Preschool Art (and sensory) Project – making Soap Clay

I have had this little project in mind for ages.  I first heard about it from MaryAnn Kohl (are you surprised, really?  You know we are her biggest fans).

We bought 2 bars of Ivory soap, and M used our cheese grater to shred the soap.  As much fun as playing and molding with the soap was, I think grating it up was M’s very favorite part.  He loves using a new tool!  Believe me, I would not let him do this at a much younger age, and I was right beside him the entire time, making sure those little knuckles didn’t get grated too.  I’m happy to say not a drop of blood was shed in this activity. :)  That’s always a good thing, don’t you think?

watching the soap flakes pile up in the middle of the grater

We ended up with about 2 cups of soap flakes.

M poured in a tiny bit of water at a time…

And stirred, until it began to form into a ball:

Then the fun of grabbing a glob of it in his hands and squishing it all up began:I had to get in on this action too!  The smell, the feel - it was a great sensory experience.   

We tried using a play dough mold to make some dinosaur-shaped soap, which would have been so cool!  Except there was no way to pop it out of the mold without completely destroying it.  Maybe if we had left it in to dry a bit, but neither of us had the patience for that.  This was a hard plastic mold.  I really think a silicone candy mold or even cookie cutters would have worked much better.

So, M ended up adding some food coloring (blue, because that’s all we had, ha ha), and rolled it into some bath crayons.  They really work well, and he could hardly wait to take his next bath. ;) 

We will definitely do this again.  It would be a fun project for Mother’s Day – maybe add some dried flowers or oatmeal?  And use a flower-shaped cookie cutter as a mold.  The food coloring from the tub crayons does not seem to leave any stains, so a bit of color in the soap is apparently ok, which opens up a lot of fun possibilities, doesn’t it? ;)

Definitely a successful sensory activity, and not a bad art project either!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Pretty Patterns for Mother’s Day

Wow, can you believe Mother’s Day is just a few days away? 

Over the weekend we made some cute flower magnets for M’s grandmothers. 

This craft was inspired one Sunday morning at IHOP (International House of Pancakes – yum, yum, yum!).  On the walls, there were framed papers, with egg-shapes cut from them, and patterned paper underneath, making pretty Easter eggs. 

With quick help from photo-shop, here’s an idea of what they looked like:Anyway, I really loved these, and tucked the idea into that little craft area of my brain.  When I saw a pack of pretty spring-themed scrapbooking paper at Target for 50 cents, I knew just what we would do with it.

However, it all turned out differently than the plan in my mind.  Doing the cut-out presented more of a challenge for M than I expected, and it looked more like a card than a piece of artwork.  We will probably do something along those lines sometime, but for now we modified the plans as follows…

Supplies: White cardstock, colored cardstock (we used yellow), marker, something to make a large circle and a small circle (lids), simple cardstock flower template, foam sheets or scraps, scissors, glue on a saucer, small paint roller, patterned paper cut into squares or small rectangles.  There was no measuring for this – I just snipped a few strips of paper into pieces.  If you want to make these into magnets, you’ll need magnets too.  I usually have a roll of magnetic tape from Walmart on hand.

Pour some glue onto your saucer, water it down a tiny bit, then use the roller to cover your white cardstock with a thin layer of glue:

Then, begin covering the cardstock with pieces of patterned papers; some will need to overlap in order to completely cover the paper:
                        look at those sweet baby hands!

 

Once your cardstock is covered, roll another layer of glue on top: 

While that’s drying, draw one large circle for each flower you are making on your colored cardstock, and cut them out: (M has 4 pairs of scissors, but couldn’t find any of them, and was allowed to use my sharp ones under close supervision.)

Draw small circles on foam (M picked pink) and cut them out too: 

Once your paper-covered cardstock is dry, use a template, or freehand draw two simple flowers: 

Cut them out. You will need the sharp scissors for this:

Dot some glue in the center of a large circle:

Pop on a cut out flower, dot it with glue in the center:

And stick on a foam circle:

We trimmed the yellow circles a little bit, and put magnets on the back, and now we have pretty magnets for Grandma’s and Nama’s refrigerators. :)     I love the variety of textures used on these (see the glitter and glossy spots?)!  Using fabric scraps instead of scrapbooking paper could add even more texture!

 

Some other ideas for Mother’s Day…

Paper plate and tissue paper flower suncatchers:

Foam mosaic flowers (or any shape mama likes): M made these for Easter when he was 2 years old (pre-blog).  I cut the cross and flower out, gave him scissors and strips of foam to cut the tiles, and he glued them on.  I still love these.  I put a little magnet on the back and they’ve been on our fridge ever since.  It would be fun to revisit this project now that he’s twice as old. :)  I think these would be perfect for Mother’s Day too!  And super-easy for just about any child to do.

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)