Art Time – Pretty Painted Suncatcher

Since M seems willing to do more planned art and craft activities of late, I’ve had fun thinking up new things to do.  I recently re-organized my craft stash - all 2 carts, 6 drawers worth - and found an embroidery hoop that hasn’t seen the light of day for the past 5 years at least.

I remember seeing something about dot painters and fabric somewhere about a year ago, and that’s what I thought of when I started brainstorming ways to use this hoop.


I found some muslin that I was going to use for goodness-knows-what and put a large square of it in the hoop.  I gave M the choice between markers, watercolors, or his roller paints to decorate this.  He chose the roller paints.  He enjoyed this and I love how it turned out.  I trimmed the extra fabric off and for now it’s still in the hoop, sitting in front of the window over my kitchen sink. 
It did not take him long to make, but I love looking at it.  It just makes me happy. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner – April 25, 2010

M is 3.5 years old.

This was a pretty laid back week.  We’ve had a bird theme going on, but I’ll wait until we’ve finished all our activities before (hopefully) including them all in one Preschool Corner post.
Here are some of the other things we’ve done…

Fine Motor Skills:
Tweezing pom poms into a vase:


Building with a pipe connector toy.  This is actually a game, called Pipeline, that I found at a thrift store for next to nothing.  I thought it would make a great fine motor activity, and M loves it!

Literacy:
I set out a mini ABC foam puzzle for M.  He likes to link these together in one long line.  I try to get him to do it in alphabetical order, but that’s really hit or miss at this point. :)

He did great with matching up these rhyming cards (from Prekinders):



He put together these little sticker scenes by matching the letters on the stickers to the letters on the paper.  I made these for him a long time ago to do on a car trip.  We just never got around to them.  He really enjoyed them this week.  To see more about this, go here.

And one morning I found him “reading” a few books to his trucks. :)  So sweet! 
Sensory, Practical Life, and Art:
We are fortunate to have a breezeway in our home (kind of like a 3 season porch, but it runs from the front of the house to the back); when it was too cold to go out one day I set him up in the breezeway on a towel with this messy little project:
This was scooping and pouring practice for him.  He placed the funnel into a bud vase, then used the ice cream scoop to scoop and pour the colored sand into the funnel. 
He quickly realized how neat the layers looked and it turned into an art experience too:  
Then, of course, he wanted to do more with the sand so I gave him some glue and colored paper and he made these:

For more Preschool Corner posts and ideas go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our First Week of Advent

I’ve been seeing so many great posts about Christmas crafts and Advent wreaths… so many good things out there!  M is still not really into crafting, but I did sneak a couple of things in, so thought I’d share with you how our Advent is going!
First off, here’s our Advent wreath, made totally from Dollar Tree finds (at one time in my life I would never have admitted this, now I’m proud of it.  Go figure!): It’s very simple… but we snazz it up a bit when Christmas arrives.  There are pretty iridescent red berries in the middle surrounding the white candle (which won’t be lit until Christmas Eve), which is sitting on a round mirror – it’s hard to see in the picture.  Also, each taper is in a star shaped holder which is also really hard to see.  Hm.  Just take my word for it, in real life it’s prettier than in this picture. ;)
Here’s our Jesse Tree so far: Yep, not a single ornament is actually on the tree.  I’m not sure why M has them in the “air” but I’m sure he has a good reason in that 3 year old brain of his.  Next year we might use a piece of felt shaped like a Christmas tree – ornaments on a Christmas tree is easier to understand, maybe??
Here’s the little box we use to hold his nightly treasures, as well as the little manger with it’s daily pieces of “hay”: He calls it “The Jesus box”, hee hee.  And checks it multiple times per day hoping some candy has magically appeared in it.  (He gets a chocolate kiss in it each evening.)
Also, the little tree we have on the fridge that he puts a sticker on each evening (sticker also “appears” in the Jesus box :) ): Obviously it is not big enough for 22 more stickers.  Someone judged wrong when she cut it out.  So, it should be interesting-looking by the time Advent is over.
Now, for the crafts…
Wrapping paper with glitter mixed into the paint: See the glitter?  I wish my camera could capture it better:
And, he’s been begging to do sand art, which I swore would never, ever again be done inside after our first time.  Well, he talked me into it and made these: He really had a lot of fun with both of these little projects, and well, it’s something Christmassy, just not the cute crafts I was hoping for. However, I am glad that we will have these to look back on as the things he wanted to do this year.
Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – November 29, 2009

