water painting

I was planning to save this idea for next week but with today's warm weather I decided we'd try it. We've painted a few different ways now. M has used a paintbrush before (see our garden pets entry). Water painting was a great way to let him practice more with a paintbrush and to cool off a little in the warm weather.
We used water, a few paintbrushes, and construction paper for this activity. Basically M "painted" the construction paper with the water instead of paint.  For the first 10 minutes M was happy to stir the water with his brush.

Once he got the hang of it he had fun.  We even made some hand prints after M stuck his hand in the cup.  He made a lot of dots and splatters.

The neat thing was the construction paper held up to a lot of water.  Even when the cup was dumped on one piece.

I'll admit I failed at this project in the beginning.  We first tried this on our porch (bad idea, wet carpet) with a rather full cup of water (um, not sure what I was thinking).  Much better out on the deck with a half-full cup.  It was plenty of water until it got dumped.  However, I think the dumping just made it more fun for M.  You can do this on pavement or wood surfaces too - basically anywhere that water will show up darker.  

cloud dough

I have seen cloud dough on a number of blogs/websites since I began looking for activities a few months ago.  We tried it today and I can see why so many people have used it.  It has definitely become one of our new favorites.  We played outside today since the weather was so nice but I could see this being an awesome indoor activity when the weather is cold.  The common cloud dough recipe I found was:
- 1 cup of baby oil
- 8 cups of flour

8 cups of flour seemed like kind of a large amount to me for just M to play with so we made a half batch (1/2 cup of baby oil and 4 cups of flour).  This amount seemed to be just right for us today but I can see why the larger amounts would come in handy with more children.  I mixed it with my hands like kneading bread dough.  It mixed fairly quickly.

There were so many reasons why we loved cloud dough.  First of all, it feels really neat, which makes for an enjoyable sensory experience :)  It looks crumbly and grainy like sand but feels soft like flour.  It molds really easily.  It's not messy at all and easy to clean up - either toss it or save it in an airtight container.

Most of the places I read about cloud dough used a plastic basin for playing.  I put ours on a cookie sheet because I felt like it was less restrictive, plus we were outside and I had the luxury of just hosing down the patio when we finished.  If we were doing this indoors I would definitely use something with sides and I'd probably put him on newspaper or a plastic table cloth or something like that.  We used some of our sand table toys to play but for the most part I think M enjoyed using his hands.

And for easy baby/toy clean up...our water table:

hot wheels lamp

I've needed a lamp for M's room for a while but I haven't been able to find anything just right.  His room started with a bear theme.  As he's accumulated more stuff it's turned into a bear room with trains and sports and dogs and all kinds of other boy things.  At first I was looking for something that either had a bear on it or went with the mostly red/brown/beige colors in his room.  I widened my search and still didn't find anything I liked so I turned to Pinterest.  I've been trying a lot of DIY ideas from Pinterest lately and found some cute lamp ideas.  I decided to go with this one since M loves trucks and cars.  This would be an awesome project to do with a boy in first or second grade as a fun measuring activity.  I did our version slightly different from the original:

I went to Target and bought the lamp with the black shade and the matchbox cars.  We had some yellow felt left over from our felt board project.

I cut the yellow felt into one-inch strips and placed them one-inch apart on the lamp shade.  Our lamp shade was 28-inches around.  I attached them with hot glue.  

The cars were more difficult to attach.  At first I put hot glue on each wheel and stuck them on.  It didn't hold so I tried coating the whole bottom of the car in hot glue.  I held each car on for about a minute.  This seemed to work well.  There was one orange race car with a thin bottom that was more difficult than the others but eventually it stayed.  

I realize our blog has been missing a lot of "activity" type posts lately.  I have a few things planned that we'll try and share here soon.  But I love these projects and want to share them too!

scribble art canvases

Quite a while ago I pinned this page on Pinterest: http://squashblossombabies.com/2012/01/19/toddler-scribble-art/

After trying one of these scribble art canvases I have to say I love the idea.  I will definitely make a few more to hang along with this one that I finished today.

I did a less complicated version of the instructions on the Squash Blossom Babies link so I'll explain my process.  I took a few scribble drawings (we have plenty these days):

I cut out shapes.  I used scissors not a knife like the original poster.  I had a spare black canvas from another Pinterest project that went bad.  I didn't paint the canvas.  I glued the shapes on.  I haven't coated it with anything yet.  I think I might hang it and use it as my tester to see how it holds up.  I don't want it to end up being sticky.  I'll update if I end up coating it or changing anything the second time around.  I love this idea and I think it will look really cute hanging up.  As the original poster commented, it's a great way to save some of the scribble drawings.  

smoosh painting

This is a relatively quick and clean art activity.  Our finished smoosh paintings came out colorful and cute but M lost interest in this pretty quickly so we didn't cover the entire shapes.

