Craft Time – Pumpkin Mosaic and a Sensory Lesson

M loved the way this project was set up:
“What do you have there for me, Mama?”  (Being called “Mama” is rare these days, which I can’t dwell on because it makes me oh so sad.)
He loved the idea too:  Put glue all over the pumpkin then put the little squares on it like a collage.  We’ve done mosaics before, but not in a while.  With this one we talked about how the foam pieces were squishy, the felt pieces were soft, and the paper pieces were smooth.  There were also light and dark orange foam pieces, so we talked a little about that distinction.

What he really loved, though, was the glue.  Pools and pools of glue.  He used up the last 1/3 of the bottle.  I tried, really hard, to hold my tongue, but after the 5th glue pool for one tiny orange square, I took the glue away.  I helped him spread out the copious amounts of glue already on the pumpkin with a sponge brush so he could put on more squares. 
He put on maybe 3 more.  Then he was done.  His attitude was, the glue is gone, this isn’t worth doing.  What is it with glue and this kid?!?
We did this Monday.  The glue was finally dry on Wednesday.  Finished artwork:
I ran across something similar that he made last year around Halloween:
I guess my brain is rotating ideas without me knowing it. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

Color Mixing with Play-dough

Wednesday we were stuck at home with cold, rainy weather and feeling a little cabin-feverish.  Thank goodness it’s no longer snowing, but still… we would love a little nice, sunny, beautiful autumn weather before winter really comes.  I’ve gone outside just to be outside one time so far this fall. 

Anyway, since M coughed, breathed, and just generally snotted (Check-spell is telling me that’s not a word.  Hmph.  It doesn’t know my kid.) all over his play-dough a couple of weeks ago when he was sick, it had to be thrown out.  And today we made a new batch.  :)

I love making play-dough at home – it’s all nice and warm when you knead it and the colors can be so vibrant!

We made two batches actually – one yellow, one blue: Then we took a little chunk of yellow, and a little chunk of blue and kept squeezing them together and mixing them up.I asked M what color he thought they would make.  He alternated between “dark blue” and “kinda brown”.  He always says this, no matter what colors we are mixing.  Anyway, if you are wondering – they made…. GREEN!  Just amazing, isn’t it? ;)

(Thanks to whisperingwhispers at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn for this idea in an email!)

Then he played.  2 hours straight.  I’m not kidding.  He even skipped lunch. 

Here’s the best play-dough recipe I’ve come across.  I don’t even remember where I first saw it (it was at least 3 years ago).  We’ve tried lots of others, but always come back to this one:

1 Cup white flour

1/4 Cup salt

2 Tbs cream of tartar

1 Cup water

1 tsp food coloring

1 Tbs vegetable oil

Mix flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a medium-sized pot.  Add water, food coloring, and oil.  Cook and stir over medium heat 3 – 5 minutes.  When it forms a ball in center of pot, turn out and knead on lightly floured surface.  Store in airtight container or plastic bag. 

It lasts several weeks!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – October 11, 2009

M is 37 months old

We began this week by moving an old TV stand / media center to M’s reading spot. Tuesday morning I grabbed some kitchen plastic ware and filled the shelves with activities.This worked so well with M, even better than I expected. He was able to pick and choose which activities to do (or not do) and many of them were things he could do independently (which gave me a little time to check the laundry, tidy things up, etc).

We worked on putting one activity away before getting another one down, and I was ok with him quitting an activity whenever he wanted. I’m trying to concentrate on having fun more than anything else right now in regards to tot school. And M woke up with a horrible cold that morning, so I wanted to go easy on him. Just cleaning up one thing before getting another one down was enough in the way of rules for us this week!

First, he strung some pony beads onto a length of yarn, using a plastic needle.

Next, matching up some paint sample strips with clips.We are working on learning the gradation of color shades. I thought the clips would get him a bit more interested in this. They did, but only a very little bit. He did the blue and then that was enough. This post from Shannon at Growing and Learning by Leaps and Bounds gave me this idea. Maybe next time we will work on just one color like she did.

He also did this super-fun activity that I whipped up for him over the weekend – an ABC tube with stickers to match: I simply took a cardboard tube and wrote the alphabet on it in random order, and put it out with some foam letter stickers. M would pick a sticker, then roll the tube around to find the matching letter. The idea for this came from Sophie’s mama in this post. I just added stickers! It was a big hit for M! I plan to do one with numbers sometime soon too.

M did some scissor practice pages:

In one of the plastic tubs I placed a piece of green construction paper, scissors, a glue stick, and some pages from a toy catalog. For this activity M had to cut out any toys that had green in them, then glue them to the construction paper and make a collage.He liked the idea of this, but didn’t work on it for very long. We put it back on the shelf and he can pull it out some other time to finish it.