 

This was a pretty light week for us… and we enjoyed it!  We didn’t try to do too much, and just had fun.

Fine Motor Skills

M cut strips of green and red paper with the “zig zag” scissors, then we made a chain of loops and used stickers to close them up: He was very interested in this activity, and caught on to the fact that we were making a pattern.  This was a real breakthrough because in the past he hasn’t gotten the whole *pattern* idea.  I expected lightbulbs to appear over his head and bells to ring, but he just calmly said, “it’s a pattern, we need green next.”  Ha ha, this kid always amazes me and makes me laugh. :)

He spent a LOT of time popping the tiny bubbles on this bubble wrap, such a great activity for strengthening those little fingers:

 

He put pipe cleaner “branches” into the holes of a salt shaker, then added fall colored leaves (pony beads).  He loved this, and thought it was hilarious to call them branches and leaves.  We got this idea from the Schafer Family blog.

 

And laced up some Autumn themed lacing cards:

 

Sorting

M used tongs to sort fruit and vegetables from his supply of pretend food:

And we sorted truck cutouts onto a color wheel:

Math Skills

We played “store” with M’s pretend food and a cup of pennies.  We both had so much fun with this and M had a smile on his face the whole time.  I don’t know why we haven’t done this sooner.  He told me later in the day, “I had fun playing store with you, Mommy!” :)  We set up his fruit and veggies on the loveseat and he picked the items he wanted and I told him the price.  It was perfect for counting practice, and when he ran out of money we had a short conversation about why we can’t always have everything we want.  This great idea came from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!

 

Sensory

We played a sensory game with a few matching pairs of items and a small pillowcase.  One of each pair went into a small container and the other went into the pillowcase.  M had to pick an item from the plastic container, then try to find the matching item in the pillowcase using his sense of touch only. I held the bag for him, but he was on his own here just so I could take a picture. :)  He did great with this and had so much fun we did it again right away.  Here are the items we used: pennies, pinecones, wooden blocks, megablocks, clothespins, glass pebbles, pipecleaners wound into a circle, craft leaves, and spoons.

 

Thanksgiving

Here’s a picture of our finished Thanksgiving tree:

We had so much fun with this and we will definitely be doing it again.  What a great way to list our blessings and what we are thankful for.

We went to our Nature Center again for our weekly class and while there the kids drew pictures of what they are thankful for.  Here’s M’s: Apples were first on his list, you can see it in the middle.  Other things were his family, building a snowman, and going sledding when it snows.  He had a great time scribbling… I was surprised because he has not shown that much interest in crayons at home.  At the nature center he was still coloring when all the other kids were done!

I printed a turkey out from here, and M painted it with his watercolors, then cut the tail feathers apart:

 

Imagination

M has a tiny teddy bear that he’s been calling “baby” lately.  (He wants us to have a baby so badly!)  He made a little bed and “baby” slept in it: Then “baby” woke up and wanted to be rocked (someone else wakes up and likes to be rocked sometimes too). What a great daddy!! :)  (No, that isn’t quite the same way I rock M!)

For more Tot School posts, go here.

