Sand Sensory Art: 100th Day of Preschool

Henry had his first homework assignment for preschool.
To create the number 100 out of something.
[Not 100 of something, but to make the numbers themselves.]

We discussed it together to decide what to make.
[Henry told me his teacher made one out of corn!]

We decided we wanted to make one with dirt.
Well, its February in Iowa and it just snowed about six inches, so dirt wasn't to be found.
We settled on sand. [Thankfully, our sandbox has a lid!]

Henry created the number 100 while playing with sand, inside!
It was fun and George even joined in.

First, I had Henry write the number 100 on a piece of scrapbook paper.
I was amazed at how easy this was for him.
His writing skills have really taken off, even if they aren't correctly done all the time, I'm still impressed. [He often starts at the bottom of letters and numbers, instead of the top.]

I then traced over it to thicken up the lines.

Henry painted the numbers with glue. 

And then the real fun began.

The sand came out.

Henry decided to dig in it with his backhoe.

Loading it up and hauling it to his paper.

This literally took him well over an hour to do.

He covered his numbers with sand, as well as pushing the sand around to make piles and spread it out. He was pretty busy.

When all the numbers were completely covered, he picked up the paper and shook it off.

Ta-da! 

The number 100 was still there where he painted his glue! 

What's your opinion?

Does he get an E for effort?

Like it? Share it!

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Sponge Art: Paint a Rainbow

Paint a rainbow with a sponge.

I wish I could claim the idea of rainbow sponge painting, but I saw it last year over at Strong Start.

While this is a kid-friendly idea, a lot of the prep needs to be done by an adult, or older child. And prep needs to be redone during the activity as well.

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100 Acts of Kindness: Create Something from the Heart

100 Acts of Kindness.

Toddler Approved has a series on it, with many ideas for kindness and how to instill it in our children. 

While we're trying to do our acts of kindness, teaching what kindness is to a three year old seems tough at times. By acting kind to each other, and leading my example, is the only way I can figure out how to teach this concept.

To contribute to Kristina's series, we are sharing a very special gift we made for his Grandpa, in memory of the boys' Grandma.

While this is a more 'elaborate' project than a quick kindness gesture. May I just suggest creating something from the heart for someone you love as an act of kindness.

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Fun Kids Art: Melted Crayon Shavings

Henry, Grandma and I made some pretty art with crayon shavings!

And it was fun to do!

The crayon shavings are what makes this art so pretty, but it also gave Henry some time to work on his fine motor skills.

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Parenting: Learning to Let Go

Guest Post by    Ever feel like this project just isn't turning out? Let go. Remember the process. A post is written and shared by Ali at At Home with Ali.

  
Learning to Let Go

Doing art and craft with young children can drive anyone crazy. Paint going everywhere except on the paper, glue on fingers and in hair, mountains of glitter spread out for no purpose, oil pastels having their wrappers ripped off and smushed into the couch... frankly it was all too hard for me.

However, one day I turned around and realized I had limited my 2 year old daughter's art and craft activities to a set of waxy crayons, a glue stick and some paper – no paint, no pva glue and no glitter.

I love art and craft so how did we get here?

Luckily, I was fortunate to have a mother-in-law trained in the field of early childhood education and we had many conversations about the importance of process over product and child-centered play... which really got me thinking.

You see, I am a graphic designer and all my working life has been focused on the product, sure there is process but I am not happy if the end product does not look great. This sort of thinking had transferred to my art and craft activities with my daughter, Cakey. Time for a different approach – I stopped trying to create beautiful things with Cakey and let her lead the way.




First up, I changed my meaning of a 'successful' activity – I started to measure success only in terms of time spent [the longer the better] and fun had. I stopped whipping away collages when I thought they were finished [i.e. looking lovely with heaps of bits and pieces glued on]. I left them out for Cakey to destroy. She seemed to get more pleasure from ripping the pieces off than she did from sticking them on.

I also re-introduced paint but I took away the easel. Instead, I set the paint up on a big table and supplied a variety of different materials to paint on – bark from a paperbark tree, little canvasses, coloured paper of various sizes, stones from the garden. This stopped her from painting on the table or pavers. And I gave myself a break – on days when I couldn't cope with cleaning up the mess from painting I pulled out our little tray of watercolours instead.

As Cakey got older [she is now 3.5], I introduced good quality [i.e. sharp enough to actually cut paper] child-friendly scissors. I let her experiment with these by cutting up strips of thick paper. I also used to sit her at the table with a magazine and let her go to town on it.

But by far the best thing I have done [in terms of independent arts and crafts go] was to teach her how to use the sticky tape dispenser. I bought a decent tape dispenser and the most expensive sticky tape because it breaks off easily for little fingers. It was well worth the investment. Cakey will happily sticky tape together amazing creations for hours with no help and is always so proud of her results. I do have to buy sticky tape in bulk now though.



