Canada Day Handprint Flags

Today we did a great Canada Day art activity. There are lots of different ways you can do it, depending on how old your kids are, what supplies you have, and how much mess you want to make. 

I got the idea here: http://puddlesandmud.blogspot.ca/2011/06/more-canada-day-activities-crafts-etc.html?m=1

Supplies: red finger paint, paintbrush, finger paint paper, card stock 

The first thing we did was the handprints. I painted the boys' hands (Peanut did this one, too!!) and then stamped them in the middle of a piece of card stock. 

I chose to do the paint handprint here, but you could also trace their hand on construction paper then glue that on, or you could trace their hand right on the flag and colour it in with red crayon or marker. 

Next, Monkey did some finger painting. 

He only used red and I encouraged him to cover as much of the page as he could. 

Once the boys were in bed and the paint was dry, I finished up the flags.

I measured and cut out the sides of the flag from the finger painting Monkey had done. 

I purposely chose parts of the paper that were more textured and had a little bit of white on them still. I wanted it to be obvious that Monkey had finger painted them and not just painted them with a paintbrush. 

If you're not into finger painting or you're looking for a different option, you could use red construction paper, or colour directly on the card stock with red crayon, marker, or paint. 

Finally, I glued the sides onto the flags. 

I think they look so fantastic! They are one of my favourite art activities I've ever done. 

Happy Canada Day!

Mar

Sand Paint Starfish

A few weeks ago we made some Bubble Wrap Fish Prints. They looked so lonely on the paper all by themselves. So, we're going to start making some more ocean animals to make a big underwater mural for our wall. 

Today I wanted to make starfish. Since the shape is really simple I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to use some textured paint. Monkey loved this one since we took sand right from his sand box!

I got the idea for the sand paint here: http://homegrownfriends.com/home/sand-painting/

Supplies: sand, paint, paintbrushes, card stock, starfish template, paint containers 

I chose to print and cut out the starfish because I knew I couldn't draw it as perfect myself. Then I traced it onto the card stock and cut that for Monkey to paint on. 

I would recommend card stock, or even thin cardboard (reuse a cereal box, maybe?) because the paint is quite heavy once you add in the sand. 

The next step was to get the paint ready. The website above recommended one part paint to one part sand. I found this turned out to be too much sand. The sand almost seemed to drink up the paint. So I had to add more paint. 

In the end I probably did a mix closer to 1/4 sand and 3/4 paint. It was obvious that there was sand in the paint, but it wasn't so thick that the brush was getting stuck when I was mixing it. 

Monkey tried to help mix but it was a little too hard for him. It was a very strange consistency. 

Then it was time for Monkey to get to work. 

I taped the starfish to the cardboard so that they wouldn't move around while he was painting. He's not very delicate...

The paint was very, very thick. It took Monkey a little while to get used to. 

They turned out better than I hoped! There is so much texture. 

Mar

Celery Experiment

If you ever have some celery lying around that's too old to eat, this is a great experiment you can do with it. 

Supplies: celery, food colouring, glasses, spoon

The celery has to have leaves on the top or the experiment won't really work. 

Fill the glasses up about halfway with water. 

Drop some food colouring into each glass. I kept it simple and used just the primary colours, but you'll see below that the yellow doesn't work too great, so mixing to make other colours would work too. 

Monkey loves squeezing the food colouring. I'm all for giving him as much independence as possible, but I still do this with him because he'd do twenty drops instead of just five! 

He stirred each glass to make sure the colour was all mixed up. 

The last step is to put one piece of celery into each glass. I asked Monkey what he thought would happen to the celery. He said, "They will be blue and yellow and red." 

Then, you wait! In my experience, it's best to leave the celery overnight to get good results. We put this together on Friday and then went up to the cottage for the weekend, so we didn't get to see our results until Sunday. Monkey had forgotten all about our experiment so he was really excited when he saw it! 

You can see that the yellow didn't work too well (it's slightly better in person, you can tell it's been coloured) but the blue and red look great! The celery was pretty wilted before but after being in the water it perked right up. 

I find simple experiments like this are great for teaching sequencing. You can review the steps of the experiment quickly. For example: First we... Then we... Last we... 

Mar

Kinetic Sand and Stamps

Monkey was really lucky to get a big tub of "Sands Alive" kinetic sand for Christmas this year. If you haven't heard of kinetic sand, it's really cool - it's dry sand but it can molded and shaped as if it's wet. Even better, it only sticks to itself, so clean up is really easy. But, it's pretty pricey. If Monkey didn't receive the kinetic sand as a present, I would have tried to make our own. I've never done it, but the ingredients are pretty basic and it doesn't look too hard. 

Usually, Monkey just plays with the set of sand toys that he got with his kinetic sand, which are great. But today I wanted to try something different, an idea I found here: http://picklebums.com/2014/06/17/kinetic-sand-stamping/

Using sensory activities to teach literacy and numeracy skills is an excellent strategy because often the kids don't even realize that they're learning.

Supplies: kinetic sand, bucket, flattening device, alphabet stamps 

There was essentially no set up for this activity. We flattened down the sand a little to have a nice surface to stamp on. Monkey used the trowel and I just used my hands. Today was a time when I really wish we had a toy rolling pin, but I can't seem to find one at any store!

