Simple Summer: Face Painting with Colored Pencils

At a recent birthday party, my girls had their faces painted. But the mom at this party did it the genius way--she used colored pencils. Just regular old colored pencils. What you do is take your colored pencil and dip it in water until it is soft enough to write easily on skin. Then you paint away. Not messy! So much so, that I let my girls do it to each other at home, which thrills them. Give it a try!

Dinosaur Diorama

The diorama! Can you believe I have been a parent for almost nine years and have not yet done a diorama? Truth be told, I am not all that "into" artistic things, and neither is my first born. My second born, now five, however, is a major artist. She loves, loves, loves to do art. She found this in a book and immediately wanted to create it. This is found in the book Cats Sleep Anywhere published by D.C. Heath and Company. (true...strange title for a book with a dinosaur activity in it?).

Supplies:

• shoe box
• rocks
• twigs or small branches
• bandaid
• paper
• scissors
• pencil
• crayons
• tape
• one straw

Make the Dinosaur:

1. Fold your paper in half.
2. Draw a dinosaur on one half of the paper. Make it so the top of the head and the back are on the fold of the paper.
3. Cut out the dinosaur. Do not cut along the fold where the dinosaur's back and head are.
4. Color the dinosaur with the crayons.
5. Cut the straw into four equal sized pieces.
6. Tape one straw piece to each leg of the dinosaur on the inside of the dinosaur.

Make the Home:

1. Cut one long side of the shoebox off so it is open at the top.
2. Color in the sky, grass, mountains, a sun...you could also make these out of paper and glue them in place.
3. Take your two twig pieces and adhere them to a large rock with the bandaid.
4. Put your dino and rocks in the shoebox. Ta-da!

Clover Handprints

McKenna made this at a friend's house. I love crafts with the child's handprint! This is simple, you just have the child dip her hands in green paint and then make a clover. You can do three handprints or four. Then use a finger to make the stem. You then have a cute craft decoration!

Hibernating Polar Bear

This is a fun winter craft. This is an art project that works fine motor skills and adds sensory input.

Supplies:

• Blue or black construction paper
• White paper
• Crayons
• Cotton balls
• Glue
• Scissors
• Polar bear printable

Activity

Have your child color the polar bear. Cut out a white mound of snow. Have your child glue cotton balls to the snow. Your child can color the construction paper to have snow and snowflakes if desired. Glue pieces on.

Bringing out the artist in your child

One of my daughter's extra-curricular type activities is an art class at the co-op we go to on Tuesdays. Each week they learn a little about a new artist and do some sort of art project. I was thinking about easy ways to extend what she has learned to help her remember and I came across a website (I wish I could remember where....) that took famous works of art and turned them into color sheets for their kids.
So, along those lines, I came across a fun activity that used Picasa (a free photo program) to change photos into pencil drawings. Like this:

So, I googled Georgia O'Keeffe, let Charis pick a flower she liked, and turned it into a pencil sketch via Picasa. You can do straight coloring, or work on colors, shading, etc.

Or..

 

Or take your own picture of flowers outside (of a goldfish if working with Matisse, etc).

The Ever Changing Collage

I have been missing in the blogosphere for quite awhile now.  In light of Val's precious addition and obvious busy-ness I thought I would try to finally post some of our recent activities. We are in the middle of a major move, so please bear with me. I'll do my best!

This ever changing collage is an activity I have done with J a few times over the past few months (3.5-4 years). I tape a piece of white contact paper upside down onto the table (the sticky side should be facing up). I then lay out an array of supplies for him to use to create his artistic masterpiece. I love that this activity truly ignites their creativity. J has evolved from created random collages to images that I can actually interpret clearly.

The fun aspect of this activity is that it is ever-changing. If they don't like the way a certain part of the collage looks, they can rearrange the pieces easily. This is perfect for my little perfectionist. If they begin to lose interest, just add a few new materials to the mix. Creativity rejuvenated!

Here is a picture of his more recent masterpieces.



