Preschool Art – Epiphany Stars and Corn Syrup Painting

Today is the 12th day of Christmas – are your little drummers drumming?  If they aren’t, I bet they will if you tell them they can. ;)  I’m sure mine will, although that’s only one drummer, not twelve.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be ok with it if I had twelve drummers!

Tomorrow is Epiphany, and we’ll be moving the wise men all the way to the stable, where they finally get to see the baby they’ve been looking for.  They will bring gifts, and I plan to have a little something (a very little $5.00 something) for them to give to M also.

We decided to make some stars to help celebrate, and I turned it into a full-fledged art project by introducing a technique we’ve never tried before – painting with corn syrup.  This was fun and I wished we’d tried it sooner.  It is not as messy as it sounds!

Here’s what you’ll need:Corn syrup, food coloring, small paint brushes, glitter, craft sticks, and stars cut from cardboard or cardstock.  And, because I just wouldn’t be me if I included all the supplies in the photo, we also used parchment paper, double-stick tape, scissors, and an ice cube tray.

First, pour a puddle of corn syrup onto one of the stars: 

Then use a craft stick to spread it out towards the points.  You want to cover the entire star:

Next, squeeze on a couple of drops of food coloring: 

And use the pointy end of a paintbrush to swirl the colors (you could use a toothpick or skewer for this too, obviously):

We loved watching the colors swirl around – so pretty!

Keep swirling out towards the points, until you have it just the way you want it.  We should have left it at that, because it was beautiful.  However, M was sure a little glitter would be great, and a little glitter probably would have been fine.  I think I liked it better before the glitter, but apparently I forgot to get a photo of that.  Here’s with glitter:

You can’t tell in the photo, but the corn syrup makes it very, very shiny – perfect for a star!  It almost leaves it looking like painted glass or ceramic.

Leave them to dry overnight.  Depending on your humidity level, drying could take a couple of days.  Our air is very dry these days, and it only took one night for our stars to dry.  They look just as shiny after they are dry, but are no longer sticky.

Next, we decided to try painting our cardboard stars with colored corn syrup and paint brushes instead of a craft stick.

I poured a little corn syrup into four wells of an ice cube tray, added some food coloring, and a tiny amount of glitter: 

We each painted one star (after watching, I just had to try this for myself – it was a lot of fun!):

Painting with the paint brushes left a much thinner layer of corn syrup, which meant less mess and a shorter drying time.  However, we weren’t able to achieve the swirling effect from earlier.  The swirling was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch.  When we do this again, we will paint plain corn syrup onto our paper, then drip on food coloring and swirl.  Hopefully that will mean a thinner layer of corn syrup, while still having the swirled look.

Our finished (painted) stars:

We have company coming over for dinner tonight, and one last evening enjoying the light of our Christmas tree.  We may watch The Little Drummer Boy, read Little Star, and sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  We’ll read the story of the Three Kings from M’s little Bible tomorrow and I have a little mosaic crown project set up for him (pictures of that later).

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

New Year – New Hopes, New Goals

This sweet praying angel is one of my favorite things to bring out at Christmas time.  She was given to me by a dear friend, and I imagine her prayers are my own, but she’s a bit more diligent about it than I am.  :)  Doesn’t she just seem so peaceful and trusting, even in the middle of unending supplication?  I may leave her out for all of 2011.

I know what she and I are praying for as this new year begins:  peace, grace, focus… and a little joy would be nice too. (A very little joy, wrapped up in a blanket, and looking an awful lot like a baby would certainly be nice, wouldn’t it? ;) This might take a miracle, but my sweet angel and I will continue to pray.)

I’m in the middle of drafting a post about the routine and rhythm we’ve developed over the past couple of months, so I won’t go into that too much here – but I do hope to use my time more wisely this year; and plan to set aside time on a regular basis to see what’s working, what needs to change, and whether or not my priorities are what they ought to be.

There are a few things I am going to work on, and I’m going to try to schedule most of these into my weekly calendar somehow:

• I need to find make time to exercise at least 3 times a week.
• Read daily to M (the snuggled-up kind of reading, not just bedtime stories or our chapter books at lunch).
• Prepare and actually do more activities pertaining to our faith.
• Organize about 5 areas of our home that really need it and are making me crazy.  Winter should be a great time to do this, but I’m trying to figure out how to do it and still have time for everything else…
• Make a decision about preschool this fall – I really thought we’d already made a decision (to not do preschool outside of home), but an enlightening conversation with family members over Christmas has turned it into a question again (ugh).
• Really sit down and form my thoughts about homeschooling (pros and cons) in a way that will help me explain, out loud, how I feel, and help others to understand. 
• In regards to preschool activities with M:
  • More reading of *good* books – I recently went through the book, Books Children Love: A Guide to the Best Children's Literature, and marked a bunch that sound enjoyable and are on M’s level.  The book was written to help Charlotte Mason followers find good literature for children instead of “twaddle”.  I found it very helpful, and found myself becoming more interested in Charlotte Mason and her ideas about education. 
  • Some book activities, hopefully, in relation to the above.  The planning of this, for one child, is a bit daunting for me.  We’ll see as we read, whether or not I can come up with activities.  (Yes, I know about Five in a Row, and should really look into it more.  I’m kind of stubborn when it comes to spending $$ on things I could do myself, and stubborn about planning activities that I know will appeal to M – he’s a custom-job kind of kid.)
  • More gross motor activities and exercise time with M twice a week.
  • More art (is that possible?) – meaning more looking at beautiful art, learning a tiny bit about various artists, art museum trips, more learning about various techniques, etc.  Books Children Love, was helpful in this area, and lists art books and the ages each one appeals to. 
  • More music – our first step in this is a fun local class once a week.  We may not make it to all the classes, as it falls on the same day that we do other things, but I’m looking forward to garnering good ideas from it when we are able to go.
  • More hands-on work with science, since this is M’s favorite thing. 
• In regards to blogging:
  • More posts about faith-related activities for preschoolers.
  • Posts about depression, especially post-partum depression – there’s a lot of good writing out there about this, and I’m sure I don’t have anything new to add to the conversation, but it’s just something I want to do as it seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge among people in my personal life.  It’s another “I’ll write it all out so I know how to explain it out loud” kind of thing.
  • A series of posts about homeschooling books I’ve read – there are 3 very good ones, in particular, that I want to make notes about.
• And, finally, after all of this, I want to work on an opportunity that has presented itself to make a little $$ from home, while working on something I love… again, it’s a matter of working out a time for this and scheduling it in.  I’ll keep you all informed about this as any progress is made, because it may be beneficial to a lot of homeschool mamas. :)

Whew.

Any plans on your part for the new year?  I’d love to hear about them!

I hope your 2011 is off to a wonderful start and that all your dreams for the year will come true. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)