Valentine Cards~ Painted

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


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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.

Play-Doh Fun

M really enjoys Play-Doh.  She was introduced to it more than a year ago by her (now former) speech therapist.  When I saw how well she responded to it and actually made sounds, we bought the duffle-bag Play-Doh kit (but I am pretty sure we paid around $10-12 for it, not $18).   It is perfect for us.

It can hang in our pantry when it is not in use, and it has enough tools to entertain M for a few more years.

For the longest time M needed a lot of help with Play-Doh.  I am happy to say she has gotten more independent and creative with it.

Here she is displaying her favorite dinner: spaghetti and meatballs.  Yes, we are still a one-color home.  Typically she will use several colors in a sitting, but never at the same time.

The Play-Doh place mat is something I made several months ago.

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.

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Creation

Tot School is typically less structured than what I'm sharing, but I still wanted to share! Tot school is typically just learning through play. Our weeks of Creation were fun, and we played with a lot more toys and speech activities than Creation activities, but I like the idea of putting my Creation thoughts together in a post. Meghan is 34 months old. We've spent the past two weeks talking about how God created the world in seven days. This was a lot of fun for M and me. We use Hubbard's Cupboard for the base, but use very little of the ideas. We focused on the verse Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. We sang it...well, I sang it. M attempted to fill in a few words. Though she is not capable of singing, she would ask for more. (I'm thankful she has no clue how horribly I sing!) This is a mini-Creation book that M colored and read. We also made binoculars to go for a walk to see all of God's creation. We mostly saw rocks, plants, and trees. We did see a few animals and friends, too though. A note here: Super glue made them much sturdier. They were also reinforced with packaging tape. We played a game putting animals in the sea or sky. (FYI, I printed them smaller than the game is made to save ink. Yes, I am cheap like that.) I purposefully made sugar cookies for this little study of creation. As it turned out the animal cookie cutters were quite large, so M only iced the much smaller heart cookies. It wasn't a bad idea though, just not as practical as I would have liked. We also ate Oreo cookies to show the dark and light like God made. We had fun with our moon magic, too. This week we'll be talking about Adam and Eve...I'm looking forward to the challenge. See others' Tot School ideas here.