When a preschooler loves glue…

Emma recently developed an obsession with all forms of glue. She will happily spend hours gluing sheets of paper to each other. Sometimes she considers her final creation worthy of nothing better than the recycling bin, and sometimes she describes it as an elaborate work of art. This past week she decided she wanted to pour glue on single sheets of paper. In a bid to make this activity a little more exciting and to get her to stop pouring glue without making a scene, I added a couple drops of food coloring to the glue on her paper and handed her a toothpick. Emma loved swirling the food coloring into the glue, and she got some interesting results.

I figure it’s a good creative exercise; plus she gets some practice in fine motor skills. You can water down the glue a little if you want to make it last longer. This activity could be expanded by adding other colors and seeing how they mix, or by doing the activity in a plastic container and dipping sheets of paper into the solution to create a print-type effect.

Blog Favorites: Crafts requiring minimal materials

• 4 Crazy Kings shows how to make Easy Toilet Paper Tube Stamps. Materials used: toilet paper tubes and paint. Haven’t got paint? See the post for some substitution ideas.

 

• Make a nature collage using a lint roller as described at the Frugal Family Fun Blog. You can even turn your collage into a placemat! Materials used: a sticky lint roller and plants from your neighborhood.

 

• Make your own foam bath toys as seen at Pink and Green Mama. Materials used: craft foam (and scissors).

 

• Looking for outdoor water play ideas? Try this aluminum foil river from Filth Wizardry. Materials used: aluminum foil.

$1 Crafting with Dad: Dinosaur Models

Last Saturday, Mike and I decided to take advantage of my 14-year-old sister visiting to go on a mini-date. Our destination? Our local Michaels craft store, where we picked up these two wooden dinosaur models for $1 apiece. Emma and Johnny put the models together with Mike Sunday and last night, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves each time. Johnny’s dinosaur rarely falls apart, but Emma’s has a habit of losing limbs, so we may need to add some glue so she can play with it a little more. Both kids really enjoy their dinosaurs.

 

Our kids enjoyed finding the pieces and matching the shapes to the map provided with the wood cuts.

Blog Favorites: Fourth of July Crafts

 

• The picture above is our version of the 4th of July Firework Pom Poms from Make and Takes. Visit the linked post for instructions and much prettier pom poms. We didn’t have any blue yarn, so we used blue pipe cleaners for the handles. My kids have no clue what pom poms (or fireworks) are, and I think they’re both a bit perplexed by this craft. Maybe they’ll get the point after our local parade on Saturday.

 

• The Frugal Family Fun Blog shows how to make a patriotic wreath using a paper plate, glue, and punched out stars. Sticker stars would work great also.

 

• No Time for Flash Cards shares Letter F Flag and Flag Place Mat crafts.

 

• Make a Handprint American Flag as shown at Her Cup Overfloweth.

Luxury Crafting

Johnny and I went on a shopping outing to Staples this week, armed with $6.00 of Staples money from recycling two ink cartridges (if you didn’t know, Staples now gives $3/cartridge for any brand of printer ink). Rather than use it to buy something sensible, we came home with these Crayola paint brush pens and some chocolate (Ghirardelli Luxe, currently free after mail-in rebate – so you do pay for the stamp - and highly recommended by our household).

The kids are loving their new paint brush pens. I love them because they feel like they’re painting but there’s no mess and – if they do draw somewhere they aren’t meant to – the ones we got are washable and so will come out of anything. The effect is somewhere between a paintbrush and a marker, so it isn’t exactly like painting with real paint. The brush is made up of individual bristles, so it’s different from other paint markers I’ve seen that had a flexible foam tip. The pens cost nearly $1 apiece, don’t have a ton of paint inside, and are non-refillable, so it isn’t something I would buy all the time, but they’ve been nice as an experiment in new artistic media. Here are a couple recent masterpieces:

Johnny:

Emma:

Now for a question: Does anyone know if it’s possible to get something like this that is refillable that still allows for a fine point the way these do? I’ve seen refillable paintbrushes before, but they didn’t have the beautiful fine point you get from these paint brush pens…

Line Art

I found this activity here and on at least one other blog, but I couldn’t remember where and didn’t know what to search for – so if you think I may have seen your post, please let me know so I can link up!

Update: Here's one of the other places where I saw this activity, thanks April for helping me find it!