Handing control over to Cakey has been hard. I realized that I have many pre-conceived ideas about what are the right and wrong ways to do something, but Cakey doesn't see the world in the same way. She doesn't want me to tell her how to do something, she wants to discover it herself. As I have slowly loosened up, art and craft activities have become loads of fun for both of us and I am learning the difference between supporting her rather than directing.

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I am a graphic designer and a stay at home mother to my two beautiful daughters - Cakey [3] and Boo [1]. Cakey wants to make things all the time - sometimes it is fabulously fun and sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out. I love the challenge of trying to channel Cakey's interests and ideas into activities we can do together. I also love watching Boo's personality come out and am intrigued by what her interests will turn out to be.

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Art: Christmas Coffee Filter Garland

Guest Post by    Laura at Art for Little Hands is sharing a Christmas Art Project! A garland that can be adjusted to any holiday! A perfect open-ended art project for the kids.

How many alternate uses are there for coffee filters? 
A google search of coffee filter craft brings up 1,680,000 pictures of crafts you can do with a coffee filters.

This month at Art For Little Hands we are doing several art projects using the medium of a coffee filter. One of those projects we worked on this last week was a coffee filter banner.

This is such a simple and easy way to dress your house up for any occasion. I love that anyone can take part in this art project. As long as someone can hold a marker they can take pride in the final results.

For this art project you will need:

• coffee filters
• markers: we used both bingo dot markers and crayola washable markers
• a long piece of string, ribbon, or thread
• glue

At Art For Little Hands, we like to do art that is more open ended.
The only thing I told my children they should do was try to make their art look like Christmas.
After folding the coffee filter one time in half, I let the children create.

After each child had made about three or more coffee filter art pieces, I then glued the filter onto a long piece of wrapping ribbon using my two year old as a helper.

The banner is now an inviting part of our Christmas decor and the kids feel proud that their art work is on display!

Hi!  I am Laura from Art For Little Hands. I am a stay at home mom that gets excited about doing art with little ones. I got my degree years ago in elementary education and feel the need to teach often. I love the way art teaches little ones to express themselves, relax, get messy, and have fun. I hope you will check out my blog and follow along as I share the art we produce in our home.

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It's Playtime! Let it Snow!

The Creative Christmas Countdown is well under way.
Kitchen Counter Chronicles has today's advent activity, Making Snowflakes!

Looking around the It's Playtime posts has gotten me in the mood for snow [okay, just a little though]! So, bring on the snow!

Let it Snow!

[Adventures at Home: Snowflake Mobile]

Adventures at Home makes paper snowflakes into a pretty mobile for the winter season!

Above, from left to right:

• A Childhood List made these beautiful pasta snowflake ornaments that are so sparkly!
• Another homemade ornament from Let Kids Create. Snowflakes grown from Borax! A great science experiment!
• Snow paint! We gotta try this one. A shaving cream and glue mix. Great idea from Beansprout Preschool.
• A twist on bowling - make snowmen to knock over with a giant snowball! Imagination Station reuses Danimals containers as the snowmen [I bet Puffs containers would work great too]!

High Five to these play friends!

[Go leave them a playful comment!]

[Please grab the featured badge on the right if you were featured]

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It's Playtime is a community for play loving bloggers to share ways to play.

Head on over to my playtime co-hosts:
The Imagination Tree, Messy Kids, Quirky Momma, Let the Children Play.

New to It's Playtime? Read How to Play to get all the details. 
Basically, share your play ideas at the party below and browse for more play ideas from others! 

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Happy Holidays!

Time to Play Away! - Link up your Play Posts!

[No blog? You can leave a comment here to share, too!]

Be sure to LIKE your favorite play ideas!

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Henry is 3 years. George is 1 year.

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com

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Craft: Upcycled Christmas Trees

Upcycled homemade Christmas tree decorations! These are beautiful! A guest post today that's shared by Rashmie of Mommy Labs.

I'm beyond delighted to share my daughter - Pari's - handmade Christmas trees with all you wonderful readers of hands on: as we grow! [smiles]

We at Mommy Labs love hoarding junk and then upcycling them into something artful. From disposable glasses to dozens of cardboard boxes, from the tags on new dresses to fabric scraps - there're very few things that can find their way to trash under our scanner eyes!

For these Christmas trees too, Pari sorted through our chest of drawers where we stash our junk and brought out a tall paper glass. She wanted one more - for her friend to make; but we only had one tall glass like that. I remembered the used birthday party hats that I had saved from last year.

 


After tearing off the golden paper, we had a whitish paper cone left of the hat that could be painted on nicely.

                   

So, she and her friend set about painting the glass and the cone with green tempera paint. They mixed 2-3 shades of green and some white paint to get the shade of their liking.

Once painted, we let them dry. In the meantime, they cut out a star using a stencil to make the tree topper. They smeared those with glitter and taped a straw - half the length behind each.




I drilled a hole on top of the paper glass tree and poked the straw inside. The star now sat a little above the trees.

They had already started to look so festive! 
                 
