Art Time – Nature Collage

 

This little art project is perfect for a window decoration this time of year! I was thinking of simply finding and gluing objects from nature onto a piece of sturdy cardboard.  M is such a glue guy.  And he wanted to do the whole play-doh collage in an egg carton project again, which was very cool, and very tempting… but then I was reminded of contact paper collages by this post at One Hook Wonder.  They are so easy, and always turn out so lovely with the autumn sunlight shining through.  So that’s what we did!

First, M grabbed his “nature basket” and headed outside to see what he could find:

I made a point of telling him no rocks, and no sticks bigger than a finger.  I wanted to avoid the frustration that would come if he tried to stick something too heavy to the contact paper.  He searched and searched, and mostly found an assortment of leaves (I love the bright red ones!), a couple of dandelions, small pinecones, and one small stick. :)

He brought everything in and set it on the table while I cut the contact paper.  Ours is roughly 7” x 20”.  If all of your nature items are flat, you can cut 2 pieces and sandwich the items in between.  They are sure to stay put that way.  Since M had some lovely 3-dimensional objects, we chose to just use one piece of contact paper.

 

 

When he was done arranging items and sticking them down, we hung the finished collage in his bedroom window.

  Beautiful. :) 

And this way the birdies can enjoy it too. 
(M is always thinking about birds.  I wonder if he will be an ornithologist?)

 

It was so much fun, and we realized the next day that we’d missed all the pretty red maple leaves in our front yard, so we made another one!

 

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

The Art Box – Oct. 11, 2010

In the Art Box last week: lots of colored paper, watercolor paper (in the back with a paperclip on it), watercolor paints, watercolor pencils, markers, glue, glitter glue, scissors, a small container with little goodies in it for collaging (lower left), a pinecone, stickers, and cardboard ribbon spools.

I’ve been trying to find a good way to keep M’s art supplies organized, and found this little utensil carousel at Target.  It’s great for markers, pencils, scissors, glue, etc.  But, the picture looks a little crowded, doesn’t it?  Maybe next week I’ll set everything out all nice and pretty before I take the picture.  Didn’t you know I have all the time in the world to do things like that? ;)  Okay, maybe not.  We’ll see. ;)

Despite the plethora of good art supplies, not much art was done.  We’ve had a run of summer-like days this fall (I guess to make up for the fall-like days we had in summer), and much of our time was spent outside.  Some beautiful items did make their way into nature collages, but those are for a post later this week.

However, despite the beautiful weather, M can’t resist anything sparkly.  Once he saw the glitter glue and some sparkly bug stickers he had to take time out from his outdoor play to put a couple of things together. 

A glitter glue, sticker collage: 

And whatever this is, with glitter foam pieces (more sparkles!):

That was it.  Just some quick bling and then back to jumping in the leaves.

I did find time to put up some art strings in our home.  Here’s one:

We’ve got 4 of them up in a variety of places – stairwell, family room, bedroom.  My (unspoken to M) hope is that I can s l o w l y start taking down a few pieces of art that he’s just randomly taped on the walls and move them onto the art strings, and eventually only have M’s art on the strings except for a few very special things that we’ll leave in the kitchen, perhaps in frames.  That’s the plan, anyway.

If you have a kid's art post, link it up below! Be sure to link back here somewhere in your post.

Have a beautiful day! :)

What We’ve Been Reading – Oct. 9, 2010

The Brambly Hedge Series by Jill Barklem

I’ve missed writing these posts!  Summer was just too busy and I took a break from all the memes I normally participate in.  We’ve read so many great books that I almost don’t know where to begin.  

Early in the summer I began reading longer books to M as we ate lunch.  He loves books and his attention span for a good story has always been amazing.  Amazing, as in totally flooring me when he would sit still (this is a boy who never sits still) for a long Dr. Seuss book when he was 11 months old.  There were two of them actually – Are You My Mother? and To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street (which is a pretty long book!).  A good book has always been worth sitting for with him, something I’m very thankful for!  It seemed like those months between 1 and 2 1/2 years were nothing more than a succession of him toddling over to me with yet another book in his hand.  :) 

Okay.  Enough bragging. (sorry!)