This is our house and garage with a tree in the front yard, the sun shining, a bird flying, and colorful flower-buttons filling the garden (can't recall a time when my garden looked so good!).

The materials included foam shapes, colorful popsicle sticks, and colorful buttons. These seem to be his favorite materials to use since they leave nothing behind when removed from the contact paper. He gets annoyed when the other materials leave a tiny bit of fuzz or string behind. Did I mention he was a perfectionist?

We have also used pop poms, cotton balls, q tips, fabric pieces, ribbon, larger sequence, toothpicks, straws, pipe cleaners, jewels, rope, and shoe strings. I have found providing just 2 or 3 different materials at a time is enough for him. He gets overwhelmed if I put too many options in front of him. For the above example, I first gave him only the colored popsicle sticks. After he had time to play and create, I brought out the buttons and foam pieces. Bringing out the materials at different times really helps him explore each one's potential (and certainly makes the activity last longer!).

This activity would work for almost any age. Of course watch for choke hazards for those that like to mouth everything in site.

Simple Summer Fun: Watercolors Outside

A fun activity for summer is to paint watercolors outside.

You can paint on the driveway, paper, or on each other (as my girls decided to do). It all washes away very easily. All you need is a brush, watercolors, and a cup of water. When the cup of water gets spilled, there is no clean-up because you are outside! 

Caterpillar to Butterfly

Supplies:

• Coffee Filter
• Markers, paints, or something to color coffee filter
• Clothespin
• Pom-pom balls
• Pipe cleaner 
• Wiggly eyes
• Scissors
• Glue

Activity:

1. Color the coffee filter. Set aside to dry.
2. Glue some pom-pom balls to a clothes pin. Three works well--that way you can open and close the clothes pin easily.
3. Glue on wiggly eyes.
4. Glue on pipe cleaner for antennae.
5. You can then take the caterpillar and scrunch up the filter in the clothes pin to make a butterfly! This is a great supplement to a caterpillar theme unit!

 Kaitlyn made this at preschool last month and it has been one of her favorite projects by far.

Puffy Paint Snowman

My daughter made this in preschool and has been ever in love with it since.

This is made from puffy paint, which is simply equal parts shaving cream and white glue. You mix the two together and then paint with it, or glob it to make a nice snowman. 

She also used pieces of construction paper to create the eyes, noses, mouth, hat, and arms. Lay flat to dry. Once it is dry, you can touch it and feel is puffiness! Now she just wants it to have feet so it can walk around like Frosty :)

Christmas Wreath Ornament

Kaitlyn brought this home from preschool last week and it was one of those things where I thought, "Why have I never thought of that?"

Supplies

• green foam
• red ribbon for bow
• string for hanging
• glue
• desired decorations
• scissors

Prep

1. Gather supplies
2. Cut out wreath (you can use straight scissors, but decorative scrapbooking scissors will add some character)

Activity

Have your child decorate as desired! A simple and cute ornament!

TeePee

Though the Wampanoag Indians who were involved in the first Thanksgiving did not live in Teepees, Teepees are associate with Indians in general, and Thanksgiving is a time of year we talk about Native Americans, so I thought it was an appropriate time of year to share this activity idea.

It is simple. You take a tortilla, roll it into a cone, then secure with a toothpick. You then let your child paint and decorate it. It is fun and a novel item to paint.

You could add some history to the activity by studying the Plains Indians and teepees and share the knowledge with your child as you paint. 

Halloween Fun: Face Painting

I remember one time as a child standing in line for over an hour to get my face painted. That is dedication! Children seem to love to get their faces painted. Now, I am no artist. You can, however, easily paint fun holiday themes if you break down the picture into simple shapes.

Take the jack-o-lantern pictured above. A simple orange blob, some black eyes, nose, and mouth, and a green stem and you are done. I didn't make that, though, my sister-in-law did, and she is an artist. 

Here we have a spider web. You have a white web made from drawing various lines. You then have  black spider, which is made from drawing a couple of circles and some legs. 

