Squirt Gun Art

I saw this on a blog that I read, and I thought it looked like a lot of fun. Since Rick likes to go shoot his guns, I thought Jack would be excited to shoot his own guns at a target.

I did this once with just Jack in our backyard and it didn’t turn out so well.  Mostly because I didn’t follow the directions. That’ll happen.  I used water with a little bit of food coloring in it instead of just food coloring.  The result was a very pale color left on the paper.  You could barely see it. 

This time, when Cage and Jack got together for their most recent Art Date, I changed things up and got a much better result.   Instead of using water and food coloring, I used water and tempera paint.  It made for a much bolder color on the paper.  Since I only had three squirt guns, we used yellow, blue, and red paint.  Obviously, if you try this at home, you can use any colors you want to use. 

It was a fun activity for the boys to do.  It was definitely a workout for their fine motor skills and eye hand coordination.  Luckily, they didn’t get too much paint off of the paper.  At least, I hope they didn’t!

Thanks, Bekah, for letting us come over and have another Art Date with you!  We can’t wait until next time.  My Pinterest board is filling up quickly with ideas for our little guys.

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!

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.”*

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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

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

They 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. 

Cage’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. 

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.

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

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

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. 

While 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. 

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.

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

It 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…

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

Which means I totally started over.

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…

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.

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.  I 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.

My Artistic Son

Remember in my last post where I said my son is a genius? Well, I’m not sure his artistic skills have caught up with his motor skills.  He can walk forward and backward (and even sideways on accident), but he can not make a mark on a paper with those cute little palm markers from Crayola.  

It could be because they’re meant for 18mo+, but I thought he could handle them by now.  He marked on a paper with my highlighters just the day before.  Maybe he’s TOO SMART and figured since they’re not shaped like markers, they’re not really markers.  Naaa. He just liked the feel of them and had no interest in using them as markers yet.

Here’s a pictorial walk through our 5 minutes of discovery time with those horribly messy adorable markers. 

 It started out well…(any mark on the paper was my demonstrating how they worked)

  Then he grabbed a hold of them and spent the next 5 minutes feeling the wet ink.

      And getting messier and messier… 

This is where we had to stop.        

So, it may be a while before we get those markers out again.  He loved them, but I didn’t love it when he chucked them across the living room floor.  They were horribly messy, but luckily for him they were very washable.