One of his favorite activities was this:I wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on bottle lids, then made cards to match them up with. The cards also have the corresponding number of X’s to put any small manipulative on. In this case, it was m&ms, which is why M loved it. :)

He did a little pom pom transferring with tweezers:He made this into a game and I had to use his pliers. :) We would each grab a pom pom, say “cheers!” while clinking them together, then drop them into the ice cube tray. He’s a funny boy sometimes. :)

Hands down, the all time favorite of the week was this *I spy sensory tub* activity. It was inspired by the many posts in the blog world about making I spy bottles, but I knew M would never be happy just looking for small objects – he would want them in his hands where he could examine them and get to know them. So I photocopied a bunch of small objects, then hid them in a mixture of rice, macaroni, and lentils. He had so much fun with this, I was amazed.He did this 7 times that day. Sometimes he would hide them, sometimes I would. He was totally enthralled. Which made for a very happy mama. :)

I worked the hardest on this activity, and it was the only one M was not even mildly interested in:I’ve been seeing this book everywhere - and just love the idea of it… so I made my own! I cut some foam shapes to use, and made letter templates for them, which I then laminated. I thought M would love this, but he was absolutely. not. interested. Ah well, we’ll try again another day! I’m still showing you because I’m just so proud of it. :)

We did one more sensory activity – packaging peanuts and water. If you get them just a little bit wet they stick together and you can create things. If you get them a lot wet they dissolve. M had fun making them dissolve. :)

One day we made this pretty autumn tree:

And we learned more new songs and poems. First, from Preschooleducation.com:

(tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”)

All join hands and circle around
While we watch the leaves fall down.
See them twirling to the ground.
See them skipping here and there
See them flipping in the air.
Autumn leaves so peacefully
Falling, falling from the tree.
(I would have loved to have sung this one outside while twirling M around, but his cold and our rainy weather just didn’t cooperate.)

And a poem, from childfun.com:

Leaves
Little leaves fall gently down
Red and yellow, orange and brown. (flutter hands like leaves falling)
Whirling, whirling around and around. (turn around)
Quietly, without a sound. (put finger to lips)
Falling softly to the ground (begin to fall slowly)
Down and down and down and down. (lie on floor)

I hope everyone had a wonderful week! Check here for more tot school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Leaf ID sheet and a little Art Time

We are fortunate to have a yard full of trees, and lots of different ones to choose from.  A couple of days ago I went out and grabbed some leaves to make a leaf identification sheet for M. 
I simply arranged them on the scanner and copied them onto a piece of cardstock:Then I labeled them (I only picked leaves that I was sure of, but I clearly need to learn a bit more about the trees we have.  There are several I can’t identify). 
I gave the sheet and the leaves to M to match them up as I told him their names: I hope to have him gather some leaves on his own and use this sheet to identify them some time soon (he’s been sick all week, and stuck inside, poor guy!).
Then we did some rubbings of the leaves:We’ve never done rubbings of any sort, although it is something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while.  M enjoyed seeing the magic picture show up. ;)  I hid the leaves under the paper while he was out of the room.  When he started the rubbing he said, “I’m making a tree!!”.
Finished products (top pic is chalk, bottom pic is crayons): 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art & Craft time! Arm Print Autumn Tree (and stamping!)

I’m working at having an art, craft or sensory-type activity for M on a daily basis.  Today we made a pretty fall tree.
You will need:

• Paint in fall colors – we used orange, yellow, green, and red
• Brown paint for the tree trunk and branches
• paintbrush
• paper – we used cardstock
• leaf stamp
• pieces of felt
• something flat to use for a stamp pad.  We used saucers… more on this below.

First to make temporary stamp pads, begin by putting the leaf colors on the saucers.  We put two colors on each saucer. Next, place one small square of felt on top of each paint glob. Gently pat the felt down until the paint soaks entirely through. Optionally, you could use a sponge and let paint soak into it, but I have found sponges do not give as clear a print with stamps as does the felt.  To keep from wasting paint, you really don’t need to use as much paint as I did.  You could also use something like a cd jewel case to do this, then shut it (possibly wrap it with plastic too) to keep your “stamp pads” usable for future projects.
Now, the fun part! 
Paint your child’s inside forearm and the palm of their hand with the brown paint.  You may want to warn them that you are going to do this, apparently it can be a bit ticklish. :)  We talked about how the paint felt slick and cool on his skin.  Here’s M showing you his brown arm.  He really did love this although you would not know it by looking at his face.
Next, print the arm onto the paper for your tree:
Start stamping leaves onto the tree branches and some on the ground, or falling in the air: See how crisp the stamp is using the felt?  M wiggled the stamp some after he set it down sometimes, creating a bit more of a blurry leaf, but the felt worked really well as a stamp pad.
I let him put the stamp in different colors without wiping it off first, which turned out to be ok, because some leaves have a couple of different colors in them, just like real ones!
Here’s his finished tree:
The felt washed up nicely and so did the boy. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time – Aluminum Foil Art

We did this for a quick and simple art project this week. We haven’t done much with foil, but as I was wrapping up something to stick in the fridge, I thought about how much fun it would be to use for art time.

