Showing posts with label activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activity. Show all posts

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Fall “Easter” Eggs

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The other day I hard boiled eggs like I do every few weeks, and I decided that Jack and I were going to color eggs again.  We did it for Easter and loved it, so why not do it more often?  I chose fall colors this time (yellow, orange, green and brown) and I think they turned out great! 

I started out with my tools :

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The paper towel roll cut up into little egg drying stands works best if they’re not glued together.  For the colors, I followed the ‘recipes’ on the back of the food color box.

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One egg must have had a crack in it when I put it in the pot.  We didn’t color this one, but it sure was fun to eat after we were done coloring the rest of the eggs.

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I have a feeling we’ll be dying eggs for every holiday coming up.  Thanksgiving will be the same, but Christmas may look a tad different. 

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I’m linking this up with La-La’s Home Daycare Holiday Kid Craft link up.  Hop on over to see what other holiday crafts have been posted. 

Monday, August 8, 2011

Art Date–Track prints

Last week, McCager came over for another Art Date.  We decided to use our trucks to paint.  I got the idea from the blog Mumma Made It.  I get a TON of ideas from her!

Track prints

Since I didn’t have any paper plates to put the paint down on, we decided to paint the tires and then hand the trucks to the boys.  They figured out what to do pretty quickly. 

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I told Bekah to have Cage bring his favorite car with him, but he didn’t need to bring any really.  Jack has plenty of trucks, cars, tractors, backhoes, and big rigs.  It’s a love of his.

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We tried to get them to notice how the different tires made different tracks, but I’m not sure they really cared.  they just liked running the machines across the paper to make tracks.

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Of course, they had to stop and play with the trucks as they went.  I understand that.  The paint cleaned up pretty well from the tires afterwards.  I just used a damp cloth and wiped most of it off.

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Afterwards, they tried out my homemade play dough.  I have to say it was an awesome play dough.  (I only used 1Tb oil instead of 2) It was the perfect consistency and the colors turned out pretty good.  I added just a touch of almond extract to add a nice smell to it, but wasn’t enough I guess. I couldn’t smell it unless I put it up to my nose.  I read how you can use Kool-Aid packets to color the dough and it makes it smell great too. I want to try that!

then the playdough came out

Jack has played with play dough (the real stuff) in Sunday School, so he knew what to do with it and what it was all about.  Cage, on the other hand, has never played with the stuff, so it was a new experience for him.  I think he liked it, though all he really wanted to do was go outside and play.  Poor guy.  We torture him by making him stay in and do art when all he wants to do is go play baseball. *He’s AWESOME at baseball.  He can hit a ball pitched to him almost every time.  Seriously!  He’s the next…umm…. “insert name of really great baseball player here.”*

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I gave them some plastic knives to use with their play dough and Jack showed his awesome slicing skills.  I had no idea he could slice so evenly.  I may have to have him help out more in the kitchen. 

he's pretty good at it too

I have to admit that I’m a little OCD when it comes to my play dough.  I’m sure Bekah was ready to slap me silly when I kept telling the boys, “keep the colors separate!”  I always hated when colors mixed.  I’ll have to get a little more relaxed about that. 

Finally, after the educational portion of our play date was done, Cage entertained us with a tribute to the Doors.  He was more like Elvis with a curled lip, but it was so adorable all the same.

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I love having these art dates with McCager and Bekah.  I have Pinned a bunch of ideas that I’d love to try with the boys.  I have a feeling someday we’ll move on to teaching them letters and numbers, but for now, it’s all about the art.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Marble Painting

We had our first Educational Play Date today.  (Bekah, I think we need to come up with a more FUN name for these dates)

We decided to try marble painting first.  I went searching for marbles this week, since I don’t own any.  Did you know that you can’t find marbles very easily?  I ended up with some round decorative ‘gems’.  They worked and they were very cheap.  I also bought paint.  I found some Tempera Paint and figured that’s what most elementary art teachers use, so I should be good with that.

