Puddin’ Paint

In search of a creative fun indoor activity I remembered a tip from my dear friend Tracy – finger painting with pudding! The kids enjoyed it tremendously. I’m always happy when we try something that’s a hit with both ages. Seth was thrilled with the color mixing aspect and I think Eleanor was content to be participating in something with her brother. She didn’t even mind getting stuff on her fingers!

Now this activity couldn’t be simpler, but I warn you it’s messy:

1. Make some instant vanilla pudding. Get the small size, we had WAY too much with the larger size box.
   
2. Divide it into small containers. I did 10, but with the smaller size box you could get away with 6.
   
3. Refrigerate until ready to use.
4. Set out white or light colored plates, food coloring, spoons, a wet washcloth that you don’t mind getting stained and the pudding containers. For the youngest you could just use their highchair tray instead of messing with potentially airborne plates. Also for the little ones you  may want to premix but for my kids at 20 months and 4 yrs that was part of the fun.
   
5. Let them at it. The one thing you’ll need to monitor is the amount of food coloring they use. Seth was good here. Eleanor, not so much. I got distracted and we ended up with one extremely dark olive green. Of course, we ended up with a couple containers of the inevitable brown as Seth just wanted to see what happens if he added yet another color to the mix. And that’s OK, it’s all a learning process.
   
6. At the same time or afterward, don’t forget to eat the “paint”!

1st Hat

This is the first hat I’ve ever knit. Can you believe it? I’ve knit toys, baby clothes, children’s sweaters, ponchos, bags, scarves galore, but never a hat. Until now. And I ripped it all apart tonight.

See that funky V just above the right side of my eyebrow? It was driving me nuts. Nuts I tell ya! And there was another one just like it on the other side. I know exactly what happened. I remember dropping a stitch twice and pulling it back up with my fingers. I must have done it the opposite of what I needed to. (In stockinette instead of garter for those of you knitters out there.) I didn’t even see it until the day after I finished it. Tried to live with it. Couldn’t.

Bleeding Tissue Paper

Did you know that there are two kinds of tissue paper? Well, I didn’t. The first time we tried this project I was completely confused. I had heard of how if you put wet tissue on paper it will stain the paper. Sounded cool to me but little did I know you can’t just go raid your wrapping supplies for the tissue. It’s got to be “bleeding art tissue” paper. The kind you get at the craft store and is labeled as such. Oops! Needless to say Seth thought I was a little off my rocker.

Well, time has passed and he’s forgotten my loony tunes first attempt. This time we got it right! Wanna give it a go?

Materials:

• Bleeding art tissue paper
• Water in a bowl or cup
• Paint brush
• Heavy weight paper – water color paper works well
• Wet rag for quick clean up

Steps:

1. Tear tissue up into smaller pieces – about 1 to 4 inches.
   
2. Adhere tissue to paper by “painting” it on with water. Interestingly the black didn’t bleed, but the other colors worked instantly.
   
3. Whatever you do, resist the urge to stop your child when they want to remove the tissue or even paint with the soggy wet lumps. A word of warning is probably appropriate here – the tissue will stain hands for a day or so. Not sure about clothes.
   
4. Let tissue dry in place. This will give much darker colors than if the tissue is peeled off while still wet.
   
5. Peel off dry tissue.
   
6. Admire.

Unfortunately, Seth’s agressive tearing offended Eleanor’s sensibilities. Luckily, the tearing part was over pretty quickly and after she calmed down she was able to find solice in her colored pencils.

Nutty Art

Cleared out some old raw nuts from the freezer today.  Added some birdseed and talked the kids into going outside with me to do some art for the birds and squirrels. The idea excited Eleanor more than Seth. Most likely because she’s the animal lover. However, Eleanor completely lost interest after about 5 minutes. Seth, on the other hand, enjoyed choosing the nuts and both directing the placement and placing some items himself.  Here’s what he came up with:

And just in case you were wondering, it was dusk and all the little specs are sand from the sandbox about an inch under the snow. We’re short on snow around here these days due to some abnormally warm temps a week or so ago.  The warm air was nice after all the 20 below weather but now instead of blankets of white snow we’ve got dirt, ice and a few patches of snow in the shadows. Bluck! Seeing as March is the snowiest month in these parts, I’ve got my fingers crossed for a fresh blanket of snow soon.

If your child attends the same daycare as mine leave a comment guessing who these are portraits of. I’ll email you back the correct answers because I guarantee you won’t guess the 2nd one right.

Valentine Memory Game

Although I think candy and Valentines Day go hand in hand, I also think the kids get plenty without me adding more. So instead of attaching a piece of candy to Seth’s valentine cards I made a heart themed memory game.  I used watercolor pencils to create heart and heart themed images. Simple yet Seth really seemed to get a kick out of them.