So we got out the foil and some markers. I said it was quick and simple!

We talked about how shiny, almost like a mirror, the foil is; how smooth it is; and how interesting it sounds when it moves. M enjoyed using his regular markers, and then we tried the window markers. I preferred the window markers (yes, I was drawing a little bit too). M loves the white window marker because it’s so unusual to have a white marker, so he used that one a lot, but I think he liked using both kinds of marker equally.

Here’s his finished picture:

And here’s mine :) : Can you tell I am just itching for fall to get here?! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Color Mixing Bags

So, M has really been into the color mixing idea lately. But, he’s not quite “getting” it, if you know what I mean. He loves that you can mix two colors together and get a totally new color. I mean, that is pretty neat if you think about it – I’m sure to a toddler/preschooler it seems like magic.

But he will pick random colors and say things like “Mommy, guess what you get when you mix together pink, brown, and orange!” Then he’ll say “Green!!” :) Sometimes he says something along the lines of “dark green” or “light green” which really cracks me up.

So, apparently we need to work on shades of color (which will be in a separate post – probably a tot school one), and exactly which colors mix together to make new colors.

He loved the color mixing activity we did a while ago and I’m going to try to do a new color mixing activity on a regular basis. Lots of exposure to the idea in various ways means it will eventually come together in his mind and he will understand it (I hope).

This week we made simple color mixing bags with paint. We’ve all seen these on other blogs, this is nothing new! But anyway, here’s what we did…

First, get 3 good heavy duty ziploc bags (you may want to double up your bags – one of ours tore.) Place two dollops of paint in each one, one in each corner. Bag 1 – red and blue, bag 2 – red and yellow, bag 3 – blue and yellow:Tape the bags shut with duct tape or packaging tape.

Then talk about how colors can mix together to make new colors. Give your child a bag and ask him/her to guess what these two colors will make mixed together. If he says “kinda purplish-green, I think” just smile and say “let’s see!” and let him squish the paint around and mix it up. It’s important that the discovery be solely the child’s… they remember things so much more easily if this is the case. Act surprised when he says “it’s orange!” :)

You can do more with these after the colors are mixed – I showed M how to draw shapes with his finger, and we practiced a few letters too!. You can smooth out the paint into a very thin layer and see if you can look through it. Hold it up to the window if it’s sunny and see how pretty it is!

Enjoy! Have a beautiful, very colorful, day! :)

Art Time! Salty Watercolors

This is one of those art projects I’ve had in the back of my mind for ages – meaning to do it, forgetting about it, remembering it, getting too busy to do it, forgetting it again… you get the picture. :)
Finally, we did it.  And, boy, am I glad we did!
It is from one of our favorite art books - Scribble Art by MaryAnn Kohl. 
We used white cardstock, glue, table salt, pipettes, paintbrushes, and our fabulous homemade liquid watercolors left over from a previous project.  (I covered our art tray / muffin tin with foil and the paints kept pretty well.  I did have to add a few drops of water to each cup and mix them up, but they worked just great and were still nice and vivid.)

M scooted up to the table and got busy with the glue bottle:
Then we tried sprinkling salt on with a spoon -
but it was not covering the glue as well as we needed it to.  If you do this, you need to put  a lot of salt on your glue pattern.  I finally just dumped it on right out of the box.  Then we tapped the extra salt off into the tray and we were left with this:
The idea at this point is to gently touch the salt pattern with watercolor paints and it will spread out – you can actually watch it soak through the salt along the lines you’ve made.  We started off with pipettes:It worked, but the paint was also forming puddles because M was squeezing too much paint out.  We (*I*) couldn’t clearly see the salt doing it’s thing because of the puddles.  So, I tried to get M to use a paintbrush and just barely touch it to the salt lines.  This is actually what the book directs you to do, and I should’ve listened to the book because M loves those pipettes dearly (they are fun) and we had a bit of a disagreement at this point.  ;)
Anyway, it did work better with the brush, as long as you just touch the salt.  Don’t brush the salt.  That point is very important!
It was a very neat and fascinating project, watching the soft colors of the paint spread along the salt, sometimes mixing together and creating new colors.  There was something just very slow and relaxing about it. 
Here are the finished art pieces:

This is definitely on our “do again!” list!
Have a beautiful day! :)