Have a beautiful week! :)

Crafts from Christmas Past

As I’ve mentioned before, M is in a no-crafts kind of mood lately.   Right at the beginning of craft-heaven season.  Sigh.  It may be pointless, but I’m still trying to come up with some fun crafts to do with him this year for Christmas.  I’ll talk about my plans in another post (soon, I hope!), but I thought it might be fun to show you some things M made last year, pre-blog.
In case these inspire you with any ideas of your own, M was just under 28 months old when he made these.
A Rudolf made with a cut out of M’s foot and two cutouts of his hands, along with a pom-pom and some googley eyes:
A wreath that he painted and glittered (cut from a paper plate) and then put stickers all over:
Some salty snowflakes… if I remember correctly, this was just tempera and salt mixed together.  He used blue and white paints, and we hung it up as a mobile (the salt made them somewhat sparkly, but you can’t see it here):
A cotton ball snowman, which was a huge hit (like the backward nose?):
And a Christmas tree decorated with colored pasta, which we hung up in his room:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Jonah and the Whale

We finally got around to doing another Bible story with actual activities to go with it.  We’ve been reading the stories and talking about them, but I’ve just been completely out of creative ideas to go with any of them.
And, just an FYI, with Advent beginning soon I’ll be preparing for a daily (quick) Bible story with M up to Christmas.  After that we’ll try to get back in the swing of things with a weekly story… my current plan is to start with creation and go from there.  This is what we’ll be doing in Advent too, but after Christmas (or possibly New Year’s) we’ll take more time to do some crafty things on a weekly basis for each story.  Gosh, I hope that makes sense.  My mommy-brain needs some serious sleep. :)
So, last week we talked about Jonah.  Good old Jonah, who is a lot like M in many ways… mainly in the saying “No” way and running the other direction when asked to do something. ;) 
We read two books about whales throughout the week, and the first time we read them I casually mentioned Jonah and his *adventure*.  M was fascinated.  He hadn’t really learned about whales yet, and loved hearing how big some of them can be and that they don’t chew up their food, they just swallow it whole.  Gulp!  For whatever reason, he found this fact astounding.  And Jonah getting spit out?!  Well, you can imagine how cool he thought that was. :) 
The first book was Whales by Gail Gibbons – an excellent book for learning facts about these creatures.
The second book was Baby Beluga, by Raffi.  You have probably heard this song… the book is basically the song with illustrations.  This one was also well-liked. 
Then we read the story of Jonah from our favorite toddler Bible:
And I just (today) found this flannel board set:If you are interested, click on the picture and it will take you to the site.  The pictures are about halfway down the page.  I’m going to make this for M so he can “do” the story on his flannel board.   Of course I searched high and low for something to make at the time we were actually talking about this story and couldn’t find anything… this would have been (and will be) perfect!
Our craft was so much fun for M.  He LOVED it.  I can’t stress that enough.  I thought it was so simple that I would be lucky to get his cooperation for the whole thing, but he really, really loved it! (I like it when that happens!) 
First, he did some color mixing – periwinkle blue and a tiny amount of yellow to make a sea-green (pretend it’s sea-green, ok?) background.  He painted this onto a piece of white cardstock with a square piece of sponge:
I found a coloring page here, printed it on cardstock and cut the whale out.  M colored Jonah with a crayon.  Then he mixed white and purple paint and painted the whale and an oval piece of cardstock that I had cut out.
We let everything dry overnight.  The next day he glued the whale to the sea background, and we attached the oval to the center of the whale with a paper fastener.  This is the whale’s flipper.  I know most whales don’t have flippers right there but this one does. Matthew asks everyone who enters our house, “Do you wanna see Jonah in the big whale?!?” and he flips up the flipper and there sits Jonah, on his knees praying, just waiting to be spit out. :) 
Jonah did the right thing in the end and did what God asked him to do, but I’m not entirely sure that lesson made it’s way into M’s brain exactly the way I hoped it would.  However, I would say this story definitely made an impression on him, and he really does like it – a lot.  And hopefully, eventually he’ll understand the moral of the story too. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)