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....