Post It Names

Peanut is now just over three, and is super interested in reading alphabet books. We read them over and over and over and over... When we're out and about, Peanut points out letters on signs and labels. All of these are great clues that he is ready to start learning the letters of the alphabet. A great place to start is with his name! I've been holding on to this idea for a few months now. I found it on one of my favourite inspiration Instagram accounts, @busytoddler - if you haven't taken my advice and checked it out by now, you're missing out!

Supplies: roll of butcher paper, black markers, post it notes, painter's tape

The first thing I did was roll out my paper and write Peanut's name in big letters. I use the painter's tape to keep it taped on the table and then it's easy to transfer it to the wall for the activity. I'll just show the 'A' from Peanut's name, but I think you get the idea.

Next, I wrote each letter in Peanut's name on post it notes ten times each. I did these two preparation aspects of the activity the night before. 

When Peanut came down in the morning and saw the big poster on the wall, he was instantly curious! So was his older brother, who obviously noticed that there was no poster for his name and was a little bummed. I knew this might happen now that Monkey is at school and Peanut is home without him. I just explained to him that Peanut and I will be doing activities just like I did with him when he was three. He seemed okay with it...

When we got home from our morning outing, Peanut couldn't wait a minute to get started, he was so excited! I took all the post its that I had written his letters on and stuck them up all over the wall.

Since this is the first time we've worked on his name, I spent some time doing through each other the letters in his name with Peanut. We said the letter and went and touched it on the poster. I also spelled his name over and over again, kind of with a little tune, so that it would start to stick in his head. Then he got started on finding some letters to match.

Every time he pulled a letter off the wall, I made sure to say the letter to reinforce it for him. 

Peanut ended up doing half the activity and then taking a break before coming back to finish it up. When his daddy got home he was so proud to show it off, and even remembered two of the letters in his name! I know that he's going to need lots more practice at this. I'm going to keep the poster so that we can use it again, maybe with stickers or something instead of the post it notes, just to mix things up!

Mar

Painting with Cars

Today we did another process art activity! The boys, like many other their age I'm sure, have a large bucket of toy cars that they absolutely love playing with. I know that I can always get their attention when I use their favourite things in our activities. This was certainly one of those times!! I even sneakily added in some learning, by purposefully using only the primary colours so that the boys would mix them together and we could talk about colour mixing.

Supplies: roll of butcher paper, paint, tape, toy cars (that you don't mind getting covered in paint!)

I started by laying out my trusty plastic table cloth on our table. Then we rolled out a large piece of butcher paper and taped it down. Next we added drops of paint and laid cars out, ready to go. You can see I made a different area for mixing each secondary colour.

Well Monkey and Peanut couldn't wait to get started. By the time I was ready to take some pictures they were hard at work driving the cars through the paint. They definitely thought using their beloved cars was awesome!

I always find that the easiest colours to mix are blue and yellow. Green always comes so obviously. Purple and orange take a little more work and are a little harder to see in these pictures.

The boys sat here driving their cars around on the paper until the paint was starting to dry. They loved this art project. And they really liked it when we headed up to the bath tub and I had them bring the cars to join them for a big scrub! 

Mar

Squeegee Painting

This process art activity was so much fun! For those of you new to reading my blog, I absolutely love process art - art which emphasizes the process of creating rather than the finished project. It allows kids to explore, make mistakes, and have an experience while they are creating. There is no prescribed product to make at the end,although we often turn our process art into various animals, shapes, or decorations, as we did with this one.

I saw the idea for squeegee painting here:  https://www.hellowonderful.co/post/SQUEEGEE-PAINT-EASTER-EGG-ART/#_a5y_p=6231668

With Easter right around the corner, I knew we had to try it out. (Yes I am weeks late getting this blog post done. That's life with a newborn!!)

Supplies: thick paint, white paper, roll of butcher paper (or something else you can put underneath the white paper in case there is a mess), a squeegee, painter's tape

To get started, I rolled out the butcher paper and taped it to the table. I used this to catch any mess we made with the squeegee. Normally, I have a thin plastic table cloth for when we do art, but I needed something perfectly flat for this. Then I taped the white paper down to the butcher paper using the painter's tape. 

I ended up having to add more tape to each corner of the white paper, so I would recommend taping the four corners and not the top and bottom like I did.

For our first attempt, Peanut and I squeezed drops of paint all over the page.

Then we took the squeegee and dragged it down the page, starting at the top and going all the way to the bottom in one swipe.

Although it looks pretty cool, it wasn't really what I had in mind, and it didn't look at all like what I had seen on the blog I found the idea on. For the next attempt, we put all the paint at the top of the page.

Then, the same as the first time, we dragged the squeegee from top of the page all the way to the bottom.

This turned out way better! We did all the rest of our pages this way.