Basically you draw random squiggly lines on a sheet of paper and color in however you want. Emma and Johnny really enjoyed this activity; they actually spent a couple days finishing their artwork! I helped Johnny color his in, which was very relaxing. Our house is a bit torn up right now (switching to a new heating system as the previous one broke – something we knew might happen when we moved in and thankfully something that happened AFTER rather than in the middle of a long cold winter) so I’m very grateful for quiet table activities like this one!

Is it just me, or is Johnny’s hair getting lighter every day?

Here are their masterpieces – as I was scanning them in Emma noted that hers actually is not finished, so I guess she’ll be working on it some more!

Emma’s:

Johnny’s:

I drew the lines on Emma’s using a permanent marker instead of a plain black marker, which is why the lines on hers look so much bolder.

We just colored these in randomly, but I could see this being a nice add-on activity to a lesson on complementary/contrasting colors or color wheels. You can also try to color in the squiggles to look like different objects or animals (sort of like finding objects/animals in clouds). I’m also thinking of having the kids make a few on cardstock to turn into cards.

Felt Map of the World

Having been raised on three continents, it’s important to me that my children know as much about their world as possible. I thought this felt board activity could be a fun introduction to continents. Inspired by a high school history teacher who forced all of his students to learn to draw simplified maps of the world and Europe, I created a template based off of this map from http://www.mapsofworld.com/. I cut the simplified continents out of felt and made a new blue-background travel felt board. I also laminated (very poorly, I’m afraid) a print-out of the same map. I will keep the laminated map and the felt pieces in a folder, within a larger folder that holds all of Emma’s felt board activities. I’m not sure how well Emma understands the concepts of continents (or even the world) at this point, but she enjoys playing with the felt pieces, looking at the map, and talking about where various friends and family members live. Here’s the template I created, if you would like to try this activity yourself:

Emma asked to trace the map of the world. She did a great job, in spite of using thick printer paper. Anyone know where to buy tracing paper?

She even added some animals to the world (after I took the above picture) – here’s her version of a baby fox:

and a sheep:

From paper bag to book bag

Emma and Johnny really enjoyed making this during craft time at the library yesterday, so I thought I’d share it here.

MATERIALS:

• Two paper grocery bags
• Markers
• Colored paper to cut out decorations (optional)
• Stapler
• Glue stick (optional – only necessary if adding paper decorations)

STEPS:

1. Cut one grocery bag in half.
2. Cut open the four corners of the second bag to the halfway mark.
3. Put the bottom half of the first grocery bag inside the second one.
4. Fold the cut edges of the second bag into the first bag.
5. Use the top half of the first bag to cut and fold handles.
6. Staple handles to bag.
7. Decorate.
8. Use to carry library books (or anything else).

Toddler gardening

This activity is courtesy of my local library’s wonderful free toddler craft series. We did this activity last year and this year. Emma really enjoyed it both years, and this year the grass even survived Emma and Johnny dumping out the cups of newly-planted grass seeds and then throwing everything back in topsy-turvy.

MATERIALS:

• Cup (clear ones are nice since you can see some of the roots)
• Soil
• Grass seeds
• Water

STEPS:

1. Fill cup with soil, leaving at least 1 inch of clearance at the top.
2. Add a thin layer of grass seeds.
3. Cover the grass seeds with a small amount of soil.
4. Water.
5. Place in a sunny area.
6. Wait for seeds to grow.

Here is the poor destroyed grass plant (I thought it was out of Emma’s reach and I was wrong)

Surviving five days later

And thriving two weeks later

  Emma really enjoyed giving the grass a “haircut” this morning.

Food Coloring and Fluid Mechanics

MATERIALS:

• food coloring
• clear glasses
• water

Food coloring and water is a great way to introduce children to some basic concepts of fluid mechanics. We got out six glasses, which we filled with water.

First, the kids tasted the water in each glass to see if it tasted the same. I’m not sure what they concluded, since they definitely drank more water from some glasses than others.

I wanted to do the water and musical notes trick, but our thick IKEA glasses didn’t sound very musical. Crystal glasses work beautifully, if you have them.

Next, we put some food coloring in each glass. We did a little color mixing (red and yellow to make orange, and blue and red to make purple). We talked about fluid density (the food coloring is denser and therefore sinks to the bottom) and fluid dispersion (looking at how the food coloring spread through the water). No idea how much of it Emma got, but they were both very tolerant of their geeky mom, although I’m not so sure about Johnny’s expression in this picture. And if you’re wondering, the thing in Emma’s hair is a sticker.