I want M to begin learning to visualize stories in his mind without needing to see the illustrations, and the Brambly Hedge books by Jill Barklem are perfect for that.  They do have beautiful illustrations, and I lshow them to M after reading the story to him. 

Honestly, some of these books aren’t all that long (although some are), but they are each full of suspense and magic.  I mean “magical” in the sense of a young child’s view of the idea of small mice who live in a little village and have homes like we have, only in miniature; and who have work to do; and who, best of all, go on wonderful adventures. 

The nice thing about these books is that there is almost always a suspenseful moment, and it’s then that I close the book and leave M wanting more.  ;)  We normally take 2 days for each book. 

Hands down, his favorite of the series has been The Secret Staircase.  The two main characters are 2 mouse children – Primrose and Wilfred.  It is midwinter and the village is preparing for its annual winter festival.  As Primrose and Wilfred rehearse a poem they plan to recite, they go searching through the attcs of the Old Oak Palace (the home of Lord Woodmouse), for costumes.  Primrose finds a key, Wilfred finds an old door behind a curtain, and together they find an old staircase leading up into the tip top branches of the oak tree.  The climb the staircase and… you have to read it to your child to see what they find. ;)

This book sparked M’s imagination like no other book has done.  He spent weeks with a little key from a small piggy bank in his pocket.  At random times he’d grab my hand and whisper that he’d found a door.  We’ve gone all through our house, “discovering” old hidden rooms. :)

His other top favorites from this series are The High Hills and Sea Story .  I hope you check these great books out!

For more reviews of children’s books, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

♥ School ♥ – week 2, part 1

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”

– Henry Ward Beecher

So, I’m playing around with what to title my school posts.  I’m looking for something catchy, and I’d like to make reference to the quote above, since I love it and it’s what I try to keep in mind while we are “doing school”: listening with my heart, following my maternal instincts, etc.  However, Mama’s School of Love doesn’t quite sound right, hee hee. ;) Any suggestions?

Wondering why this is just “part 1” of week 2?  Well, we started week 1 out with colds, and ended week 2 with an out-of-town funeral.  My husband’s very sweet uncle, Bud, passed away on Wednesday.  So, between recovering from being sick and then packing and heading out of town on the spur-of-the-moment, only a tiny bit of school was actually done.  I’m going to carry my plans for the week over into another week.  Honestly, I’ve been running behind on everything since my grandmother’s funeral at the beginning of the summer.  Another funeral and all the stuff attached to such an event just makes it harder.  I hope to get back on track next week!

For now, I thought I’d give a quick explanation of how I have M’s shelf activities set up each week.  I bought these last spring, but have not gotten around to posting about them until now.  Here’s how they looked over the summer, for the most part (this was right before M’s birthday, so I had cleaned off a couple of shelves to make room for new toys):

I have been playing a trial and error game with rotating M’s toys on these shelves; I’m not sure it’s working like I envisioned, but I plod on anyway.  Now that we are doing more preschool-ish activities again I’m using the shelves on the right for school activities and the ones on the left continue to hold toys.  

Some things are out permanently (more or less): the music instruments and songbook (shown on the top left in the photo above, but have been relegated to the corner on the floor at this point); M’s ABC collage and trace book; his phonics box (mentioned in this post); and whatever math work we are doing, which is currently bead bars and number cards.  I also have his flannel board tucked in beside the shelf, and all our flannel board sets in the folders on the bottom shelf. The remainder of the shelves hold rotated activities.

I’m trying to rotate a total of 6 to 8 activities every week.  I put out 3 or 4 activities each Monday and 3 or 4 every Thursday.  Each activity stays out for one week, unless it’s something he’s really loved and shows an interest in continuing to do.  Or, if it’s a one time thing – a craft or just a little something fun – then obviously once it’s done, it’s off the shelf.  If I have something to replace it with I will, but if not I just move everything around so the shelf looks full again. :)  Initially I planned to only use the top two shelves for school activities, but I can not put out enough activities for M, as he absolutely loves them, so I decided to use the entire 4 shelves of the one unit.

