Montessori Alliance

Sarah Dean from Sarah Dean Childminding has kindly written a guest blog about how she created this wonderful Winter Scene.  We always keep a check on Sarah’s Facebook page as she tends to come up with some fabulous ideas and posts wonderful pictures & clear instructions on how to replicate her activities. If you’d like to check out the last blog Sarah wrote for us which was about Story Baskets & how to create and use them, you can find it here

How to make an Igloo for your small world play tray.

Resources Needed:

Modroc, Balloons, Hot glue gun or strong glue, Black Marker Pen, Scissors.

Select your balloons and blow them up, the larger balloon the larger the igloo, decide what size you want to be in proportion to the small world figures you are using.  Dark coloured balloons work the best as you can see where you have filled in the modroc and where there are gaps.

Measure the strips of modroc then dip in the water.  The first strip needs to go over the full balloon to give the top some stability.  Wet your fingers and smooth over the modroc until all the little holes are covered by the wet plaster.  This is where it is useful to have a coloured balloon rather than a white one as the colour shows through where you have missed

Then you can cut strips to fill in the areas ensuring each slightly overlaps to cover the whole balloon.  Once you have covered all the balloon in modroc and ensured all the holes are filled, you can leave them to dry.  They take about 24 hours to ensure they are completely dry.

Once dry pop your balloon.  Decide how large you would like your igloo and trim off the excess but do not discard it, keep to one side as you need this part for your doorway.

Next cut your doorways in.  Measure the off cuts to make your little doorways.

Bend the edge of the offcuts so that it creates a ledge with which you can glue them to the igloo.

Using a hot glue gun or some strong glue attach your doorway tunnel.

Draw in your lines to represent the blocks of ice with a black marker pen.

Finally add to your small world play tray and let the children loose!