Finally, we have a simple ghost. A white oval-ish with some black eyes and nose. 

There are a few different types of paints that people often use for doing face paints.

The first is a simple crayon or pencil. I haven't tried these, but a youth group at my church does face paints every year at the Halloween party, and they seemed to think they were not as easy as paint, which makes sense to me:

You then have actual face paint:





My sister-in-law just uses normal old acrylic paint:





Try this out with your children! You can do it for any holiday, sporting event, or even just something fun to do along with your weekly theme.

Paper Plate Apple {plus fine motor bonus}

So this is my other fun activity from Kaitlyn's preschool class I wanted to share. It is a paper plate apple with a fine motor activity. You could do one or the other or both together.

The paper plate apple is a very simple craft. You paint the paper plate the color you want it. Then you cut out and glue a green leave to the top. You could also add a brown stem. Children LOVE to paint. You could also color it or do cheating paint and paint with do-a-dots. If I want to do "paints" but don't have the patience for paints, we use do-a-dots.

The other is a worm fine motor writing activity. There are simply pictures of worms, a dotted line for the path the worm took, then the apple the worm ate. You could find pictures of worms on the internet. Then find pictures of apples on the internet. Copy them and put them into a Word document. Then make dotted lines.

OR 

You could print the little pictures, cut them out, and paste them onto a page and draw the dotted lines yourself.

OR 

You could just draw the whole thing. I am not artist, but lately I  have come to prefer that method. Then it turns out how my head wants it to :) But I do check the Internet first in case someone has previously stolen the image from my head and kindly put it on the Internet first ;).

You then have the child color the pictures and trace the dotted like. This builds fine motor control for preparing for handwriting. You can see these lines Kaitlyn did get harder to do, and you can see how her top lines are perfect, and bottom lines are not. Good practice!

Watermelon Crepe Paper Pic

My son brought this activity home from preschool (above, age four) and Kindergarten (below, age five). I figured if it is good enough for both teachers, it is good enough to post here!

Supplies Needed:

• paper
• red crepe paper
• green crepe paper
• black marker/paint OR actual watermelon seeds

Activity:

1. Draw a half circle for your child. If your child is able, have him cut it out. If not, you cut it out.
2. Draw a line to divide the flesh from the rind.
3. Have your child tear or cut red crepe paper to glue in the flesh section.
4. Have your child tear or cut green crepe paper to glue for the rind section.
5. Glue on seeds or add black paint dots for seeds.

Paper Bag Puppets

A great way to enhance learning is to make a puppet to go along with what you are talking about. Children love crafts and they love puppets. Are you talking about the letter F? Why not make a Fox? Maybe you are learning about bears this week and want to make a bear puppet. And the great news for you is that the internet is full of instructions on how to make these.

Enchanted Learning has some great instructions for some paper bag puppets: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/puppets/paperbag/

DLTK is another classic resource with some great puppets: http://www.dltk-kids.com/type/paper_bag.htm

ABC Teach has printables for you: http://www.abcteach.com/directory/fun_activities/crafts/paper_bag_puppets/

More fun ideas at First School: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/crafts/paper_bag_puppets.htm

If you don't find what you are looking for on these pages, go to Google and search "paper bag puppet ____ "(insert key word here, like Dog). You will get tons of ideas. 

Sensory Ocean/Beach pictures

This activity works for babies (touch and feel), all the way to elementary aged kids! You have lots of options...

*Paint the ocean

*Paper towel paint

*color the ocean w/ markers

*Use the side of a peeled crayon and make the water

Once the water has been drawn/painted, start adding details...

*We added shells collected from a previous vacation

*spread glue on the bottom (we used fingers) and sprinkle w/ sand

*Add glitter to wet paint/glue for a sparkly effect

*Use pom-poms for anemone, collected sticks for seaweed (or ribbon, pipe cleaners, etc)

*Make fish out of construction paper to glue down, or use fish stickers

*Finally, stretch out some cotton balls for clouds.

