Craft Time – Rainbows Galore – #1

I wanted to do these crafts as part of our Noah’s Ark theme last week, but we simply ran out of time.  They are pretty fun to do though, and I like the results, so I’m sharing them here.
The first idea I got from Making Learning Fun.  I printed this template, then circled the color names in the appropriate marker color so M could do this on his own a little bit.  Then I put a muffin tin out with different flavors of Jello powder – cherry, orange, lemon, lime, blueberry, and grape. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

(Please pretend you can’t see my rusty old pan.)

M put glue on each stripe of the rainbow (he needed a little mama guidance with this, so no pics), then used a small spoon to *sprinkle* (dump) the powders on.

Here’s the finished rainbow, and it smelled delicious!

There are a couple of things you should know before you do this with your little one though…
1. The paper becomes very heavy with this on it, because it gels when it mixes with the glue.  We used cardstock thankfully, or it would’ve been a disaster.
2. It gels when it mixes with the glue.  So, you know, you have gluey Jello  which, while it smells pretty and looks pretty, is really kind of gross.
3. Ants may come calling when they realize there is gluey Jello nearby.  For this reason M’s artwork ended up in the garbage early the next morning, the evidence covered up with lots of paper towels.  Thankfully he has not asked about his pretty, smelly rainbow yet. :)
So, if we do this again… and it was truly a LOT of fun for M (kept him occupied for a good 45 minutes) we’ll use sugar free koolaid. 
Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art – Mixed Mediums

The theme for Open Ended Art this week is Mixed Mediums… check out the other artwork here!

This turned out to be a really easy art project for us… because I didn’t have to do anything!  One day recently when M was home alone with Daddy, he made this:

Look very closely and you can see one yellow line on the left.  It qualifies! :) 

Apparently M did this completely on his own.  I had some construction paper out and he picked a green piece and put it on his easel.  Then he got a cup of water from the bathroom sink (where was his dad? That’s what I want to know!), and dipped chalk in it then drew on the paper.  As a finishing touch, he added stickers.

So, colored paper, water, chalk, stickers… you can’t get much more mixed than that! :)  Here’s a close up:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Mixing with Yellow

The Open Ended Art theme for this week was “mixing with yellow”.  You can check out other works of art here.

I am cheating a little with this post because it’s more of an activity than actual artwork.  And we did this as part of our Noah’s Ark theme for Sunday School on Friday this past weekend (the post about Noah’s Ark will be coming this Friday).  However, it includes yellow and there was plenty of mixing involved, so I am hoping it qualifies! :)

M had a great time with this.  It seriously kept him enthralled for an entire hour.  There was a higher than usual danger of messiness, so I had to stay right there with him, but I really enjoyed it too.  It could’ve (should’ve) been done outside; I was just too lazy to take everything out.  There’s a towel on the table for obvious reasons.

I set up several glasses and jars on our kitchen table and filled them about halfway with clear water.  We started with six and ended up adding one or two more as we went along.  I put red, yellow, and blue food coloring into an ice cube tray, gave M some pipettes, and he started mixing. 

Here he is with yellow in his pipette (it’s looking a little green; I think this is due to my camera for some reason):

And… Yellow + Red = Orange:

 

Then he filled 2 ice cube trays with the colored water so he can have more outside ice fun one of these days.

This was such a fun activity for M, and it was fun for me to watch him be a little scientist.  I highly recommend doing this with your kids – just pick a day when you are feeling brave and very, very patient!  I had to remind M several times that this wasn’t an activity we could be silly with.  I didn’t want broken glass and food coloring all over my kitchen! 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time! Bubble Wrap Printing

I’ve been seeing this done on, oh, just about everybody’s blog lately, and we just had to do it!

I gave M a big selection of paint colors – I was trying to get the last little bit of paint out of a lot of his paint bottles, so he had just about every color of the rainbow there.

We started with little bubbles, and painted a section of the paper with a paintbrush, then pressed the bubble wrap into that and then again onto the paper:

You can see in the picture that we made both negative and positive prints. 