Recent activities on our shelves

I’m trying to use more attractive baskets and trays for his activities and I do think it helps grab his attention when things are presented in a pleasing way.  I made this cute little “work mat” for him too, for when he’s doing something potentially messy (using markers, etc.).

Most of the activities I set out are related to language or math work we’ve done, or are fine motor skill practice of some sort, for which I get most of my ideas from Montessori practical life activities.  I also try to include one sensory bin or sensory activity per week, although this doesn’t always happen.

The activities on M’s shelves are meant to be semi-independent work.  This means it’s something he knows how to do and can do completely on his own, or it’s something he will bring to me for instruction on how to do it, then complete it on his own.  I have to say I am usually in the room with him doing something and we keep up a running conversation regarding what he’s doing and how he’s doing, with a lot of me jumping in and out of any particular activity as needed.  There are a few activities that totally engross him and it’s then that I say a prayer of thanks and try to think in something more than 20 second intervals. ;)  We also have “together” activities, not on the shelves, which are things that we, well, do together.

I think this all sounds like more work than it actually is.  I actually have fun planning and preparing M’s “work” for him, both shelf activities and our “together” activities.  And I love, love, love spending time with him actually doing them.  I just wish I didn’t need to sleep so that I could have everything perfect, all the time.  But I can’t.  I’m already tired enough. ;)

I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner, and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Go check them out to see what other moms are up to with their kiddos!

Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Art Time – Fun with Paint Dough

We’ve been trying to fit a mama-directed open-ended art project in each week.  This week we made “paint dough”.  The recipe for this was from one of the books I’ve mentioned in previous posts – Preschool Art, by MaryAnn Kohl, a book very well worth getting!: 

To make this special kind of paint, mix together equal parts of flour, salt, and water.  I used about 1 cup of each to make about 2/3 a bottle of 5 different colors (you can see our bottles below, I think they each hold about 2 oz.).  After mixing you should have something that looks like this:   Add a tablespoon of tempera paint in various colors (divide the mixture into separate bowls before adding the color), and mix in.  You could use a few drops of food coloring too, if you’d rather.  Use a funnel to fill squeeze bottles with the paint.  Because I know I’ll get questions about where we bought our squeeze bottles, here’s the link. :)

The neat thing about this “paint dough” is that it’s runny, but the colors just bump up against each other and don’t mix together.  You could swirl them with a toothpick or skewer for a really neat effect!  It also creates texture because it is so thick.  Not quite like puffy paint, but very similar.  Thick, yet runny… a very interesting combination!

Use heavy cardboard or something similar for painting on.  We ran out of cardboard and started using cardstock, which was not a thick enough surface and some of the paint soaked through.  It’s a very heavy, wet paint, so a layer of newspaper underneath is a good idea too.

M was fascinated with this this paint.  I have to admit, I was pretty fascinated myself, and spent a little time just playing around with it and having fun. :)

He squeezed and painted and immensely enjoyed himself until every last drop of paint was gone.We had oodles of paint dough creations.  Here’s a few samples of how it looks:

A van on a colored road

     A tree

 A lion, with a green smile :)

Once the paint was all used up M begged for more, but I had used up all our salt and couldn’t make anymore that day.  However, this is definitely on our do again list! 

I should mention that this paint dough takes a while to dry – ours took two whole days for the pieces that had pretty large puddles on them, but only overnight for the pieces with simple lines.  Next time I’ll adjust the tips of our squeeze bottles (they are the glue kind) so they don’t allow quite so much to come out at a time.  All in all, it was a definite success and clean up was minimal for the amount of time it kept M happily occupied!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

The Art Box – Oct. 4, 2010

I try so hard to be organized every week… but inevitably something always gets overlooked!  This week it was the art box again.  I just can’t seem to remember that it’s time to change out the supplies (or let M change them out) and we end up just haphazardly grabbing extra paper and whatever he wants on the spur of the moment.  And art gets done, but there’s no neat and tidy art box.  And I like a neat and tidy art box – even if it’s just neat and tidy long enough for a picture to be taken.  One of the things I like most about these posts is seeing those supplies, all picked out and nicely arranged, just waiting for imagination to take hold and something to be created.  It helps me remember what we’ve done, what items M has especially enjoyed, and gives me ideas for what to give him in the future.  So.  Next week – maybe?

