easter art

I am very behind on this blog and I know there were some things I missed over the past few months.  Truth is, I'm happy to get this post up before Easter is actually over.  M and I have done a few little projects to get in the Easter spirit, which seemed to be a little overshadowed getting ready for G's baptism.

I love this bunny project because M loved it so much.  Of everything we've ever done, he was so proud of this bunny and asked me to take his picture with it when we were done.  The bunny head is a paper plate, covered in cotton balls.  M loved it because he spread the glue and stuck the cotton on with no help.  The ears are footprints and his bow tie is handprints.  Ideally we would have used googly eyes but drawn on did the trick this year -

Our second bunny is made out of a baby food jar, which we currently have a surplus of (any good baby food jar craft ideas?).  M filled it with cotton and we hot glued on some ears made of felt and pipe cleaners.  M has perched this guy up on our entertainment center so he can watch him.  

All M needs now are some colored eggs and he'll be ready for the real bunny...

october art

Last week I realized that last October our kitchen was full of fun fall art and this October all we had hanging up was a half-finished water colored coloring book page of Ernie trick-or-treating.  I suppose I could blame that on our countdown to baby G and the fact that baby prep has come before toddler art but that excuse makes me sad so over the long weekend we did a few projects to make our house a little more seasonal looking.

We did my most favorite Halloween project last year but this year's were cute too.  A few months ago we needed cotton balls for one of our many dog ailments of the year.  I don't think M had ever really seen them and he took to playing with them and calling them "bunnies."  I knew he'd like this project because it included cotton balls and ghosts, a new favorite since a neighbor hung a big ghost in the tree outside their house.  We used about 10 cotton balls (spread apart) and black construction paper cut into a ghost shape.  

I spread glue over the ghost first but if M were older I would have had him handle the glue.  He had to take the cotton and stick it on.  Being the efficient two-year old he is, he took all the cotton at once and dumped it on the ghost so we then had to work on spreading out the pieces.  

We also did a paper plate pumpkin that M enjoyed painting.  He loved using the big foam brush.  We've been playing with pumpkin faces lately so once he finished painting and the paint was still wet I let him stick on the face pieces by himself and then I glued them as he had left them.  He did a pretty good job and I love the crooked-ness of it.  

We also started a special project over the weekend that I've been looking forward to.  We can't finish without baby G so this is a "to be continued" part of the post for a few weeks from now.  About a month ago I bought two small canvases especially for this project.  While we had the paint and smocks out for our pumpkin I figured we should get M's piece done because I clearly remember how hard it is to get a newborn handprint on anything.  

On each canvas will be an M handprint and a G handprint.  One will hang in his room and one will hang in her room.  To be continued....

stained glass window

This is an activity I've been meaning to try for a while but I never had clear contact paper on hand. This weekend we bought some for another DIY project for the baby's room so we were able to get this in as well. 

All you need for this activity is clear contact paper and small pieces of some other type of paper. We used construction paper because it was what we had. I think tissue paper would look really neat and give more of a stained glass look but this worked fine too. 

Hang the contact paper sticky side out on a window. We used our slider which worked well because I could put the paper lower for M. Cut or rip the other paper into small pieces then stick it on. 

M took it upon himself to name some shapes as he went, which I wasn't even expecting.  As we worked I thought it would be neat to have pieces cut as specific things that could make a scene (like animal/barn/tractor pieces to make a farm scene).  That would obviously take more prep on my part (as it was we did this kind of on the fly this morning) but I think M would really like it. 

All finished:

animal handprint book

This pregnant mom has not been loving the 90 degree heatwave.  Even in a pool I'm not thrilled to be outside.  It makes me feel bad for M, who loves anything to do with being outdoors, so I've been trying to come up with some new and fun air conditioned indoor activities for us to try.

As I've said before, M loves art, especially painting.  This was a fun one for us because he got to paint in between making handprints and we got a fun book to read at the end.  While doing this I felt a little guilty pushing a "school activity" on him - this could really be seen as toddler writer's workshop.  However, he seemed to enjoy it so I'll make books with him while I can get away with it.

We started by doing about ten handprints of different colors.  Each one on it's own sheet of paper (we used small paper we had).  If you Google "handprint animals" you'll find plenty of ideas.  Once they dried we added googly eyes (M liked sticking them on then pulling them off then sticking them on) and I helped with a few details to make them into animals.  Then the writer's workshop part (guilty) - M came up with every sentence in this book.  I wrote them.

We ended up with an elephant, chicken, duck, giraffe, octopus, fish, monkey, alligator, pig, and horse.

M decorated the cover...