                 

Now was the time to rummage through the tiny version of a chest of drawers where we store all the tiny weeny junk - like - buttons, sparkly stars, beads etc.

The decorating was their favourite part.




Finally, Pari wanted to write some letters to Santa so she could fold them and place under the tree for Santa to read. She wants to write many more until Christmas. Kids and their innocent wishes!




Hope you like our upcycled Christmas trees.

Merry Christmas to you all and Happy Holidays!


If you'd like to get some more ideas for upcycled art/craft from junk, you can check these out on my blog:

• An Upcycled Artful Musical Dice
  
• Leaf Decoupage Candle Holder
• Self Portrait with Magazine Cuttings and Mixed Media

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Rashmie is a homeschooling mom to a 6-year old girl. She writes on Mommy Labs about creative learning for children with focus on open-ended art, integrating art and fun in literacy, and connecting our kids with nature. She loves photography, traveling and spending time in nature. You can connect with Mommy Labs on Facebook and Twitter.

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30 Days to Hands on Play : Paint

DAY 20 CHALLENGE:

PAINT!

DAY 20 CHALLENGE:
Paint! In anyway you like! Get creative [and maybe a little messy], and spend 15 minutes of uninterrupted time, with the kids today!

Challenge yourself to use a new tool to paint with. Or even better, paint on something out of the ordinary! Or maybe use a new method of painting!

Get some inspiration by these 40 Big Art ideas. They're bound to get your wheels turning!

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Imagine Toys : DIY Puzzles

Imagine Toys was so very kind to send this beautiful product our way to test out.
A 9-Piece Block Puzzle to decorate your own puzzles.

The package includes:

• 9 wooden blocks
• 6 colors of acrylic paint
• 2 paint brushes 
• An assortment of colored pencils

Read more »

A Big, Big Art Collection

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If you've been around for awhile, you already know I'm a fan of Big Art.

For those of you that are new to this term that I've made up.

Big Art is art that makes you be involved in the process.

[Because I believe the early years its all about the process, and not the product.]

Its big.

It gets you moving.

Generally, using those gross motor skills that are ever so important in the early years.

How to create Big Art: 

• Make art bigger
• Create it with movement
• Use big objects

Here are 40 examples of what I claim to be Big Art!

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Halloween Craft : Spaghetti Webs

After playing with colored spaghetti noodles with George...

Henry and I made some spaghetti spider webs with it too!

This time, I let Henry do the coloring.

What other color would he pick, but green?

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Art : Bubble Print & Leaf Collage

I feel like a successful hands on mom when my preschooler runs to me with bubble wrap in his hand and says,  "We have to save this and paint with it later!"

That's how fall leaf art collage came about.

We made bubble prints first in beautiful fall colors.

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Craft : Yarn Monsters

Monsters made of yarn, just in time for the spooky season.

There's not much to these monsters, but I think they turned out kind of cute.

Henry and I used the same technique we did for our Yarn Circle Garland.

[You can check out the details on how to create the yarn circles there.]

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Art Activity : Zoo Animal Puzzles

A counting book called 1, 2 ,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle inspired this creative art and activity. 

The book is a counting train of zoo animals! 

Henry really enjoyed this book and loved counting each zoo animal. 

A great way to learn to count to ten.

We decided to bring these zoo animals to life and make them interactive!

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Art : DIY Wrapping Paper

George is turning 1... tomorrow!

Henry and I got creative by making some of our own wrapping paper for George's present.

A simple art technique with tissue paper and water, that I learned about from The Little Red Hen.

Henry started with ripping different colors of tissue paper into small pieces.

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Modern Art Memory Game : Giveaway

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THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.

Congratulations to sweetheart!

Due to the previous winner not responding, I drew a new winner and notified her via email.

AMMO Books will be sending her one of these beautiful Modern Art Memory Games!

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I received this beautiful Modern Art Memory Game from Sara of AMMO Books. 

It combines two of my favorites: kids and art.

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Art : Tape Resist Letters Homemade Edible Finger Paint Recipe

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As George is getting older, it's getting more interesting to keep him entertained during activities with Henry. 

Especially art activities.

To solve this, I included George in the activity this time.

I made my own Edible Finger Paint so just in case when George ate it, I knew it wasn't harmful.

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It's Playtime! : Feet & Hand Prints

Last week on It's Playtime, I noticed a lot of hand and foot action you guys have been having!

But before we get into our playdate, I wanted to share that I found out earlier this week that hands on : as we grow has been nominated as the 'Best Craft for Kids Blog' on Parents.com![!!!!!] If you agree that you find lots of valuable kids crafts and art [and activities!] here, head on over to Parents.com and put in your vote for this blog [and others too, there are many FANTASTIC kids blogs listed!]. 

[You do have to register to vote, but its a pretty quick process.] 

Onto the playdate.
Your hand and foot prints left their mark:

My favorite footprint that was made has to be this big art from Toddler Approved: Shoe Print Painting!

Some more of your marks that were left on last week's It's Playtime:

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