The Creative Campus The Place For Learning Activities for all ages!

Hi Everyone! Hope your having a wonderful holiday season so far! With all the hustle and bustle, I wanted to share two of my favorite Holiday ideas with you. I actually have done both of these with children from ages 2-5 and they all enjoyed it. The First is Painted Glass Globes, yes it sounds scary to paint with a two year old but I promise you this is all self contained and EASY!!! take the globe and let the child pick two colors. Drip a little paint into the globe one color at a time replacing the cover. Let the child SHAKE the globe to spread the paint and then repeat with second color. I added glitter with my older friends which looks really pretty. This is how ours turned out.   Then we made a wreath with noodles and  sticky pieces. This is another one that children of all ages will enjoy. You can also swap out the Christmas pieces for Winter or any other holiday and use this idea over and over again.  Merry Christmas and Happy New a Year from Ms. Theresa and Creative Ca

Hello Everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! I love this time of year. The Shopping/Gift Giving, The Cooking and The Crafting! This is a wonderful time of year to work with your little ones to create art that makes wonderful Gifts and Keep Sakes. I as an adult make my own Christmas Cards every year, and Its a wonderful time for letting our little friends join in. I still have many of the wonderful holiday decorations that I made as a child! I am going to share with you two special activities my friends have recently done. The first is Circle Christmas Trees. the kids had soo much fun stamping these. You can use TP rolls or plastic cups of different sizes (super cute with different sizes).  Then I gave the children shapes but you can use any art supplies you have around the house or classroom. These are what the children used to "decorate" their tree. I think they are adorable and I hope you do as well. Since It snowed over the weekend, my friends w

Hi everyone, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and with it comes all the prep for Christmas. I wanted to let you know that I found a better version of my Applesauce Play dough That doesn't get all watery. You still Mix Equal parts Apple Sauce and Cinnamon They suggest starting with one cup of each.  but to that they say to add one teaspoon of white glue . I tried this and it actually works. I also add instead of glue I used flower. it holds together just like the glue. This is still my favorite recipe because its smells so good after its solid. You can either bake the ornaments after you cut them or you just let them dry on wax paper covered pans till hard. Happy Holidays!!!!!

Hi friends, I just wanted to drop by and say hello. I haven't written in a while, This has been a crazy week. I have celebrated my birthday and  I am recovering from Thyroid surgery (yesterday). I haven't been with my friends at school this week. I hope your week is going well and you are enjoying what is left of fall. I will be back at it sharing ideas this coming week. I have Turkey activities I want to share and a lot more. As soon as it starts to snow here in my are I want to share a really cute snow activity I came up with too. In the mean time, I would love for you guys to share some fun activities you have done . Talk To You Soon Your Creativity Producer and Professional Mess Maker, Theresa @ The Creative Campus

Happy Halloween Everyone! I know it's a little early but I have something really cute I wanted to share with you, that would be great for a children's party activity. Pumpkin and Turkey Tissue Window art. as you can see, I don't have the finished Pumpkin  picture, I will try to get it and add it next week. but that one looks super cute when it's finished.   This is the turkey, which I  will be using again come thanksgiving. The children really enjoyed doing this and I just gave them a blank piece of wax paper, and let them go till they were done. Then I asked them what they wanted it cut into Pumpkin Or Turkey.  The turkeys could actually be used as gools or monsters if you added legs I just noticed that lol. Let me know what you think!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share with you a few things I will be doing in class this week. I am going to be making mummy's with my friends. We will be taking People cut outs, and white tissue paper strips and gluing them on. Sounds very simple, but turns out VERY cute!  as you can see in my example, I did not use tissue paper, and I don't think it gives as good of an effect. I also added Large Google eyes. I would also suggest you use Black paper and not brown. This image was supposed to be a video and wouldn't load for me to share. The brown showed up better in video then the black did.  The other project we are going to do is pumpkin keep sakes. I am going to use baby food jars, tissue paper and glue. I will have the children paint the glue on the jars, and then use orange tissue paper to cover the jar and green to cover the lid. Once dry I will go over the tissue with more glue to seal it. This makes a very cute Halloween candle holder.   Happy Halloween!