At this point Monkey knows all his letter names and sounds so I want to start to practice spelling his name. I used the stamps to write his name in the sand and then had him copy it below. Then we did it with "Mommy", too. 

While doing our names I would sound them out slowly and really emphasize the letter sounds while he was stamping them, as well as repeat the spelling over and over. 

After he finished up our names I told Monkey he could do whatever he wanted with the stamps. He wanted to take turns stamping the alphabet in order, so that's what we did. 

Once the alphabet was done, Monkey was about done with the stamps. I don't ever want to over do it with any learning activities because I don't want him to become frustrated or disinterested. So we pulled out his sand toys and he played with those. 

Mar

Bubble Wrap Fish Print

We got some bubble wrap in the mail a little while ago and despite my husband's best efforts to pop it I tucked it away with my art supplies, knowing it would be useful for something down the road. 

I found an idea here: http://coco-coccoleecolori.blogspot.it/2013/09/la-scuola-e-iniziata-ormai-da-un-mese.html?spref=fb&m=1

Supplies: paper, paint, paint brushes, bubble wrap

I cut the bubble wrap into the shape of a fish, mostly because it's an easy shape to draw and I don't pretend to be good at drawing. 

I got Monkey set up with some cardboard to paint the fish on and I put some underneath the paper, too. 

Monkey started painting the fish. 

He did a great job. I did end up helping a little bit, more than I usually do, because the fish wasn't entirely covered and I knew the print would look best if there was paint all over it. 

I flipped the fish over on to the paper and we "squashed!!!" it down. 

We repeated this process until Monkey was sick of it, which ended up being after three prints. I told him he could paint the fish differently each time but he wanted to keep the colours in the same place (he gets that from me). So we mixed it up a bit by having the fish swimming in different directions. 

I really love how they turned out. I thought I could convince Monkey to help me paint the background into an ocean scene but he was not interested. So I think I'll paint an ocean myself and I'm going to plan some more ocean creature crafts to add to it, along with this fish, for a big under the sea collage. Stay tuned!

Mar

Rainbow Beans

Another sensory activity today... Can you tell they're one of my favourite things for Monkey?

Monkey has a serious obsession with all construction vehicles. He has an entire collection of small trucks for inside, a set of larger trucks for outside, plus another set at the cottage. Yes, he's spoiled! The outside trucks live in his sand table or in the sandbox. We also take them to the park where he sits in the sand and plays with them. Until I drag him back home. He doesn't even go on the play structure, unless he's taking one of his trucks for a ride down the slide! But I digress. 

Monkey really loves playing with his smaller inside trucks, too. For the past few weeks he hasn't played with much else. He's been entertained enough just driving them around on the couch, talking them through their jobs and quoting his favourite  show "Mighty Machines: Construction Trucks Go To School". But in the past few days he's been looking for stuff he can scoop and dump and move around. He tried some wooden and plastic blocks, and even the laundry! I knew I had to find something better. 

Here is the perfect solution! Beans. I've seen this idea online on a lot of blogs, but I followed the instructions from here: http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2014/02/how-to-color-beans-for-play-and-art.html?m=1

(Fantastic blog, by the way, I highly recommend checking it out.)

Supplies: beans (we used navy beans), food colouring, paper towel

Last night we dyed the beans. You could just play with the beans when they're white, but who doesn't love a little bit of rainbow? I bought eight bags of beans so we chose eight colours and got to work. The instructions on the blog I read were to use 15-20 drops of food coloring for each cup of beans. The bags I bought were just under two cups each so we used 30 drops of food colouring in each bag. Since we were using the whole bag, we just dropped the food colouring right into the bag and shook the beans in the bag. But if you wanted to make less, you could use ziploc bags. 

Monkey's Daddy did all the shaking here. He did it for about 30 seconds per bag.  It wasn't as messy as I thought it was going to be, although he did get some food colouring on his hands. 

We used a combination of original and neon colours. The bottom two piles in the picture below are colours we made by mixing. We did it by dropping both colours into the bag, no need to mix the colours first. These ones needed to be shaken a little bit longer. The red (on the left side) wasn't very dark at first and looked too much like the pink (on the right side) so my husband dumped them back in the bag and added 30 more drops of red. It made a big difference which you can see in the pictures more towards the end. 

After we finished coating the beans with the food colouring, we laid them out to dry overnight. 

We checked before we went to bed and they were not dry - the food colouring came off on our hands. But by the morning they were good to go! 

I arranged the beans into a beautiful rainbow in the long, shallow container I bought for this purpose. 

Doesn't it look so inviting!? I realize this is the one and only time they will be like this which breaks my perfectionist heart, but I didn't make them for me so it's not important. 

I put some of Monkey's trucks in the beans so it would be ready and waiting for him when he woke up. 

Well he's been at this for about three hours now, stopping only to eat (when forced) and go to the bathroom (also when forced). 

I have to admit they look pretty cool all mixed together. 

The food colouring won't come off on his hands, unless they are wet. Even then, it comes off with a good bath. 

The beans should last for a while (years) as long as they are stored in an air tight container. I'm not sure I'll be able to convince Monkey to use any other toys in the beans right now, but maybe eventually we could put his farm toys in, or the measuring cups and spoons, etc. Lots of ways to play! 

Mar