I do remember that he had access to markers, do-a-dot painters, and stencils this week.  And here’s what he created…

He tried the stencils with his dot painters and then with his markers.  I can really see the difference between the two “techniques”. ;)  I was also impressed that he was able to trace the outlines with the markers, which was something totally new for him.   

 

His drawing has really taken off lately too.  He drew up a storm, but here are my three favorites:

I’m not sure what this is, but I love the happy smiley face!

A family, not ours, but one with two boys… which is what he wishes our family was.  (Me too!)

A rainbow, a sunshine, and a bird – so sweet!

 

He has created a “collage box” that he keeps near his “reading spot”.  Basically this is a box full of interesting magazines and catalogs and calendars, and general stuff.  He’s been creating collages non-stop with all the good things he’s finding in this box o’ things.  And with his new found love for masking tape, I’m being surprised with new collages popping up everywhere I turn.

 The front door.

  A closet.

  The hallway.

And more in the kitchen and bedrooms.  Sigh.  I don’t plan on keeping these beauties up, but so far I haven’t had the heart to take any of them down since he is just so darn proud of himself.  Yet, deep down I know my house is beginning to look a little… strange.  Like a 4 year old is running around on the loose with scissors and tape.

Lastly, Daddy’s birthday is coming up soon and M made him a little something:Pretty special, wouldn’t you say? :)   

If you have a kid's art post, link it up below! Be sure to link back here somewhere in your post.

Have a beautiful day! :)

“Doing School” - week one

Matthew has been itching to “do” school for weeks now.  I’ve caught him making up his own flannel board activities, trying to draw letters, and even teaching scissor skills to some stuffed animals. :)  He’s taught himself how to spell “on” and “off”.  As in the remote control jeep is “on” and it should be “off” so the batteries don’t run down. ;)  I bet the people that put the little “off” and “on” on toys don’t realize what a teaching tool they are creating!

I’m planning 3 weeks of work at a time, then one week off to do things we didn’t get to, or to just review what we have done.  Or, you know, so when we get sick on day 2, Mommy knows we’ll have time to catch up and doesn’t stress (much).

M learned to recognize all the upper case “mama” letters before he was one year old, and he knew the sounds many of them made (he was an early talker, and hasn’t stopped since).  I thought I had a genius on my hands, let me tell you.  Turns out it was just the fascination of bath tub letters, and somehow the knowledge didn’t stick (unlike the letters, which do.  Hee hee.).  So we will be going through the alphabet, learning the shape and sound of each letter, and matching mama letters to baby letters.  I expect M will fly through this, but at first we’ll cover one letter per week, starting with A, which was this week!  Of course I have to add (because I am a mama) that my bright boy already does know many of these, so it will be a lot of reviewing too, which is always good!

Shelf Activities (semi-independent work):

Watercolor painting pictures for big A and little A (from Making Learning Fun):He only did the little A page, so the big A page went into his art box for a later time.

Poking push pins into big and little As and pictures of things that begin with A:

I found the templates for the above activity at Preschool Express in the patterns section.

Our new Autumn Sensory Bin:There’s a lot of goodies in there… pinecones, acorns, a little wooden acorn-shaped bowl, cinnamon sticks, pom poms, silk leaves, paper mache gourds and pumpkins,  sparkly orange flowers, berries (not real), and some autumn-colored lacing beads.  M thoroughly enjoyed this sensory bin.  He especially loved the cinnamon sticks.  Thank you to Mari-Ann at Counting Coconuts for many great ideas in this post!

M explored all the various items: 

Created some pinecone sculptures: 

Made a little “garden”:And we played an I spy game.  I’d say something like, “I’m looking at something very small and round and soft and fuzzy, and it’s orange.”  And he’d look everything over and guess which item I was describing (pom-pom).  We took turns describing and guessing; it was a lot of fun!