Before giving them paint, we decided to show them how the whole marble painting thing worked.  We gave them a marble and showed them how to move the box around to make the marble move back and forth.  That also gave us a chance to see that we needed to tape down the paper.  It was a good dry run for everyone.

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Then the pretty paint came out.  The boys kept saying “Can I paint now??”  (notice their cute, PLAIN shirts?  grrr)

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We dipped the marble in the paint and plopped it into their box.  Away they went! 

P7140029They were cautious at first, even moving the marbles with their hands, but they got the hang of things after a few seconds and really started moving and shaking those boxes.   I think one marble even landed on the floor because of the feverish winging of the boxes. 

P7140028P7140033Cage’s box was a little more flat on the bottom, so his paint moved all around the paper. Jack’s box had a pretty bumpy bottom, so the marble tended to stay in the middle.  P7140031

After they did one page of marble painting, they were ready to really paint.  Evidently, marble painting to a 2 year old isn’t actually painting.  So we gave them new paper, put the paint in their boxes (GREAT idea, Bekah!) and let them really paint until there little hearts were content.  That lasted about 3 minutes.

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Cage’s mom brought pom-poms and feathers to adorn on the paintings.   (I love Cage’s chubby little hands!)

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It was a successful Educational Play Date this morning, I’d say!

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They boys ended up playing in our sandbox for the rest of the time.  Which, we found out, has a mouse living in it.  I guess the tent over the top of the box didn’t keep the mice/chipmunks/moles/whatever it is! from digging up from the bottom of the box. 

 

 

Art Shirts

Today, as this post is going out, my friend Bekah and her son Cage are coming over to be crafty with us.  I Facebooked Bekah the other day and said “We need to set up an educational play date.”  Thankfully, she didn’t disown me for being too nerdy, but said “YES!”

Bekah and I have only known each other for a little over a year now.  We met at our library’s storytime.  When we found out our lives were pretty parallel – she was a teacher for years before becoming a SAHM to her little boy only 3 months after I did – we decided to get to know each other better and have play dates for our boys. She was the brave one and, after months of seeing each other at storytime, she asked if we’d be interested in meeting for lunch afterward someday.  When we finally made it to McDonald’s the next week, we were standing in line when I said, “By the way, my name is Amanda.  What’s yours?”  We had only known each other by our son’s names for the many months we’d been attending storytime.   How embarrassing!

Anyway, we’ve been friend’s ever since, and love to get together to talk and let our boys play.

I finally figured out that, while I’d love to do all the great crafty activities I’m finding online with Jack, I’m too chicken to do it by myself.  So I employed my teacher-friend to help motivate me.  She said she was having the same problem about not doing a lot of stuff with her son, so it’s a Win-Win for both of us! (plus, my house gets clean if I have company over – that makes it a win-win-win for me!)

For today’s inaugural 'educational play date’, I thought I’d make an art shirt for our boys.  I found plain little t-shirts at our local craft store for $2 each and decided to bleach the boys’ names on them.  I didn’t have freezer paper, so I used contact paper as my stencil. 

P7130010While I was drawing the letters, I imagined that I’d paint/bleach the letters solid.  Then I started cutting out the letters I’d made and realized I was cutting them out backwards.  So, instead of doing a normal stencil job, I did an opposite stencil job.  What’s that called?  Other than Mistake.  P7130011

I took my Bleach Pen, traced the letters, then took a paint brush and brushed out the bleach so it would bleach all around the letter.

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I love the look that I was getting.  My mistake turned out to be a pretty good idea after all.

P7130014P7130015It took FOR.EVER for the color to change, so I’m glad I started early in the morning on these. 

HOW EASY!??!  I may become addicted to this technique and end up with lots of bleached shirts. 

*Okay, that’s what I typed up in my drafts file yesterday while waiting for the bleach to work.  Then, when I thought it’d turned white enough, I ran it through the washer to stop the bleaching process. 