Then the big bubbles (I can’t remember where I found this huge bubble wrap, but it came in handy!):

Hey, did you know that if you mix all the colors of the rainbow you get brown?  I know because I trustingly left the room for just a moment and came back to see this:

So much for the bubble wrap.  Apparently trucks are more fun, hee hee. :)  And painting your arms too.  Not that I was doing much laughing at the time…

So, here’s our bubble wrap / truck-in-the-mud finished peice of art:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time! Roller Shapes Painting

I found the inspiration for this art project in a post that Michelle wrote at her blog.  (She and Emily did something similar to this with chenille pipe cleaners glued to cardboard tubes.)

Here’s what you need:

• Cardboard paper towel tube
• Fun foam shape stickers
• paint in colors of child’s choice
• paper to paint on
• paper, paint tray, plastic cutting board, or *something* similar to roll the paint out on.  We used newsprint, but in the future I will use our plastic cutting board because paint just soaked into our newsprint and I felt like we wasted quite a bit.  You could use a smooth sheet of aluminum foil too!

Begin by peeling the backing off the stickers and let your little one put them on the cardboard tube wherever they want to.  Make sure they get stuck on firmly; they have a tendency to peel up at the corners.

Put your paint in “globs” on whatever you are going to roll it out on.  At first we were going to use a plate, but quickly saw that wouldn’t work, so we painted the paint from the plate onto our newsprint and spread it out a little with paintbrushes.  I didn’t get a good picture of this, but you can see it in the picture below.

Roll your tube through the paint a few times, then put it on your paper and roll it out:

Keep doing this until you are happy with your art.  If you are so happy doing it that you want your mama to tear off 2 more sheets of freezer paper for you to paint on, then so be it. ;) 

M made 3 beautiful shape paintings. Here’s #2:

(The # 3 painting became a little murky and then the hands got involved, and then there were really no shapes to photograph, so it didn’t make the cut for this post. :)  )

And, when he was at the sink cleaning up, he said, “I really loved painting today, Mommy!!”  And that made my heart swell. 

Have a beautiful day! :)

P.S. I am so pleased that ABC and 123 featured one of M’s favorite craft projects ever!  His cute Summer Sunshine.  I’m excited because every kid that sees it in our home wants to make one too (must be the handprints!), and I’m so glad to be able to share it!

Art time – Yellow Prints

The theme for open-ended art this week was yellow and prints.  Check it out here.

I’ve been wanting to do some circle prints lately, with all the lids we’ve collected (since I’ve started doing creative stuff with M I can’t seem to throw anything away!), so I set it out yesterday morning.  M wanted blue paint too, and since it’s his art, I complied:

  I had some lids and some old spools too.  He was really interested in the spools.  He yelled, “look Mommy, steering wheels!”  Sure enough:

He worked on this for a while, and he did notice that blue and yellow mixed together make green.  I know we’ve gone over that before, but this time he noticed it and mentioned it on his own.

He started playing around with the paint right on the saucer, and I don’t remember his exact words, but I finally realized he wanted me to notice the designs he made on the saucers, and to hang them on the wall (we have one decorative plate on the wall, and I guess that gave him the idea).  We got some paper and pressed them onto the saucers, and made prints of his “designs”:

(I know the masking tape holding up all his artwork in our house is just sooo elegant, isn’t it?)