Next was a rice-pouring activity which he absolutely loved.  He poured rainbow rice (colored with a bit of rubbing alcohol and food coloring – easy peasy) from a lightweight measuring cup into these silicone cupcake liners.  The addition of candles was his idea.  We even had to light them and sing happy birthday. :)  This will be staying on the shelf till he tires of it.  He’s been doing it every day, and is really perfecting his dry pouring skills.

singing happy birthday to no one in particular

 blowing out the candles

This next activity was hands-down the favorite of the week.  The first day he spent almost 2 hours on it and he continued to get it out and work on it a bit every day.  I gave him a piece of styrofoam, some pipecleaners, wooden beads, and pony beads.  He loved the wooden beads and only used the pony beads once the wooden ones were gone.  He pushed a pipe cleaner into the foam, then strung beads onto it and pushed the other end in to make arches.  I could not believe how much he enjoyed this activity – he just loved it.  It was enough of a challenge too, because once all those beads are on, it’s not easy to push the other end of the pipe cleaner in! What a great fine motor activity:

 

I also put out some fall-themed lacing cards.  He enjoyed these much more this time than in the past.  And he concentrated on “sewing” back to front, front to back, and going to the next hole instead of across the card.  Silly Mommy forgot to take pictures , but here’s the cards:   

My husband had a lot of odd board games when he was a kid, things I have never heard of, which are now ours because his mother didn’t want to keep them.  One of them (don’t know it’s name) had this hourglass-shaped game board with wells in it, perfectly sized for pom-poms or marbles.  I set this out with the pom-poms in the bowl at first, expecting him to use the tweezers to put the pom-poms in the wells.  However, it didn’t appeal to him until I switched it around and had the pom-poms already in the wells.  He tweezed them out one by one and dropped them into the bowl.Jill, at The Shafer Family Blog has something similar to this, in her post here, that you might be able to find somewhere.  Hers is a Jello mold for little eggs or jelly-bean shapes.

 

Now for activities we did together during “school time”…

Literacy:

This is M’s new phonics box.  I found these little wooden shadow boxes at Dollar Tree, and bought 3 of them, painted them white, and wrote the letters on them.  M sorted through the basket of big and small letters and put them into the appropriate square.  Then I gave him a few small objects to put in the “Aa” square – an apple, an acorn, an anchor, and an angel:This will stay on his shelves now and each week I’ll give him new objects to put in.

We also went through this little wipe-off mat and found everything that begins with A:

Do you like the little work mat I made for M? :)

And he practiced “drawing” a mama A and a baby a on his whiteboard, which will also be staying out on his shelves indefinitely: 

 

Math:

We started working with the bead bars I made (described in this post).  M found the “one bead”, the “two bead”, etc. for me and placed them on his work mat beginning at the top and going down, so when we got to the last one, which is the “nine bead”, he could see it formed a triangle or stairs.  We’ve done similar things before, so this was mainly to get him familiar with the bead bars and their various colors. 

Then he looked at his bead triangle and colored in this “short bead stair” worksheet to match it:

What do you think of that coloring?  I’m convinced it’s never entered his mind to even try coloring within the lines.  He’s a free-thinking artist. :)

M enjoyed this activity so much, and later I found his finished worksheet hanging on the wall:This is evidence of how proud he felt. :)    

 

Science:

We planned to do a plant experiment with a carrot this week, but M was sick the 2nd day and I was sick by the 4th day, so we took it pretty easy most of the week.  We will get to it eventually, but for now we just did these tree nomenclature cards:

Although this was all vocabulary that M already knows, he enjoyed this activity, and really enjoyed “reading” the words. :)  In fact, he just looked at the letters and matched them up, but that’s good enough for now!

 

Music:

We played “music”, although I use that term loosely, since it’s mostly just making noise with instruments, and sang songs.  This is something I hope to keep up as the year goes on.  Then I showed M how he could make music with water.  He was really intrigued by this… below is a little video.  My voice sounds old and tired, but remember - I had a cold!  Also, sorry about the blurriness!

I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)