Hi Everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I just wanted to let you in on something we did in my class today. We had some non scary Halloween fun. We made Wild Things  Each child chose a piece of paper, and I set out paint, pom poms and Halloween themed stickies. I showed the children how to dunk the golf ball in the pain and roll it on the paper. From there I let them add what they wanted.  Once the eyes were on, they truly started to look like "Wild Things". Then when they were all done adding hair  and skin and whatever they could imagine, I cut around the edges to create the full "Wild Thing" look! Suprisingly my friends sat for a very long time creating these THINGS!  Im not sure which they enjoyed more, the Painting stage or the Gluing stage! I was very excited to see how these turned out! for older kids we usually add on arms and legs as well. As if that weren't enough fun for my little friends, we took a break from "Art" an

 Its not very often that I plan an art project, that either goes wrong or I realize I don't have the supplies in the classroom for. Unfortunately that happened today. I wanted to do a keep sake project and realized I didn't have enough jars. Long story short, I got the idea to paint with shaving cream. I gave each child a pile of shaving cream and allowed them to pick two colors they wanted to mix into the shaving cream. I'm not sure which part they enjoyed more! the mixing of the paint or the drawing on the table after it turned colors. I encourage you all to try this in your classes if you haven't already! even I had fun with this one :) Have A Great Day!    Y our Creativity Producer and Professional Mess Maker, Theresa @ The Creative Campus

Hello Again Friends, I just wanted to write to you about a few really fun things we have done in the past few weeks. For me this is the greatest time of the year. I love the chilly air, the leaves pumpkins  and apples. I enjoy doing lots of fun fall art in my class because I get so excited for all. One of my favorite things that we have done is Indian Corn Painting. First I gave each friend a pre cut corn cob, then I gave them plain and shaped sponges and different color paints. They enjoyed stamping all over the paper to their hearts content. I have done this with older children as well, only I let the older ones add green husks on the sides, painted with green paint using their hands. Another Theme I enjoy doing with my friends is Fall leaves and trees. We have done several art activities for this as well. One was egg carton printing trees. I  gave each child a trunk and let them glue it on the paper and stamp the egg cartons all around, Including on the ground. Then we

Hello Friends, Ms. Theresa here again! how has everyone been doing?  I hope you are having so much fun so far this year. This is my favorite time of the year. There are so many fun things to explore in the fall time, Leaves changing colors and falling from the trees, Pumpkins, in my house we grow our own gourds as well. we have been having so much fun in my class. We have learned all about our new friends and made paper dolls to look like each other. Then we drew windows and door on  our homes that we live in and painted them. We talked about how everyone's home is different.  These were very simple but fun activites for my friends. They loved to dip the cars in paint and roll them all around. I hope you enjoyed this activity and I encourage you to try it at home!   Don't forget check back often as I add new activities on a regular basis. I look forward to hearing from all of you, to learn of the fun things you are doing and learning about at home!    

Hello Friends! I haven't posted in a long time, because I have been busy making new friends and having fun. If you are new to my blog I want to thank you for coming to visit! I look forward to hearing from you all. I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer, I have been camping, going to concerts and as I said, meeting new friends. I have also been engaging in some fun activities with my new friends that I wanted to share with you. I have done everything, from  "Fork  Fire Works" to making Alligators.  I even learned to use sand to make volcano's this summer. We have done a lot of sensory play as well this summer. this is actually one of my favorite teaching areas now. Sensory is very flexible. you can create so many different experiences from Messy to wet and everything in between. Sensory play can be used to teach many different subjects. I like to make play dough for my sensory experience and let the children use it to learn everything from colors to nature sh

Hi Everyone, I am back from my Mini Vacation.(camping with my Cousins and aunt). It was a great feeling to be by the lake and just relax again. I had forgotten how much fun camping can be. I got the chance to watch my two little cousins 8 and almost 3 playing and pretending and it reminded me of all the fun times I had creating play adventures when I was a kid. Being by the lake and the woods lends itself to lots of opportunities to learn about nature and science at any age. There are lots of ways that children can "learn" about nature and science and not realize it, because they are in their mind just "Experiencing" nature. Going on walks through the woods or along the beach is a great opportunity to create a  learning experience using games like "I Spy" which I did with my older cousin and he was a lot of fun. The other thing that this experience reminded me of from when I was a child, was  "Scavenger Hunts" we used to have these HUGE lists