Here’s the final product:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art time – Ice paints

Several weeks ago I made ice cubes in our freezer using water and some tempera paints. I planned to let M paint with them outside some hot summer day. And then I totally forgot about them. I found them a couple of days ago and brought them out for him. It ended up being one of the most fun activities we’ve done in quite a while.
I put some newsprint out on the patio, in case he wanted to paint with them. Well, first he experimented with them, watching them melt in the sun. Then he put some in his little wading pool and watched them float around. Luckily that water was pretty cold so they didn’t melt in there. He brought them back to the patio and moved them around on the paper for a while, and made this:
Then apparently inspiration struck, because he grabbed a paintbrush, dipped it into the puddles of icy paint and began painting…. himself. As in, his body. First it was simply feet, and he made this:
Then, well, he got a little carried away:
Ok, I got in on the action too. I wrote “I *heart* u” on his tummy, and made a funny face on his back. Heh. :) It wasn’t quite so much fun when he decided to paint me, but that’s neither here nor there.
He had a great time, I was surprised at how much time he spent with these simple ice cubes, and how much fun it turned into!
To make them, I just put a baby-spoonful of paint in each part of my ice cube tray, then I ran water from the faucet over them and popped them in the freezer. I may have stirred some of them up with a toothpick, but the paint pretty much settled to the bottom of the ice while they were freezing anyway.
I hope you do this with your little ones! It was so much fun. You will obviously need to be ok with messes (or have a stiff drink nearby), and a swimming pool or hose is a good idea too for clean up time! I actually brought a washcloth out and washed him (no soap) in the pool.
Enjoy! And have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Oiled Paper Suncatchers

I remember seeing this somewhere a long time ago, and it's been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. Finally we got around to doing it.

We used some sketch-pad paper, slightly heavier than regular printer paper. I thinned our tempera paints down a little bit with some liquid starch, thinking that might help it appear more translucent; however, after seeing the completed project I'm thinking bolder, more vivid colors would look nicer. The oil really makes the paper as translucent as it needs to be.

So, stick your paper somewhere in front of your child and have them paint it:
Let it dry.

Take some cotton balls and some oil (we used mineral oil, but you could use baby oil or even vegetable oil) and rub the oil onto the back of the artwork. I was going to let M do this part, but I got impatient while he was doing something else and ended up doing it myself. I'm glad I did because, well, oil is... oily. And it can make a big mess. Just an FYI. :) And the finished art:

The picture doesn't really do it justice. It's pretty in real life. I like it, but next time we'll go for brighter, bolder colors.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art - Yellow Collage

This is our first time participating in the open-ended art carnival going on here! I am excited because I think M's collage turned out pretty good! :) Of course I may have a little mama-bias going on too. ;)

I put some materials together, including a little basket with yellow pom-poms, some yellow felt pieces, yellow ribbon pieces, some green paper with stickers that he cut out earlier in the week, and a few feathers. I also put his scissors out with some yellow foam, tissue paper, and some yellow-ish scrapbook papers. I taped a piece of blue paper to the table with all the supplies:

Then I waited. M watched me set everything up and then he would occasionally go over and look at it, but he wasn't doing anything. I think he is used to me telling him it's art time and what we are going to do. I was hoping he would just climb up and start creating something.

Finally I said, "You can get up at the table and make a collage with those things if you want to." And he jumped up into the chair and got started right away.

I tried to keep quiet, and for a while I reconciled myself to the idea that he was going to have a piece of paper with 3 little yellow pom-poms and puddles of glue all over.

But I just couldn't stay quiet and eventually I said, "Ok, I think that's enough glue for now" in my happy-happy mommy voice, and I snatched the glue bottle away. :)

He cut up some of the foam and other papers and then he really started glueing stuff on. I was in another room when he came to tell me he was done. He was very excited. So was I when I saw the finished art:

How fun! I am loving this!

To see more open-ended art visit Teaching My Little BookWorm!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Masking Tape Resist Painting

There's been a lot of this painting technique going on at other blogs and it's something I've been wanting to do with M for a while now. I really want to make his initial with it, but wanted to start off with a project where he just learns the basic technique.

He loves masking tape lately, we are finding small pieces of it all over our house, so I knew this would be a hit. :)

We used the shiny side of freezer paper to paint on. I knew the masking tape would peel off of this pretty easily. I'm wondering about using it on wax paper the same way. I bet the finished piece of art would look pretty hanging in a window!