The idea is to use as many sensory (Touch and feel) items as possible. Dig around drawers, craft boxes and see what could substitute for items under the sea. If I'd had green streamers, I would have added those for sea weed.

For young children, make a small version yourself and let your child touch it, and talk about how it feels (scratchy, rough, smooth, cool, soft, etc).

Foam Fish

This is another cute craft Kaitlyn did at playgroup this past year. It is a foam fish. 

Age Range

I think you can make this work anywhere from 1 on up.

Materials

• Piece of foam
• Scissors
• Marker/pen/pencil
• Stickers, jewels, etc. to decorate fish with 
• Glue

Activity

1. You first need a foam fish. Depending on the age and ability of the child, either you draw or have the child draw a fish on the foam.
2. Also depending on the ability of the child, either you cut out or have the child cut out along the lines.
3. Now is when any aged child can participate. Time to decorate the fish! For babies, you can pull the stickers off and give them to her to put on the fish. Toddlers can apply glue and put the decorations on the fish. 

Companion Book

This activity would be fun in conjunction with the Rainbow Fish. 

Glitter Fireworks

What child does not love glitter? I think all children love glitter. And most moms fear glitter--oh the mess. But come on, the mess isn't that bad. Plus you can do things like put the glitter in a shaker to make it less messy.

This is a simple and fun glitter activity. It makes a fun art project and works fine motor skills.

You simply give your child a glue bottle and have him make firework lines. Then sprinkle your fireworks with glitter! Fun, quick, and engaging. 

Pussy Willows

This activity is quite common in preschool and Kindergarten classes. It is simple, but involves paint and children love paint!

SUPPLIES

• White paper
• Brown crayon
• Gray paint
• Optional: Paint shirt and tablecloth. Paper towels also help keep painted fingers off of clothes :)

ACTIVITY

• You might want to start by showing your child either an actual pussy willow if you have them by your or by showing them a picture of a pussy willow so they know what they are making.
• Have your child draw three stems with the brown crayon.
• Have your child dip his finger in the gray paint and dot the stems with it. 
• Let dry!

POEM

You might add this poem to your activity:

Pussy Willow

Close your eyes

And do not peek

And I'll rub Spring

Across your cheek.

Smooth as satin,

Soft and sleek.

Close your eyes

And do not peek.

-Aileen Fisher-

Earth Day Painting

This is a simple activity that your children will love for Earth Day (this Friday). Your children will love it because children love painting.

AGE RANGE

This is something children of all ages can do. If you have a baby, you can help your baby do this, and I would suggest finger paints.

SUPPLIES

• Earth coloring page print out. I used this one: http://parenting.leehansen.com/downloads/coloring/MISC/earth-color.gif
• Paint of choice. You can do finger paints, tempera paints, water colors...whatever you want to. The photo above was done with water colors (by Brayden--age 5). Kaitlyn (3 going on 4) did both finger paints and tempera paints. McKenna (just turned 2) did finger paints.
• Paper plate for holding paint. If doing water colors, you will need a small cup of water.
• Paintbrushes if needed.
• Optional: Tablecloth and paint shirts :). Also, a paper towel for each child will help keep things cleaner.

SET-UP

Set up table cloth, set papers out, and prep paint by pouring onto paper plates. Put paint shirts on children.

ACTIVITY

1. Tell your children you will be painting the Earth today. You can either direct or let them choose their paint of choice. I let the older two choose, but chose for McKenna. 
2. Talk about what parts are water and what parts are land, then talk about what colors each part are. 
3. For the older children, I suggest you require they paint the land and water the correct colors. Kaitlyn is my ever-artistic child, and she wanted to do some unique colors, but this was an activity to learn about the Earth. There are times to do creativity with your own imagination taking over, but it is also important for children to be able to identify reality, too. For older children you could even take this a step further and add in the other colors of browns and reds you can see on the Earth and put them in the right place. This would add a nice geography aspect to the activity.

Here are the finished products. From left to right, McKenna's (2), Kaitlyn's (almost 4), Brayden's (5).