I just loooove the way this looks. I have no idea why, but the paint didn't mix together at all on the paper (I assume because of the squeegee?) and it just created these perfect lines! We tried all different combinations of colours and patterns. Peanut (who is 3) is just ready for very basic ABAB patterns, and art is a great place to explore these.

We left the papers taped down as they dried. When we peeled off the tape, the paper immediately curled up, and I had read about this problem on a few blogs. I tried putting the finished art under some heavy books for a day or so, but it didn't seem to help. I read that some people iron their pages when this happens, but I try not to iron if I can avoid it. Let me know if it works though!

As I mentioned above, this sort of art, process art, is about playing and exploring with all the materials and what happens during creating time. So it would be perfectly fine to just hang these wonderful masterpieces on the wall. But, since it's Easter, I decided to cut them into eggs to decorate our house.

I printed off some Easter egg templates to use to trace... because I want it to be perfect. A normal person might just cut out an egg shape and that's okay. It's not me :)

I traced and cut out a whole bunch of eggs. I think they look amazing!! The stripes look so sharp and I think Peanut chose excellent Easter-y colours.

In addition to putting some of these beauties up on our wall, we shared them with Peanut's grandparents and aunts and uncles.

I will definitely be doing this squeegee art again. It's easy and looks so amazing!

Mar

Painting Ice

It seems that Mother Nature is a little bit confused right now... It's the middle of April and we're having an ice storm! It's a snow day, so Monkey couldn't go to school because the buses were cancelled. I didn't want to venture out to drop him off or pick him up with Boo still being so little, and it's a good thing, because the power went out at his school and I would have had to go pick him up right away anyway! All that to say, I had all three of my babies home with me today. Monkey is still into all things art related, and I think when he is around it helps Peanut get a little more interested in our activities.

We were all hanging out, possibly watching the Food Network, and we started hearing some crazy noises from outside. All the ice from the roof was sliding off and crashing into our backyard. It is crystal clear ice, and as soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for painting on! We've painted on ice before using watercolours on blocks of ice I made in the freezer, so this time I wanted to try our regular Crayola paints.

Supplies: paint, paint brushes, baking sheets, ice

If you are not unfortunate enough to have a freak ice storm in the middle of April, you could just freeze a baking tray of water for the same effect.

We got everything set up before I ventured outside to grab the ice. 

I grabbed my coat and boots and risked my life to get the boys some big chunks of ice. You may think that's an exaggeration.. it's not! The backyard was sheer ice. Luckily there were some big chunks of ice not too far from the door.

Once I was back inside the boys got to work right away!

Peanut started with orange, of course. It's his favourite colour and he was actually upset with me for putting all those other colours on the paint tray!

The ice was already starting to melt after only a few minutes, but I actually think it worked even better because it was melting. It made spreading the paint easier, and the way the paint mixed with the water turned out to be quite beautiful!

The way the colours ran together reminded me of watercolours (which makes sense because it is water and colour heehee).

Here are the finished products! I love the way they look. We enjoyed watching them melt, but I think the boys' favourite part was dumping them into the sink!

All in all, this activity ended up being a bit of a bright spot on this incredibly dreary day. I think it would be great on a hot summer day, too! 

Send spring thoughts our way!!

Mar

Easter Egg Volcanoes

Hello! I'm back! After a long break (back to teaching, so not actually a break at all) I am back home with another new baby and Peanut, who is now three! So here I am to share more of our daily adventures.

With Easter just around the corner, when I saw this Easter spin on one of our favourite science activities, I just knew we had to try it out. You can NEVER go wrong with baking soda and vinegar!!

I saw the idea on an amazing Instagram account I follow: @busytoddler

Supplies: baking soda, vinegar, food colouring, plastic Easter eggs, squirt bottle, container to hold the eggs, baking tray or other large container

We had this egg container from our camping supplies. I thought about using a cardboard egg container, but it would get soggy from the vinegar and could be a pain to clean up. So if you're planning in advance, maybe buy the eggs that come in the plastic container. 

First, I got the eggs set up for Peanut. Since there is a little surprise under the baking soda, I did this when he was busy doing something else. In the bottom of each egg, I put a few drops of food colouring!

Then I covered the food colouring completely with baking soda. 

I put some vinegar in the squeeze bottle, and everything was ready to go!

Peanut was reluctant at first. This was one of his first science activities (at least that he can remember), so there was a lot of "I can't do it, I'm too little" happening. Once we practiced squirting the vinegar a few times together, he felt good about it and got to work.

It took a lot of vinegar to get down to the colour underneath. So at first, Peanut just saw all the "bubbles" and listened to the noise it made. 

After he had put vinegar into all the eggs once, we refilled the squeeze bottle and Peanut went back in for the second round. This time, the colours really started to come up. So exciting!

We filled the squeeze bottle four times. Peanut just couldn't get enough!  

You can see what a mess it all was by the end. But worth it!

Mar