First, it's always a good idea to tape the paper to the work surface. It just makes any kind of art so much easier for little hands. Then tear off several pieces of masking tape and stick them where your child will be able to get at them easily.

Explain how to put the tape on the paper in any design they want, or just randomly. At first M wanted to put the tape on the edge of the paper, as if he were taping the paper down. I had to show him that I wanted him to put the tape in the middle of the paper.

Next - paint, paint, paint! Let them do this as long as they want, and ask them to try to cover the entire piece of paper. M was very proud of himself when he got every little inch covered in paint.

Let it dry.

Then have them pull the pieces of tape off. You will probably have to start each piece for them. Hold the page up to the light if you are wondering if you've got them all. You'll be able to see the tape outlined if there is any left. It's a neat surprise for the child to realize what they've done, that they kept some of the page white by putting the tape on before painting.

The finished artwork:

It's beautiful to do with watercolors on watercolor paper, but we used regular tempera paints today. There's a lot of variety with this technique - you can use shapes cut from contact paper, or color with a white crayon and make a "mystery design".

Have fun! And have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Summertime Sand Art

This project is a lot of fun. We did this same thing last fall... inside. What a mistake that was. I'm ok about some messiness, but that took messiness to a whole new level. Anyway, I wanted to do it again, and this time we took it all outside. That's really where sand belongs anyway, isn't it?

Please excuse my messy patio. How is it I never see what needs to be done until I've taken pictures of it?

We bought our colored sand at Michaels, but I believe you can color your own sand with food coloring and let it dry, if you are inclined to do so. (If you are, I'm in awe of you.)

We bought little salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store. I filled them up with the different colors of sand using a funnel, then stuffed 2 to 3 cotton balls in at the top to keep the sand from spilling out. M wanted red and blue construction paper, so that's what we used. Here's the set up:

Actually, the picture doesn't show it, but we ended up putting the paper in a shallow pan to catch the extra sand. The rocks are to hold it down.

Give your child the glue bottle. Chances are they'll know exactly what to do from there (sorry the picture is blurry).

Shake the sand onto the paper:

It looks pretty just like that, doesn't it?

Shake the sand off, and let your masterpiece dry. It's fun and the clean up was pretty easy - take the extra sand to the sandbox and dump it in.:) M loved doing this and it was the first thing he showed to Daddy when Daddy came home.

While M was doing this I made some sand letter cards to use when we are learning letters. M has been asking me to help him write letters, and I thought tracing these with his fingers would be a good way to start learning how they are shaped. Montessori teachers have sandpaper letters that they use for this. These are no where near the same quality, but hopefully will be helpful anyway!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Playing with Cars

This is by far M's favorite art activity. This is what he usually wants to do. I have to talk him into trying other things. It's a lot of fun, and we have a ton of paintings hanging around our home with tire tracks all over them. :)

We buy big rolls of freezer paper at the grocery store and use this for most of our art projects. The shiny side is great for fingerpainting (or anything else except watercolors), and the matte side is great for watercolors. It's much less expensive than craft paper rolls.

Tape a large piece of paper to your work surface. Let your child gather a few small cars, or anything with wheels; ones with some kind of tread make the best tracks, but the smooth ones are fun too.

We use a muffin tin with applesauce cups stuck inside for our paint tray. Grab the paint brushes and "plop" some paint on the paper. Here M is making "puddles":

Take the cars and run them through the paint.

Put more paint down, grab another car, run it through. Your little one will catch the hang of this very quickly, believe me.

In the end you have a pretty painting like this:

Then, more fun! Stick your child at the kitchen sink full of soapy water and let him wash all the cars, paintbrushes, etc. while you sit back and relax. Yes, it's messy. Yes, you'll probably end up really washing the cars and paintbrushes. Yes, water might get everywhere. Put a towel on the chair, on the floor, and anywhere else you want and let them explore and have fun. The plus side is a little mess = a lot of time entertaining themselves while you relax, fold the laundry, whatever. :)

Enjoy your messy art time! And have a beautiful day! :)