This week I wanted to write and tell you about a fun topic. Things Under The Sea most children love this theme, both boy and girl. This theme can be used in so many fun ways. You can make hand shaped fish like we did this week With this activity we drew fish in crayon and used water color paint over the crayon. (I actually did this activity for someone in their class so this one I didn't create myself). The children had a lot of fun with it and it is appropriate for all ages. you can stretch it as detailed or as simple as you might want.   Another fun idea to use with the Under The Sea theme, is fish in water. You can do this with fish shaped sponges or you can use Toys like we did this week. I would suggest using just a small amount of water. They children had just as much fun as they would have with a whole bucket. This way just kept them a lot dryer. You can even bring a kiddy pool out and fill it with water toys including fish and let the chil

Happy Friday  Friends, Today was a wonderful day to play with my friends. I was glad to see that some of my friends came to play IN even though it was so nice Outside hehe . Today I wanted to share with you some of the fun things we did. My friends had a lot of fun playing with Bugs, Grass and Garden Tools. If you look really closely you can see that we even had some flowers growing in our grass. my friends enjoyed digging and filling their buckets with the grass  and flowers as well. For our art experience today we decided to make rainbow fish. I figured a nice clean art experience would be a nice change of pace. *clean art is not usually something ms. Theresa leans towards (smile).   I am sad that I won't get to see my friends through the summer because we don't have a classroom, but I will keep sharing my fun ideas with you this way all through the summer. I look forward to hearing from those of you who read this as well. I love learning fun new things

Hi everyone! I just wanted to write a little extra post about some activities I have done over this past year that you might enjoy. this one is called " Shape Pie" my friends had fun with this because it was directed completely by them. Make a dice with colors and or shapes ( depending on child's age). Each child gets a roll the dice on their turn, when the roll a Color/ Shape  or both they have to choose and ingredient that is those colors and or shaped and add it to the pie. Ask the child "what are you adding to our pie" encourage them to say it out loud. this keeps going till all the pieces are gone. I recommend making enough shape and color pieces for each child to go twice. I hope you enjoy this activity as much as my friends did, and If you have any different versions you want to share I would love to hear from you! Enjoy the day The Creative Campus

Happy Friday! Today I had such a wonderful time with my friends. In the spirit of Mother's Day all our activities were things we had mom do With us. We made mother's day flowers which turned out very cute. We went for minimal mess ( at least with our art work  )  today and the children had a blast. I believe in letting our friends use their own creative judgment , even if they are only 2. Some of our friends didn't want to add leaves ( their hand prints) to their flowers. I still think they turned out very cute. we just used old art work that was cut into squares. Tissue paper works great as well.   some of our friends chose to   press their paper out flat to make a different look. I think they all came out very cute.   Meanwhile over in our sensory area my friends were tired of playing with blocks and asked for bugs. so I decided to be a little gutsy and gave them all paint smocks that are water proof and let them have some fun.

  Hello again friends, It's been a long time since I last posted. I just wanted to drop in and see how everyone is doing? I hope its a nice where you are as it is here in Michigan. I have some fun new things to share with you today. With all the mixed up weather we have had. I decided to do a Weather theme this week. we made rainbows and clouds with sponges. This activities was really fast but came out really cute.   We also tried a new science activity as well. We mixed colors using putting and cool aid mix. this was a lot of fun and the friends really enjoyed it.  I will say that when I do this activity again, I will use cool aid and shaving cream instead of pudding, as I think the shaving cream will mix and spread easier. I hope you enjoyed these activities and I look forward to hearing from all of you. Don't forget to visit my website thecreativecampus.weebly.com   Your Creativity Producer and Professional Mess Maker, Theresa @ The Creative Campus

Hello Ladies! It has been a while since I last posted. I hope you are having lots of fun learning with your little ones. I just wanted to write to you today and let you know that my new website is up and running. Please stop by and let me know what you think. I am also giving something away free to anyone who visits. Let me know what you think. This is my first real attempt at building a site. http://thecreativecampus.weebly.com/index.html More Fun Ideas To Come, Theresa

