Shaving Cream on Easil Chalkboard

This idea cam from the Artful Parent.  MD had a lot of fun spreading the shaving cream everywhere.  I tried to encourage him to "draw" with his fingers but he was to busy feeling the sensation as he spread it over and over on the board and on his arms. :)

The Grouchy Ladybug

We've been reading a few books from the library lately and one of them is "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle.  We read both the English and Spanish version, "La Mariquita Malhumorada".  So I decided to use another used carton from the bottom of a frozen pizza to make a ladybug.

MD had fun making it even though a was process that took a couple of days to finish.  Not that it was complicated, it's just we needed time for the layers of paint to dry and by the time the paint was dry I was busy with something else around the house.

I found another spare piece of carton in the garage to cut out the shape of the body to paint black.

But we ran into a problem.  I had never ever realized that we don't have any black tempera paint in the house.  So we improvised.  I use to work with oil paints and always made black by combining blue and brown.  So I tried it with tempera paints.  That made a dark grey color, to which I added black food color, and there you have it.  Black paint!

On the last day, MD glued black construction paper dots to the bugs wings, and I stapled it all together, adding small pipe cleaner antennae and googly eyes.  I also grabbed a piece of chalk to draw in a mouth and asked MD if we wanted me to add a grouchy mouth or a happy mouth.  He chose happy.

Watercolor Ocean (and Park) Resist

We recently took a few family trips both two the beach and to an aquarium where the kids got to see many types of sea life.  MD has been infatuated with sealife, especially sharks for quite a while now.  So I wanted to focus some art activities on this theme.  Here is our watercolor ocean resist.  I drew the sea creatures with crayon, colored in a couple of them, and then had MD color the rest.  The funny thing is, MD has never really colored in a coloring book.  Most, if not all his art has been pretty "free" so he really did not get the concept of coloring inside the lines.  This is the first time I showed him how to stay inside, but of course he did not. 

I really don't know how to go about this because small part of me thinks he should learn to color inside the lines and maybe he should know this by now, or at least try.  But another part of me (a bigger part) feels that this would be hindering the creativity that I am trying to encourage in him.  So for now I guess I'll wait.

This is our ocean, after he colored and then brushed over it with blue and teal watercolors.

 

And this is his picture of a "park" he did all by himself. 

Beach Sand Playdough

I made a batch of playdough for MD this week and added a little bit of black food color (to make it grey) and a whole lot of beach sand from our recent trip.  Since he's been excited about making sandcastles I thought this was a great idea when I saw it on Counting Coconuts. 

It is definately fun but I think I added to much sand because it's a little on the dry side.  Still works though. 

This is our quick mini castle.

Untitled Post

I am calling this Untitled Post because I don't really know what to call it.  I saw this a while back on 5 Orange Potatoes and thought it was a great idea.  That post was called "Iridescence" and rightly so.  What I overlooked when we set out to try this activity is that you are supposed to use neon food colors to create the iridescence.  At least that's what I understand of it.  So ours didn't quite look the same, but MD still liked it.

He enjoyed pouring salt on the ice.  He always enjoys pouring salt for some reason. 

He also really liked dropping food colors on the salty ice and we had fun watching the ice melt with all the different colors.  I think we went a little overboard on the colors but it was a very fun and quick activity.  I like to call it "art". 

Spray Paint

Here was a nice summer art idea I had.  Food coloring and water in sray bottles.  Too bad the colors were too thinned out with the water and didn't look so bright on the paper.  The paper got soaked.  But as with most of our art around here, we did it more for the process then the final product.  This final product was definately not saved, hee hee.

Drawing Letters

On this day, MD chose to "draw" letters during his art time.  Cute.

Rainbow Pasta Suncatchers

I have been wanting to do these for a while now since I saw them on Pink and Green Mama. 

They look so colorful and beautiful!

I finally found some time to dye the noodles with food color.

The next day, MD and I both worked on making these while SE napped.  We drizzled school glue on wax paper and got to gluing the pasta.

We hadn't done a glueing activity in a while so MD got a little carried away...

Shaving Cream Fun and a Confession....

MD is now loving doing sensory activities like mixing colors in this shaving cream.  His speech is also coming along really well and makes life a lot easier.  What doesn't make life any easier?  An extremely active and curious soon to be 10 month old.  SE will be 10 months old this week and for the last month or so life has been turning upside down around here.  We used to have our Art and Learning time in the morning after breakfast.  Now this schedule is impossible because SE will not stay put for one minute.  He is all over everything he sees including MD's art projects in progress and or educational material, and constantly interrupts any type of structured activity I may have for MD.  So now we mostly all play together at that time instead which makes great memories but little to post about.  Sometimes when SE naps for a descent length of time, I'll get a chance to work with MD or give him an art activity.  Those are good days.  Because usually all I get to do while SE naps, is make MD lunch, eat lunch, and clean up a bit.  Then SE wakes up and it's back to watching him constantly.  He will not for any reason stay anymore than 2-3 minutes in a Pack-N-Play without yelling his little head off . . . . so he's all over the house exploring, tasting, and destroying.  This is my life for now.  This is why posts have gotten few and far between.  That's all folks :)

Cold Art

Ice cube painting!  This is a fun activity that I have read about in books and in the web.  Last year MD really enjoyed it so I thought it would be a good one to also try with SE. 

Not so much.  He did get involved with it but he kept complaining when the ice became to cold for his little fingers.  Then it hit me that last year I had frozen the cubes with popsicle sticks in them for MD to hold them while he painted.  Even MD didn't want to touch them much this year and pushed them around with a brush instead. 

But it was still a lot of fun and it is very easy.  Just add food coloring to water and freeze!

Edible Art: Painting with Pudding

In an effort to include SE in more art activities, we used chocolate and vanilla pudding cups as paint. 

 

Both boys had a lot of fun with this.  MD only wanted to paint with the brush and not his fingers.  SE had a sensory experience and enjoyed sneaking some pudding into his mouth every now and then.

Window Painting

I made MD some window paint using tempera paint, liquid dish soap, and water.  I got this simple recipe from the Super Baby Food Bood by Ruth Yaron, which has a lot of good ideas for fun activities with kids.  However, the book said it's supposed to come off easily after wiping with a dry paper towel and this is not true.  So I need to look for a better recipe, but this was a fun experience for my boy.

Under-the-Sea Collage

I put together this quick and easy ocean collage for MD to work on using various shades of blue tissue paper. 

MD "painted" the tissue onto clear contact paper with liquid starch.  I had also added a little bit of blue food color to the liquid starch but it was not very noticable. 

When the tissue dried, we added various fish and ocean life stickers to the tissue to get the "under-the-sea" look.

Flowers for Mother's Day

MD and I made this Mother's Day card for my mother the other day based on an idea for a science type activity I saw on Family Fun Magazine. 

I took flowers from our garden and laid them on a piece of watercolor paper folded in half.  Covered the flowers with a paper towel and let MD hammer the flowers down until colors were showing through the paper towel.  It was pretty neat to see the colors start popping out after he hit the paper. 

When finished I peeled the smashed flowers off.  The paper towel looked great! 

I think I have really low quality watercolor paper though because it did not absorb much of the flower pigment so the card turned out like this.  That's why I ended up tracing the outline of the flowers with a black marker afterwards. :)

Found Objects Stamp Art

I've collected lots of little items from aound the house that have "knobs" for MD to hold to use for this easy stamp art activity.  A jumbo paper clip, pizza divider, wooden car tires that broke off, wooden pine tree, etc. 

MD loved this, but then again he pretty much enjoys any art activity these days and is glad to use some type of paint or goo on a daily basis.