On another note, this is our 50th blog post on this blog.  Whether you check out every entry or are just visiting, thanks for reading.  We hope you've found something here that you've enjoyed doing as much as we have :)

ice boats

We celebrated the first day of summer today with ice boats in our kiddie pool.  This activity was a huge success with M and one that we will definitely do again.

Directions:
- Tape the short end of a flexi-straw to the bottom of a Solo cup so that the tall end stands up straight in the middle of the cup.
- Fill the cup 1/3 of the way with water and freeze (ours froze overnight).

- Once completely frozen cut the cup away from the straw.  I also read that you could loosen the ice by running warm water on the outside of the cup but I found it pretty easy to just cut the cup and slip it right off.
- Use a hole punch to make a sail for each boat.  We used construction paper.  After the fact I thought it would be cute to have had him decorate the sails but they get wet and ruined fairly quickly.

M was really excited to put them in the water and we liked sailing them back and forth and sending them down M's pool slide.  As I said, the sails were soaked within a minute or so and slumped but M didn't care and eventually just pulled them off.  The straw was great because he could use it to move the boat around without grabbing the ice every time.  

The weather wasn't overly hot today but warm enough for this activity.  That was probably in our favor because I could see these melting super fast on a very hot day.  Ours lasted maybe 10 minutes each today.  I made two and we played with one at a time because, of course, after the first melted M was asking for more.  M actually seemed to enjoy them most once they melted a bit and were smaller.  He's a big fan of throwing things (balls, rocks, etc.) into water so he had tons of fun throwing the smaller ice chunks into the water then finding them.  This was a great activity for summer and one that definitely gave me some ideas for other things to try this summer!

farm crayon party favors

M turned two this week and we celebrated with a farm-themed party.  I shared a lot of our party decorations from M's first birthday party but I didn't do too many decorations this year.  I did want to share our favor.  We gave M's little friends farm-shaped crayons.  I've seen these done on both Pinterest and Facebook in a variety of shapes and they were pretty easy to make.

I started by ordering the farm-shaped candy mold that included figures of a cow, sheep, horse, and tractor.  I found ours on ebay for under $2.  M had a wide variety of broken crayons so we collected all of them up, took off the wrappers, and broke them into smaller pieces.  I used a sharp knife to cut them small, which isn't completely necessary, but they melt faster.

M liked helping by filling the candy mold with the pieces.  He was more involved than I expected him to be, which was nice.  We filled each mold then baked them at 200 degrees for about 15-20 minutes each.  I'm guessing on the time because I really just kept an eye on them until they were completely melted.  Our candy mold was made of thin plastic (on the cheap side) and it warped after 3 or 4 batches so I would probably turn the oven down to 150 next time if I was using a similar mold.  I have seen some nicer ones that can probably stand the higher heat though.

When they were melted we stuck the whole tray (on a cookie sheet for easier moving) into the fridge to cool.  After about 10 minutes they popped right out of the mold.  The tractors were a little tricky because they had a thin middle section and kept breaking.  We had to overload them with crayon pieces to get them to work.

We got small cellophane favor bags, put a few in each, and attached a "made by M" tag.  M got a set of extras (and rejects) that seem to have held up pretty well.  I've found that he hasn't broken any by coloring with them but some haven't stood up to him throwing or dropping them.  We have a few headless cows around the house.  

I really liked this idea.  I found through searching that candy molds come in a wide variety of shapes (who knew?) so you could potentially make these for almost any occasion.  

egg carton caterpillar

This is an oldie but a goodie so I'll keep it brief....

Take an old egg carton and cut it in half.  Turn it upside down and paint/decorate it.  We used our favorite Crayola paint:

Our My favorite part of painting these days is that we use one color at a time and M has to tell me the color word for the new color he wants to use.  His favorite colors are blue and red so even though he can say all the colors, he typically will tell me that everything is either blue or red - except when we're painting and he has a real reason to tell me the right color!

Anyway, let the caterpillar dry then add eyes and a pipe cleaner antenna :

truck paint

M loves vehicles of all kinds - cars, trucks, buses, trains, etc.  As I've mentioned here before, he also loves painting.  We combined the two today, as seen on a number of blogs I've looked at over the past year.

We started with M choosing the colors he wanted to use.  We're working on color names so it makes for good practice.  He chose five colors today and I put them on the paper in globs.  M dove right in.  In fact, the activity was really half truck and half finger painting for us.

After I showed him how to use the trucks to make tracks he got into it.  I put out two trucks that I knew would be easily cleaned off.  A lot of our other trucks were too big or were matchbox type so I thought they'd be more difficult to clean off.  These worked great but only gave us one type of tracks...

