baby autographed baseball

A quick post about the birthday gift M recently gave to his Papa. Papa is a big sports fan and has a number of autographed baseballs. M loves baseballs and likes seeing Papa's collection so for Papa's birthday M gave him a new ball to add to the collection.

The ball has his handprint on it in ink and his name and the year in ballpoint pen. Tip: do not try to use sharpie on a baseball. The ball came with a plastic case so it made a cute gift (and Papa loved it).

tape paint

It seems that with our new schedule Friday has become our activity day.  Today we tried tape painting. It was one of our most successful activities so far based on the amount of time we spent doing it and M's sadness at having to clean up.

To tape paint you need tape, paint, and paper.  When I first read about it they suggested using finger paint.  We used a brush and it still came out well.  To start make a tape design on the paper.  Letters are easy.  Things with straight lines are easiest.  We did an M.

We used painter's tape and construction paper which turned out to not be the best combination but more on that later.  Once the tape is on you can start painting.  M loved painting today.  He painted the paper...

And I realized this child has had his hand painted for handprints too many times...

We talked a lot about colors while we painted.  M knows the words blue, green, and purple but isn't always right on when matching the words to the colors.  We did one color at a time and I let M choose which ones he wanted to use.  We set up the bottles and he either said what he wanted or pointed.  He was really into it.  Here's what it looked like when he finished:

After a while I peeled off the tape.  This is where the combination of painter's tape and construction paper kind of messed us up.  The painter's tape kind of stuck too much and pulled off some paper with it (if that makes sense).  I think next time Id either use masking tape with the construction paper or a stronger paper with the painter's tape.  It did come out cute though:

I've mentioned these paints before and I have to say how much I love them once again.  They were fabulous for this and wiped right off of M, his socks, his booster seat, and the plastic table cloth on our table.  Love them.

fall art

This morning M and I got into the Halloween spirit with this ghost handprint.

We made two, one to hang up and one to bring to M's great-grandmother.  I don't have any pictures of the process because I had one hand on the paint and the other on M's painted hand.  It's fairly simple.  You need white paint (we used our favorite very washable Crayola paint), black construction paper, and a black marker.  We used googly eyes but you could draw the eyes on.  M is getting good at handprints but if I was doing this with an older child I would tell them to keep their thumb down so it's closer to the other fingers.

Last week we did another fall picture that M loved (I haven't had a chance to post it).  I made a brown tree on construction paper:

M filled in the autumn leaves.  We used what I call "paint dotters" (bingo daubers, poster paint, felt tip paints, etc).  M loved these.  They were super easy for him to hold and use...

The downside was that they weren't very easy to clean off of his hands.  We needed SOS but it did come off.  Finished product...