Animal Crafts with plaster of paris

Day-6

 Animal crafts are so fun and engaging and younger kids seem to adore them. Today we are crafting up a sea horse!

My older adores them and often repeats “ the daddy is the one that gives birth, not mommy” to anyone who will listen.  Some animal facts really stick with the kids –don’t they? Another one is camouflaging.

To encourage curiosity we did a sea horse related animal craft with another friend who was visiting us.

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Plaster of Paris

Water

Plastic Sand toy

Paint and Brushes

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Remember to cover your work area, because dried up plaster is vey hard to clean and will leave a stain. Unless you want to have a very colorful ,well used patio floor like us

We started off following the directions on the container which asked us to[highlight bg=”#DDFF99″ color=”#000000″]2 parts of Plaster of Paris to 1 part water.[/highlight]mix

It is recommended that you apply some petroleum jelly to the insides of the mold, for easy removal. We just brushed the mold with some oil

Once we got a good smooth consistency like this, we transferred to the sand toy

The younger one thought it was oobleck and began messy play. But this is clearly NOT  messy play activity because the plaster dries up o the hands. The kids don’t care now, do they?

While the mold dried, we played with cornstarch play dough ( a detailed post to follow)

 Now back to our sea horse in the sand toy. Carefully remove the mold by tapping on the back and stretching the sand toy up. It should come out fairly easily because of the oil. Do it gently or you will end up with  a sea horse with a broken tail and nose.

WE nevertheless played with the broken guy.

After the mold is removed, the kids can go to town with all the paint.

Here is our tropical sea horse. He is a really bright, colorful happy guy who likes tropical shallow waters.

  Big A is getting better with her uniform strokes while painting. She is paying attention to details while creating art.

I’m enjoying these animal activities with my kids because of all the conversation opportunities involved. While doing the craft, I get to talk to her about the animal and teach her the importance of [highlight bg=”#DDFF99″ color=”#000000″]respecting other species[/highlight]-of course in a very kid friendly way.

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Sea Horses are very tiny

Some can camouflage

Sea Horse is a kind of fish and IS NOT a mammal.

The eggs hatch inside the male sea horse.

They suck their food in.

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At the end of the activity, she declared “ I want a pet sea horse, not a dog anymore” I did write it off as a fickle nature of kids her age. But I know it is  no laughing matter since sea horse population has gone down by 50% in the last five years alone.