hilarious!  Hehehe!

I had also prepared this spinning top for them to do...but somehow Yashar and I ended up making it together instead.   We made the spinning top using the instructions from the Science Toy Maker site (found via Made by Joel) here.  This was another easy and fun project. 

This is what we did:

1.  While Yashar was sleeping I printed out the template from the Science toymaker site.  I had printed on some card so I could cut those ones out and then I cut out some extras from a box.  We ended up having 8 circles I think.    It is really just some circles about 15cm in diameter with a marker in the middle - so you may be able to save paper and not print out the pattern.  The site recommended using a milk carton for the circles which I think would work well.

2.  Then I pressed a small hole in the middle of each circle with a ball point pen (this makes it easier to push the ink pen through with out the tip getting damaged).   After that I took a ink pen and pushed it through the centre of the the circle. 

3. On one of the circles I drew three evenly spaced lines from the centre to the edge divide the sections like a pizza.

4.  When Yashar woke up I put out some paints for him so that he could paint the 'pizza' sections in different colours.  You can see it in the photo above - I think he did such a fantastic job!    

5. Once it had dried we put the circles on the pen and started spinning.  At first we had trouble getting it to spin much - but then we added a couple of more circles and tried it with a different pen and it worked much better.  So if you have any trouble I would suggest trying a few different pens and adding more circles.

Yashar had a lot of fun painting the circle and like watching the top spin - although I think he found the actual spinning a little frustrating.  It is probably suited to a child a little older than him I think.