Our final project was a mix of finger paint smears and tire tracks.  

I imagine it would be a fun thing to do with plastic animals if you could find some with distinctive footprints.  M liked it but it ended up being kind of a quick activity.  I think if we had had more vehicles or animals or toys to make different tracks it would have lasted longer.  We did end up doing two sheets and then had fun giving the trucks a bath :)

Santa ornaments

These ornaments might be one of my favorite crafts we've done so far.  This is kind of a mom-activity since M really didn't have much of a part except for lending his hand for tracing.  However, I bet older kids could try the painting or at least mix the dough.

This is another salt dough activity.  We used salt dough once before.  You basically need one part salt to two parts flour and then about the same amount of water as salt.  For example:
2 cups flour
1 cups salt
1 cup water*
I ad the asterisk because I usually add the water gradually based on the consistency.  For this I only used a 1/2 cup of flour to a 1/4 cup of salt.  We ended up with three ornaments.

The first step is to trace your child's hand and then cut it out.

Mix the ingredients for the salt dough then knead it until it's mixed.  Roll it out flat and use a sharp knife to cut hands using the traced handprint.  I added the holes using a plastic straw:

Let them bake at a low temperature (we baked them at the lowest temperature our oven would go which was around 200 degrees) for one hour.  I flipped ours once so they baked for 30 minutes on each side.

After they come out paint them so that the four fingers are Santa's beard and the thumb is the long part of his hat.  Add a string to hang it:

I wrote M's name and the year on the back of each.  I want to put something on them to preserve them a bit better but I haven't yet.  This is a super cute gift that doesn't cost much to make.  You could even add little tags to the string.  

toddler turkey

Back at Thanksgiving M and I made a few decorations to hang in our kitchen since we were hosting our first Thanksgiving.  M loves to use his paints so I gave him a piece of white construction paper and brush to paint with.  It came out looking like this:

Then I took it and cut it into feather-shaped pieces.  We created a turkey with his painted feathers:

We also did a handprint turkey that came out cute.  This was a Pinterest idea that I found.  When I saw it it was part of a handprint calendar that I'd love to try (each month is a handprint made into something different).  The hardest part was keeping him still while painting each finger a new color.  

My favorite part of these activities is a story I have to share because as much as this blog is for sharing ideas with others, it's also for me to be able to back at.  Before we started this activity I asked M if he wanted to paint.  He said, "paint, paint, paint."  I started getting everything out - his smock, his brush, the paint, etc. and setting it all up.  I lifted him into his seat (he was still saying, "paint, paint, paint") and he looked up at me and said, "happy."  Me too :)

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...

miscellaneous fun

M's daddy was in Chicago this weekend for the Ryder Cup so we tried a few little quick activities over the course of the weekend.  Some were more successful/fun than others but I thought we'd post a bit about each.

Pipe Cleaner Strainer

I'd seen this idea on various blogs and websites I've visited.  You fill the holes of a strainer with pipe cleaners.  It's supposed to be fun to pull them out then try to put them back in.  I say "supposed to be fun" because M found the first part much more entertaining than the second.  He'd never used pipe cleaners before so he had a lot of fun taking them out and inspecting them.  He didn't have as much interest in trying to put them back in.  He found it much more fun to chase the dogs with them.

Sticker Collage

M's had a little experience with stickers in the past but I've never given him a whole sheet of them before.  Nonni brought us some pumpkin stickers so we used them to make a Happy Halloween sign.  At first M was mad when he stuck the stickers to the paper and couldn't get them back off but eventually he got the hang of it.  The trick at the beginning turned out to be providing him with a new sticker as soon as the first was on.  Here's our final product:

Color Sorting

This is my free version of this $30 activity.  M has started to recognize colors, especially when we color with crayons.  I set up three pieces of construction paper (yellow, blue, and red) and we used some of his magnetic letters of the same colors to sort.  M watched me do it then tried it:

To his credit he did do a few on his own.  However, the activity ended shortly after like this:

Card Books

This last one is another mom idea from Pinterest.  If you look for it you'll find a variety of ways to bind together greeting cards into keepsake books.  I am not one to hold on to cards.  I probably have less than 10 saved cards (for me) but I've kept every card M has gotten.  They've been in a box, which seems like a waste, so I took out his first birthday cards and the cards we received right after he was born and made two card books for him.  I found these small 3-ring binders at Staples, which worked great for the cards.  However, if there is such a thing as a small 3-hole punch, I don't have it.  So I ended use a single hole punch to put the cards into the binder.  It was a little more time consuming but it didn't take me more than an hour to make both books - and we had a lot of cards.

Before:

After:

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.  

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.