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!

Imagination at Work

Every month we get an issue of High Five, a preschool version of Highlights magazine.  The subscription was a gift from Matthew’s grandma, and he LOVES it.  Every issue has a page with a picture of something to build using blocks or every day items at home. 

Here’s the picture from our current issue:

It’s an apartment building, built with blocks and empty cereal boxes.

And here’s what has been standing in our living room floor since Friday night:

I really should’ve taken a picture of M playing with it and setting it up, because he was really into it.  Seriously into it.

We got these little crate-style containers at Dollar Tree a year ago and we keep M’s little cars, musical instruments, and a train set in them.  Well, apparently we did keep those things in them, but now they are just lying in heaps on the floor.  Because he needed an apartment building.  :) 

Really he treats it more as a house; I’m not sure he really knows what an apartment building is.  There’s a garage to the side made from blocks, and the book in the front is the sidewalk (couldn’t you tell?).

And, yes, some of the people living in the apartments are figures from M’s nativity set that he has refused to let us put away since last Christmas.  He plays with them like they are action figures, lol.  If you look closely you’ll see Mary on the rooftop and baby Jesus in the middle square, hee hee. :)

I thought it was such a great idea, and works so well.  You can’t beat a play house/apartment building for $3.00!  And believe me, I’m not upset at all that I need to go back to the Dollar Tree to buy more containers for the toys that were evicted!! 

Have a beautiful day! :)