Shrinky Dinks
What do you think of when you hear the word, “Shrinky Dinks?” For those of you with your heads out of the gutter, you will be instantaneously wisked away, I think, to your childhood years and specific commercial of kids peering into an oven watching their creations shrink to a tiny size. I must not have been crazy because I found an old commercial on YouTube within seconds.
Shrinky Dinks, geared for chlildren ages 7 and up, now come in a variety of new, 3D designs, with themes such as dinosaurs, space, sea life, fairy princess, military aircraft, zoo safari, pirates, and trains.
So at school this week we’ve been having fun creating sea animals. These are a lot of fun, but do require the use of a toaster oven or conventional oven for the shrinking powers, so parents and teachers, you will definitely need to supervise the kids on this one. Simply kids trace a creature from a template using colored pencils. Color in the shape, cut it out, place it on a foil lined cookie sheet in a preheated oven, within 1-3 minutes it will magically shrink before their eyes! After a few minutes to cool, they are ready for play.
Here were some of my helpful hints:
– We were able to modify the fun for kids of varying ability levels. For one child, I traced the outside with the colored pencil, and he colored the inside. For another child who was a bit impulsive and quick with the scissors, I cut it out to make sure his hard work wasn’t ruined and to minimize any frustration.
– I got to thinking, since I literally can not draw a straight line, I wish I had used Shrinky Dinks when I was younger for my school projects. For children who can’t draw, you can not imagine how real looking and perfect these animals look when they are shrunk to a portion of their original size!
– When using them with 2 kids together, we had one student write a few sentences about his shark, while the other traced, because there is only one template included in the package.
– After you cut them out, you will get some scraps, but keep them, you never know when you might need to just make a small detail.
– The paper could be hard to cut through for some kids, but on the flip side I actually like to work on developing kid’s hands strength, so it was perfect for my goals.
– The toaster oven was amazing if you are short on time. Using the toaster oven took literally 4 minutes from heat up to shrink down. However— the kids couldn’t see the process in action as easily as they could have in a conventional oven.
I think what was even more amazing, was watching the teacher’s looks on their faces when we brought them back to class, EVERYONE, remembered making these as children and you could tell it brought back so many personal memories.
If you would like to win your own package of Shrinky Dinks, we are giving one away!
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Giveaway ends June 20, 2011, 11:59 p.m EST.