Hi everyone!  I wanted to write you a post and let you know about something I have been inspired to do ( thanks to all the reading I have been doing). I want to start writing blog posts on different topics and give ideas on effective ways to engage in the topic with young children. Sometimes these things will be about children who are Developmentally Delayed ( something I have studied for years) and sometimes it will be about topics that relate to children of all abilities. This time I would like to write about Language Development. I recently read some interesting books and articles on this topic, and learned a lot of interesting things. As I'm sure you know, we are all different kinds of learners. Some of us are Visual, Some of us are Hands on and some of us are Auditory. I happen to be a visual and hands on learner myself. If I try to learn about something through reading it in a book, forget I won't remember in 20 minutes from now. It is said that children at a young

Hello Everyone! I hope you are somewhere you can enjoy the spring weather. So many new things to discover and experience this time of the year. I often share things that I do in the classes I work with here with all of you and I encourage you all to share your favorite ideas as well. In the spirit of new changes all around, I want to give you a Free Gift. I encourage you to share this post with all of your Parent/Teacher friends as well and I will share with them also. The only catch is, in order to get your free surprise I would like for you to email me and tell me you read about this offer here on my blog, or on FB. Fragileangel@wowway.com I look forward to hearing from and meeting you all! Ms. Theresa

Today we made play dough gardens. we rolled out green play dough, and planted different foods, and play flowers in our gardens. This was a really fun way to bring spring alive. Then we made dot flowers which came out really cool. we used shape sponges and paint over different colors to make a flower adding a stem and leafs. I cant wait to meet with my friends again to learn about some new spring themed things. ( I'm working on something really cool). Talk to you soon! Ms. Theresa

Hello Everyone! I had a wonderful morning learning and playing with my friends today! I had the chance to have a wonderful conversation with some of their moms as well. I love getting to know such wonderful people. It's one of the best parts of being a teacher. Today in class, we talked about Rainbows. We made rainbows in play dough. In art we used textures and paint to make rainbows as well.  These are some fun activities you can re create at home with your little ones. You can even make jell -o and add spring themed items for your children to play with. If you have any fun activities that you have used at home, Please feel free to post them here! I would love to hear some of the fun things you're doing. We Will Talk Again Soon, Your Creativity Producer and Professional Mess Maker, Theresa @ The Creative Campus

Hello Everyone! I don't know about you, but I am excited for spring ( even if it is snowing as I write this). If you have little ones at home, and you're looking for fun activities to help "Rain" in spring. I have something for you! during the coming weeks, I will show you all the fun things we will be doing in my class for spring. I am going to share fun Art, Movement, Sensory and Music activities for you to recreate at home. I am going to be teaching the following Themes: Bugs, St. Patrick's day, Weather, Animals and Their Homes and More! Follow us each week and share your ideas with us as well. Each week I will post about a different activity we did in class. If you like the things were doing and you want to learn more, you can always Email me and I would be more than happy to share. Fragileangel@wowway.com is where I can be reached away from here! Let's Have Some Fun!   Your Creativity Producer and Professional Mess Maker, Theresa @ The Cr

Hello Again, I just wanted to write and tell you about an activity I am going to use in class this week. I have created a game for the kids to learn Letters. I have cut out coconuts and put upper case letters on them, which I attached to a "tree" I recommend you use a tree prop or put them on carpet squares that are arranged to look like a tree. ( this is what I will be doing). Have all the children stand up in a circle around the "tree" and sing. Chica Chica Boom Boom what letter do you see?  (have a child pick a letter from the tree and say the letter out loud). Then as a group say "child's name"  You picked a____ from the coconut tree! keep going around till ever child has had a turn or all the letters are "picked". for older children you can give each child a bucket or their own tree and have them put each coconut in their basket or on their tree. I will post pictures of the set up once I use it in class. Have A Great Week! Theresa

Hello Everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful New Year Thus far! I was Ill through the holiday and so I was unable to Post for you all. I am looking forward to Having wonderful new experiences with my little friends. We are going to play with snow and colors this week. we are going to paint in the snow, bringing the outside Into our classroom. we will experiment with cotton balls ( snow) and painted water as well. I hope my friends will have as much fun with it as I did. What are some of the things you will be doing with your Little Ones This week? Until Next Time! Ms.Theresa