My son has to make an ecosytem diorama. He picked the antarctic with a focus on the emperor pengiun. Do you have any ideas on how to make Antarctica with things like an iceberg, ocean, etc? Any ideas on what to make them out of?
Styrofoam, or sugar cubes for ice. You can make water out of blue cellophane. You can use that snow sheet stuff sold everywhere right now in the Christmas section. Or, cotton balls or batting.
Construction paper
Styrofoam
Cotton balls
paint
aquarium accessories
A plastic figurine of a Penguin. Or, get a picture of one online... and size it to the size you need to fit in the box, and glue the picture to a popsicle stick to make it stand up.
Use a Hot Glue or cold glue gun. It makes gluing things, MUCH easier and its stronger than elmer's.
How old is your son?
My daughter's Teachers... always say that they can tell, when their parent 'did' the project for the child.
Use your son's ideas... let him guide it. Then assist him because it is fine details etc. But let him lead in the ideas of it.
Just as a tip.
My daughter's/son's Teachers, prefer when the child does the project and not the parent.
But I know with young kids... they do need help. Especially with the hot glue gun etc.
Stretched out cotton balls and Elmer's glue can make snow and/or ice. You can use Styrofoam, too. A penguin, if you don't want to use a figure or printed picture, could be done out of pompoms.
These are all great ideas and this sounds like a fun project. Let me add that you may want to put a small mirror (without frame) in for ice and put bits of cotton on and around it for snow. You may also want to use felt.
Shoebox. Cotton balls. Packing peanuts. Blue glitter glue.....?
You can also use salt dough to form the continents, blue paint for the ocean and small bits of the salt dough to form the icebergs. He'll have to plan/sketch out what he wants, shape it as he wants it to be once it's finished, but once you bake it off it can be painted with temperas or acrylics.
There is something called foam core, which is the size of a poster board and it's foam between two pieces of poster board. You can cut it with an exacto knife. (google "foam core" and click images to see what I mean). You can get it at any craft store. I'm thinking you can cut/stack/glue together to make ice shelves, etc. Aluminum foil for the water? They should even be selling fake snow at the craft stores now so you can texturize the foam core.
Good luck!
styrofoam for icebergs and spray fake snow on it.
ocean paint or use that squishy blue clay
penquins from places like michaels or tractor supply if you aren't near Toys R Us(shleich brand are realistic).
Why not use real ice? If you have a deep freezer, fill a shallow cake pan with water, and maybe a couple of dixie cups too, and freeze them. Peel the dixie cups from the ice and chisel it so it's jagged like a glacier and place upside down (so widest end is bottom) on top of the frozen water in the cake pan. Before freezing you can dye the water blue to give it more of an ocean effect. :)
Place some plastic penguins on the ice and other significant critters (for instance you could even freeze plastic fish/whales in the cake pan to make it look like they're swimming under water. You could have any plastic "predators" on top after it's hardened. Crushed iced, packed down could be molded into glaciers too. You can buy ice already crushed if you don't want to bother with doing yourself in a blender.
Keep and bring the diorama to school in a cooler. If it melts, no biggie because that is truly what is going on in the ecosystem. Just be sure to account for this when filling the cake pan. Keep it shallow so there will be room for the melting water.
If you're wondering where to find "critters".... Toys R Us is the place. They currently have penguins in a bucket as a promotional for the new sequel to Happy Feet the movie. I believe there are 50 in the bucket and plastic ice bergs too, which might be easier than making your own. They also carry a line of toys called " " I believe that they have several antarctic playsets that have the appropriate animals and researchers to boot.
See:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12073612
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3072021
styrofoam (sp?) packing peanuts, sugar cubes, silver glitter...
So fun that your son gets to do this! They stopped doing this kind of thing at my kids' school years ago because it was clear that the parents were "helping" way too much :(
Some of my students made a diorama a few years back in which they used white cake for the iceberg, and blue jello for the water. They used toothpicks with labels for the parts that needed labeling. It was cool, and the kids loved it, because after the presentation they brought plates and forks and all the kids dug in. :)
I love 2txtots idea!!
S. - DFW Cake Decorating P.!
Styrofoam!
You can get chunks and break them in half...Those can be the icebergs. you can use a little bit of spray glitter to give it the icy look.
That is all I have for you!! Good Luck!! Sounds Like a fun project:)
That sounds like fun! Maybe these ideas will help.
Snow paint: http://fun.familyeducation.com/crafts/childrens-art-activ...
Gel paint: http://www.ehow.com/how_###-###-####_make-gel-paints.html
maybe make a penguin out of clay? Here are 4 clay recipes: http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/crafts-by-material/clay-cr...
Enjoy!
C. D