I then scanned all of my images and went about cropping & sizing them to fit a grid of 2×2 squares on a Word document. Interested but don’t have either the time or the desire to draw your own? Download mine by clicking here: Valentine Matching Game.

Make your own with these materials:

• 2 Sheets of images (yours or mine) printed on heavy weight paper
• 2 Sheets of heavy weight color paper for backing
• Glue – I used a spray adhesive until I ran out and then moved on to PVA, but any white glue should work here.
• Brush for glue (if not using spray adhesive)
• Newspaper or catalogs to prevent any glue or spray adhesive going where you don’t want it to.
• Wax paper
• 4 Self laminate sheets or contact paper
• Paper cutter or use a blade, ruler & cutting mat

Now follow these steps. (Just don’t try to do a dozen a couple days before the big day like me. I’m nuts.)

1. Completely cover the back of the image paper with glue. If using a white glue make sure to spread thinly all the way to the very edge or the layers will peel apart later.
   
2. Lay image paper on backing and smooth down.
3. Place between sheets of wax paper (to prevent sticking) and then under heavy objects like books or, in my case, a giant box of craft supplies.
   
4. Allow to dry. It’s best if you leave it over night but at least give it a couple hours.
5. Sandwich between 2 layers of laminate.
   
6. Trim excess off edges to square everything up
   
7. Cut down to approximately 2 inch squares. I thought I’d want to be more precise here but it’s really not necessary. In fact, little fingers appreciate it when things aren’t all perfectly sized. It makes them easier to grab off a stack.

Now you just have to find something to put them in. Us? Well, we took another shot at sponge painting and had moderately more success toward our, er, I mean MY goal. I know kids art is all about the process not the product, but when you need valentines, you need valentines. Seth sponge printed hearts onto envelopes and I’m writing the To So and So, From Seth, Happy Valentine’s Day on them. I don’t see any need for a card to go along with it. The envelope is the card.

Now I just have to worry about Eleanor’s cards. I had stary eyed dreams of sewing up little bean bags similar to this for all of her classmates but have since given the idea up. I was even going to cut hearts out of her paintings for the cards. Seriously. What was I thinking? I even bought a 5 lb bag of rice. Anywho… Now, I’m just thinking of printing something fun off. I adore these and these, but they don’t have birds or dogs in them. I figure if Eleanor isn’t going to participate in making them they should at least be something she likes. I’m considering these ones with the bird even though they are meant for wallpaper I could size them down. Anyone know of any cute downloadable puppy themed valentine cards out there?

Dear Grandma,

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for the wonderful hand knit socks. We all love them so much they have become our Sunday Socks.

Please send Saturday Socks.

With much love,
~The Family

Un-Valentines

Even before the latest Kids Craft came out I was wanting to do heart shaped sponge painting with the kids. But the issue of Kids Craft solidified it for me and motivated me onward. I had this idea that I could cut Eleanor’s down for her valentines cards and for Seth I could scan the painting for the backside of a matching game and have him sponge print on envelopes to put them in for his valentines. Uh, wrong. At least not this go ’round. It started out good:

But then Eleanor spent most of the time rubbing the paint off her hands. She detests “yucky” anything on her hands. Then she finally demanded a paint brush.

And Seth? Well it’s hard to be upset with the process when he ended up creating this masterpiece:

You see this is the first time he’s ever painted an image of something. In the past all he wanted to do was make a big purpley brown blob. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He just would always get bored and lazy about the process pretty quickly. But it was great fun to see him really thinking about what he was doing. Put effort into it. Enjoy it. Be proud of his accomplishment.

As you can see we really only ended up with one heart print per child. That’s certainly not going to cut if for a class of 12.  Maybe we’ll try again another day. Maybe we’ll do something different. Maybe we’ll just buy a box of premade cards. Who knows. It was on the early side for me anyway. I’m more of a last minute gal.

Candy Cane Hearts

We have an amazing pile of candy canes still left in our house. Steve bought a rather large box of the small size ones just after Christmas for a quarter. The expiration date is in 2010 so I suppose I could keep them for next Christmas but that seems wrong, expiration date or not. Both kids would eat them all day if it wasn’t for the fact that I keep them in the cupboard. Out of sight, out of mind as the saying goes. Anyway, I loved the idea of turning our Christmas treats into Valentines Day treats. It’s quite brilliant. I followed the extremely simple directions from Make and Takes. Either I should have adjusted the time because I used the small canes vs. the large or well, uh, I shouldn’t have accidently turned off the timer in the middles and had to guesstimate how much longer to bake them. Because, as you can see, they oozed a little in a few spots. But no matter, I still love how they turned out and was amazed at how easy they were to shape when I took them out of the oven.