Then we stirred the food coloring in completely and arranged the glasses in rainbow color order. This would have been a good place to illustrate wavelength differences in color by filling glasses with corresponding amounts of water (the most water in the red glass since red light has the longest wavelength and the least in the purple glass since it has the shortest) but we didn’t do this. Maybe next time. I don’t think it would have worked this time, anyhow, because Johnny was comparison tasting the different colors of water.

We ended the activity by pouring all of the glasses of water into a white bucket to see what color we got when they were all mixed together (brown).

Most importantly, everyone had fun!

Toddler Friendly April Fool’s Day

Those of you who know me in real life know that I once lived (and attended public schools) in France. French public schools can be a bit austere (at least they were a couple decades ago), but April 1st – Poisson D’avril  - was always a fun day.

Poisson D’avril means “April Fish”, and the traditional prank for this day is to tape paper fish to your friend’s back without their noticing. Then you yell, “Poisson D’avril!” and your friend spends the rest of the day trying to get you back. It’s the sort of humor that young children adore, so spend some time today with your kids making paper fish and let them see how often they can put a fish on your back without your noticing :)

Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year!

2009 is Year of Ox. I love this 3D ox cut-out activity from Secret Agent Josephine.

No Time for Flash Cards has a cute, simple paper lantern.

Want a less-involved craft for your toddler? Try printing a few of these coloring pages from Activity Village.

Activity Village also has a brief explanation of Chinese New Year and several other Chinese New Year activities here.

Icicle painting

I got the idea this activity from Mom’s Marbles via Her Cup Overfloweth. It was a great way to use the icicles that currently adorn our house. I hope to do it again with a few more colors of paint/Kool-Aid.

1) Get some icicles. I was amazed at how quickly these melted on the counter (we keep our house at 67 degrees Fahrenheit), so you might want to stick them in the freezer.

2) Pour powdered paint/Kool-Aid/pudding mix onto a sheet of paper.

3)Use icicles as a paintbrush (I wrapped a cloth around the end so the kids’ fingers wouldn’t freeze, as well as to prevent dripping) and paint away.

Emma had a lot of fun, although I think the final outcome would have looked nicer with more colors to mix. I just used the red Kool-Aid we had sitting in our cupboard.

Johnny said he was too much of a man to use a cloth to protect his hand, and he preferred eating the icicle to painting. That’s one good reason to use ice cubes instead of icicles for this activity…

Blog favorites

Lucky Me! has a tutorial for making adorable bottle snowmen using yogurt smoothie (or juice) bottles, quilt batting, felt, and a few other craft odds and ends. I feel like my kids are a little young for all the small pieces this craft requires, but it’s an idea I’ll save for when they stop putting so many things in their mouths

Need a Valentine’s Day gift for your toddler? Try making these cute, simple felt heart-shaped cookies from Chasing Cheerios.

This felt snowflake building activity from My Montessori Journey combines two of my favorite things: felt and geometric shapes.

Royal velvet

These crowns may not really be made from velvet, but my kids think they are awesome and they were very simple to make. Johnny’s crown used four pipe cleaners, two of each color. Emma’s crown used an extra pink pipe cleaner for the tiara effect, and I kept the blue pipe cleaners above the lower pink ones instead of alternating the way I did for Johnny. These crowns hold up surprisingly well – Emma’s had hers for several weeks, and it survived plenty of abuse from Johnny before I finally made him one last Friday. Just be sure to tuck in the sharp ends of the pipe cleaners!

Again, this is a craft that my kids needed lots of help for, but an older child could make this on their own quite easily.

Pipe cleaner flower

Pipe cleaners are a wonderful crafting tool for children because of their soft, fuzzy texture and flexibility. A toddler may need quite a bit of help to complete this craft, but an elementary school student should be able to complete it with minimal help. I made this flower with Emma to fill a vase she has in her play kitchen.

MATERIALS:

• 3 pipe cleaners, two green and the third whatever color you want your flower to be. You can use more flower-colored pipe cleaners to make a fuller, more 3D flower.

STEPS:

1) Fold the first green pipe cleaner in half. Leave a loop at the top (this will be a leaf on the stem) and twist together the rest of the two ends to form the bottom half of the stem.
	2) Add the second green pipe cleaner, folded in half, to the final twist in the first pipe cleaner (right before your leaf loop).
3) Twist together the second pipe cleaner, leaving some untwisted at each end to form two more leaf loops.
	4) Make four loops with your third pipe cleaner. These loops are the petals of your flower. Keep the ends of the pipe cleaner free, twisting them onto the “leaves” at the top of your stem to keep the bloom in place.