*ahem* this is how it REALLY turned out…P7130018

As soon as I pulled it out of the washer, the letters were GONE.  No bleaching in sight! 

Which means I totally started over.

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I cut new letters and used straight bleach on them.  I let it sit for about 5 hours and this is what they looked like…

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No difference at all!  Did I buy anti-bleaching shirts or something?? This was getting ridiculous!

So, before I went to bed last night, I tried again.  On top of the non-working bleach from earlier, I put more of the Bleach Pen on the letters and brushed it out again.  I decided to let them sit overnight. P7130016

This is what they looked like this morning.  NO BLEACHING! ARGH!!

My final attempt was to put a line of the gel along the letters and let them sit.  P7140022I am now going to wash and dry them so the boys can wear them while they paint today.  My money is on the bleach NOT working again and they’ll have plain t-shirts to paint in.  I have no clue what I did wrong!

*Back to my original post’s ending:

Hopefully, we’ll have many more ‘educational play dates’ in our near future.  I spent a TON of money on supplies yesterday and have been pinning like crazy, scouring the internet for fun – easy- projects we can do. 

First up, Marble Painting!  I’ll try to be timely in a blog post to show you our artwork.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Driveway Painting

I’ve been getting inspired by a lot of blogs recently (especially Mumma Made It)  and the activities these moms are doing with their young kids.  Jack loves to do activities, but his mom *ME* is afraid of making messes (you’d never know that walking into my house!).  He especially loves to paint, but we rarely do more than get the watercolors out every few weeks. 

I’d love to know what kind of paint (and supplies) I should have on hand if I want to paint with Jack.  When I read these blogs, they say “we painted on rocks/paper/walls….” and I’m always curious about what kind of paint they used.  I want something that cleans easily.  Any suggestions for me?

Anyway, I finally figured out a few ways we can take the painting outside. It’s a win-win situation for us.  Jack’s happy to be painting, and I’m happy to be keeping the mess outside.

First, we’ve been painting on our blacktop driveway with water and paint brushes. 

P7050007Jack really liked this, because he could splatter, drip, and swipe the water all he wanted and I didn’t say a thing if the ‘paint’ got everywhere. I liked how it dried up pretty quickly, so we could basically stay in the same area and paint all day. 

P7050027P7050025Jack started drawing roads and I tried to spell out his name (and get a picture before the first letter dried).  The bigger brush was a lot more fun to paint with in this activity.

The next paint we tried was sidewalk chalk paint

P7110007I loved this!  It was a little hard to work with only because the brushes got stuck in the paint mixture a bit, which made it more likely to spill.  The recipe was super simple.  Basically, it’s equal parts cornstarch and water.  The original recipe I used called for 1/4c of each, so that’s what I used.  I liked how it wasn’t too much paint, and we did end up using just about all of it before we were done.  I used 5 drops of liquid food coloring in each cup.

We had a spill. I recommend using shorter cups if you have them.  Maybe it was our tall cups that made them easier to tumble.  The paint goes on very watery, but dries to look like regular sidewalk chalk.  The thicker you put it on, the shinier the final look will be.  The spill looked wet, but was actually dry after just a few minutes.

It dries like chalk. It's pretty neat.

Jack loves to paint.  I love easy clean up.  If I can figure out how to marry the two, we’ll have a wonderful time!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Color Learning Activity

I read a lot of blogs.  A.LOT of blogs.  Many of them have activities to do with young children.  I watch what those women do with their children and think “I could totally do that!” and then I don’t do it.

Poor Jack.

So, today, I’m starting a new schedule for us.  I’m adding more learning activities into his daily routine.  I should have already been doing this, but I’m a lazy mother, so I haven’t yet.

Poor Jack.

Today, I came up with an activity off the cuff.  (which is a nicer way to say “I pulled it out of my you-know-where”) Jack already knows his colors very well.  He sometimes mixes up pink and purple, but other than that, he’s got all his colors down pat.  So, I decided to start with an activity where I knew he’d have success right away.

