Painted Snowman

On one of our snow days I thought we would just have fun painting to refresh us.  (Granted, snow days are pretty much behind us, but I still thought I'd share.)

M began painting the snowman with near-perfect circles of white paint on the blue construction paper.  I loved it!  It wasn't long until she started painting the entire scene, covering the entire paper with snowy white paint.  

Honestly, I was a bit disappointed.  There was no longer any distinction between the snowman and the rest of the paper-not even the circular brush strokes.  

To help M make a snowman in her snow scene, I tinted some of the white paint with purple.  She made a lavender snowman.  I wanted to make it sparkle, so I added salt to the picture's snowman.  Then M used a permanent marker to add the hat, face, buttons, and arms.  

She certainly had fun with this, and liked the added salt sparkle.  If I were to do it again, I would have her add the details before the salt.  Even Sharpies didn't want to write well on the salt.

(Glitter is just about forbidden in our home, and I don't mind avoiding it all together.)

Realizing that M just needed to explore in her own way was good for me.  Coming up with a solution to enable her to create the snowman that she did actually want to make was good for both of us, too.  She was extra excited to make a purple snowman!  Flexibility...not my strong suit, but good to be.

E painted snow, too.

I shared about the snow scene made with paper reinforcement stickers last week.

Apple Prints

Don't you just love it when your library displays a fabulous book or two for you to enjoy?  Well, that is how we found Ten Red Apples by Virginia Miller.  (It's a Bartholomew and George book, if that means anything to you.)  I plan to check out her other books because I enjoyed this one so much!

I think what sets this book apart from some others is that though it's a counting book, the story stands on its own.  Each set of pages has a sidebar where the counting of the red apples happens, though it's natural to do it with the main picture, too.  Another fabulous feature is that the number zero is featured.  Not all counting books do that.

This book just needed a craft to go with it, so we made some apple prints.  As basic as they are, using red and green paint to make ten apples altogether takes it a step further.

Materials:
apple, cut in half
paint,
lids (to hold paint)
large paper

I add a bit of yellow to both my red and green paint to make it seem more realistic.

In the book, the green apples on the tree turn red, but there are always ten apples altogether (until they are made into a pie).

With that in mind, M got to print some red apples, and then green apples.  I let her decide how many of each color she wanted.  As it turns out it was five and five, as she is showing you.  The eleventh mark on the paper is her handprint.






I don't remember apple prints being so hard to do, but she struggled to get the  apples off the paint lid and the paper.  It was too slippery!




I'm linking up to ABC & 123's show and tell as well as stART at A Mommy's Adventures.    Both offer great preschool and toddler ideas!

Valentine Cards~ Painted

Spoiler Alert: Grandmas and Grandpas may want to skip this post, at least if you are a grandparent to my children!


Don't forget to enter our book giveaway!

We're not big on celebrating Valentine's Day, but with M in preschool and grandparents living far away, we do "celebrate" a bit.  We made cards for some family members.  (I bought some for school.  I know.  I'm awful!!)

I really like the card on the left.

These cards are easy to make!
Paint small, white pieces of paper.  I showed M how to mix the colors of paint right on the paper and encouraged her to cover every part of the paper.  (Lots of white paint with bits of red and blue were used.)  By using small pieces of paper, it gave each card its own look and design.  We let these dry and then put them under some heavy books to flatten them.
Cut frames and heart shapes.  I went the easy route and used my Cricut.  If M was older I would have had her cut the hearts herself.  You could even make the frame out of a heart shape or four skinny rectangles.
Glue the frame on the painted paper and glue hearts inside frame.  Once again the paper curled a bit so I put them under heavy books again.
At this point decide if you prefer the rectangle to be the frame or not.  Trim extra painted paper as needed.
Glue new design onto a folded piece of paper, cardstock, or blank note card.  And again, I needed to flatten out the curls with a heavy book.
Write your message and give to your Valentine!


Unfortunately I am really late in posting this, but as you might guess, this was a multi-day project.  I'm sure it could be done in less time if you use paper that won't curl when it is painted.

Painting

Do you ever get a package in the mail with a ridiculous amount of paper in it as packing material?  Instead of just tossing it all, I thought it'd be fun to do some large-scale painting.

M changed from her white sweatpants to shorts.

M asked for her name to be written.  She did a great job writing each letter.  Though you can't tell by looking at the final painting, as I watched her, she made all the proper strokes.

She also learned that mixing red and green will make brown.

Then we made a second painting using just her footprints.  She loved this.

The paper is like a newsprint, so I was glad to have the newspaper down to protect the floor, even though the  tempera paint is washable.

Before painting I had pulled M's hair into two ponytails.  As soon as she began painting, I realized that they could turn into paintbrushes, too, so I had to pull her ponytails into one ponytail.  I did it just in time.

Cookie Cutter Painting

When my mother-in-law gave us a great set of flower cookie cutters, I don't think she thought we'd be using them this way. We dipped the cookie cutters in tempera paint and "stamped" them on paper. I love the way the yellow popped off the page, though it doesn't show in the picture. After we made lots of flowers, M used her finger to color the centers.

This was the card that we made for Grandpa Clark's birthday. Happy birthday!

Honestly, I thought it would be neat to see some color mixing; however, M did not overlap the flowers much.

We save lids. They make a wonderful paint palette. I just used a napkin to store the flowers when they weren't in use.

Sometime soon we'll have to make some sugar cookies to use the cookie cutters again.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway! It's great for a beginner or experienced sewer!

Homemade Stencils and Free Art

We have an abundance of lids in our home. For the past couple of months, I have been saving them instead of recycling them. Our first project with them was to make some stencils. I just drew a heart and star on each lid.

They were cut using an Exacto knife.

The first day we tried the stencils we just used crayons. It worked pretty well. (Sorry, no picture.)

Here are some of the hearts we made with paint.

After painting a few hearts, M just wanted to paint.

We used another lid for a painting palette! I love the look of brightly colored paints on dark paper, especially after it dries!