I think this would be great with two or three year old who could appreciate the mixing colors.  Materials you need: paint, large ziploc bags (make sure they have a good zip), and paper shapes.  We used construction paper.

Put one shape in a bag with some paint.  We used two colors at a time because I could see putting all the colors in and having just turn brownish.  I put a good glob of each color but in retrospect I would add more paint.  Zip up the bag and get smooshing....

Here are before and after shots:

We did this project on the floor and M used his hands and feet to smoosh.  I would recommend trying to take the paper out of the bag as soon as you're done.  I ended up leaving our second one in a little longer and it was kind of stuck to the bag.  The best part of this activity was that there was virtually no clean up.  M did this in his whitest shirt and all I did at the end was throw the bags away.  Loved that part of it!

footprint step stool

This post is a little different from our normal posts because M had little to do with this project.  I wanted to share it though because I think it came out really cute and it was easy to do.  Like a lot of other things, I found the idea on Pinterest.  I was searching for ideas for painting a step stool to put in M's bathroom.  M's bathroom has a monkey theme so originally I was looking for a monkey themed step stool but ended up deciding my freehand monkey painting skills were not quite up to par for that kind of project.  That led me to this idea:

It may not fit the monkey theme but it does match the colors in his bathroom.  Here is how I did it...

I started with an old step stool that has been around at my grandmother's house for a long time.  It was dark blue when we started.  Here is the before picture...

First step was painting it white.  I did two coats of white since it had started pretty dark and I didn't want the dark blue to show through the light blue I was planning to paint it.

The nice thing was that I did the whole project on our deck.  After each coat I let it sit in the sun, which allowed it to dry really quickly.  I was able to space the coats of white out during M's two naps yesterday.  Then later on at night I added the first coat of blue.  I did the second coat of blue this morning.

After lunch we added M's footprints and his name and the year.  I love how it came out and it looks great in his monkey bathroom.  It will end up being perfect for reaching the sink.

garden pets

This morning M and I decorated some rocks we had found while on vacation.  The plan is to put them in our garden as decorations.  They came out pretty cute:

This idea had started as making shell creatures, an idea from a magazine, but we didn't find many shells and M is more of a rock collector.  

So we combined the shells with a paper weight activity from the Kid's Garden activity cards that M got for his birthday and ended up with garden pets.  

This was our first attempt at any activity using real paint.  We've tried yogurt painting and ice cube painting but never real paint.  M is now almost 14 months old.  He did well with it but needed really close supervision.  I wouldn't do it with him if I had more than one child to watch or if I couldn't be right there unless I expected him to either eat the paint or paint my kitchen chair/floor/table.  We set up with newspaper taped to the table and M in just a diaper.  Paint on a paper plate.

M has never used a paint brush but has had some practice with forks/spoons/his toothbrush.  I was actually surprised at how fast he caught on to what he was supposed to do.  After I showed him once he understood how to get paint on the brush and then put it on the rock.  He also painted the newspaper.

He actually got more paint on them than I expected and they came out pretty colorful.  I never know what to expect from him with structured activities like this since he's a toddler.  I always leave it up to him as to how much we do and how long it lasts.  We probably only painted for about 5 minutes today but he seemed to enjoy it and "get" it while we were painting.  It might seem like 5 minutes of painting may not be worth the prep/clean up time but he was exposed to painting/art/colors for those 5 minutes, enjoyed it, and exceeded what I had expected him to accomplish so I see it as a positive experience for him.  

The paint we used was leftover from The Very Hungry Caterpillar pots from M's first birthday.  It's non-toxic, washable Crayola paint from Staples.  With an older child I might use something more durable, especially for something that will be left outdoors, but non-toxic and washable are musts for us right now.  This paint comes right off:

After the paint dried I sprayed the rocks with a sealant since they'll be staying outside then we used tacky glue to attach the eyes.  I sprayed them one more time with the sealant after the eyes were on.  They dried fairly quickly in the sun.  

We'll have a few more posts to share this week.  I have a mom project from Pinterest that I just bought materials for this morning that will be up later this week.

*Edited to include a view of the garden....