I traced a roll of masking tape onto plain white drawing-pad paper.  Then I had him color each circle (which I also asked him to name for me since I knew he knew it) a different color.  I handed him a crayon and told him which circle to color.  Next time I would let him pick which circle to color, but I was moving things right along today.

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After he colored each circle a different color, I put the paper on the living room/play room floor and said, “Now go find a red toy and put it on the red circle.”  He did!  He did the same for all of the colors.  It was pretty quick, but he did have to go searching a bit for a few of the colors.

P6060143then looked for a toy of each color and put it in the circle...

I cleared the paper, and asked him to find another red toy for the red circle.  You could tell by the look in his eye that he wanted to use the same toy he’d already used, but I’d put the toys in my lap so they were ‘out of play’ for this round.  He found a new round of toys without much trouble at all.

He did it a few times for me.

We did it a third time, which I could tell was the last round for him.  When he put a plane down on the red circle (for it’s red wheels), the plane wouldn’t stay on the circle.  Jack said It kept flying away. 

That plane  off to the left wouldn't stay on the paper Jack says. It was cute.

He was so proud of himself and what he was able to accomplish.  I only had to help him find one toy through all the rounds.

He was pretty proud of himself for finding all the colors.

I think he’s going to love his new learning activities thrown in throughout his days.  Now, Mommy has to learn to plan ahead.  It’s like writing lesson plans all over again!  AAAAAHHHHH!!!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Easter Egg Coloring

Tonight, I officially became a mom.

Well, maybe I’ve been a mom for a little more than 2 years, but I definitely entered another stage of Being a Mom. 

I colored Easter eggs with Jack tonight.  It’s a right of passage for all mothers.  I chose not to do it last year when he was 15 months simply because I was am too cheap and lazy.  I figured he wouldn’t know what he was missing yet anyway.

This year, I was excited to get a basket for him and color eggs with him. Being too cheap, I didn’t go for any fancy name brand dying kit.  I bought store brand food colors (liquid –which is hard to find these days) and some eggs.  Nothing more simple than that. I was ready to color eggs!

But this morning I realized I didn’t know how to dry the eggs after dipping them.  The fancy name brand boxes have holes that let you prop the eggs up to dry.  I knew putting them back in the carton would smudge up the color, and I was completely forgetting that I own 2 drying racks for baking that I could have used.  Duh! 

After an all-call to my Facebook friends, Dani, an old high school friend (also a mama to a 2 year old little SMARTIE sweetheart.  That little girl’s vocabulary blows Jack’s completely out of the water, and Jack’s pretty advanced for his age) suggested cutting up an empty toilet paper roll and prop the eggs on those little circles.  I remembered having just put a paper towel roll in the recycling, so I went ‘dumpster diving’ in my recycling bag and got the roll out to use.  I cut it up into 12 equal parts (that was totally by luck since I didn’t measure anything) and glued them together thinking that would give them more stability (and keep Jack’s little curious hands from grabbing them and throwing them all over the kitchen). 

Could I have used a few more parenthesis in that last paragraph?  (probably not)

Here’s what my ‘drying rack’ invention looked like and us getting started with the whole process.

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Where’d the eggs go?

After placing our first dyed egg onto a ring, I quickly realized that having them so close together wasn’t such a good idea.  I should have kept them separate from each other.  Oh well.  It worked just fine in the end.

Here is what our colored eggs looked like.  I think they turned out pretty good.  It’s easy as pie to do.  If you don’t know how, just put a tsp of vinegar in 1/2 cup of boiling water and then add as much food coloring as you want in the water.  I used a LOT of color, since the directions on the box said to add about half a bottle of coloring to the water.  That was too much in my opinion.

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Jack loved to see the colors as they came out of the water.  He was so excited about the white eggs changing to new colors. 

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