Goop Fun!

The girls and I LOVE to make and play with goop! (Seriously, I enjoy this as much as they do!) We usually mix equal parts cornstarch and water, but this time we mixed about 5 cups of cornstarch and about 3 and a half cups of water, and it was much better. Sometimes we leave the goop just as it is, and sometimes we turn it into a color mixing experiment. This time we put yellow food coloring on one side and blue on the other side, and slowly mixed them together. This is definitely an activity that is best done by the lake (or in a bathtub or near a water hose...). We all got pretty messy. After playing with the goop by itself for a while, the girls decided to start mixing it with sand. They filled up buckets and got to work. We've spent our last 2 Fridays playing with goop on our beach, so this may be a new Friday afternoon tradition! Although, we also have plans to play with a vat of shaving cream by the beach and make volcanoes on the beach. We really love our teeny, tiny beach during the Spring and Summer!

Our Liquid Watercolors

Someone somewhere (comments? email?) asked me to post a picture of our liquid watercolors in their wooden holder that I keep on our kitchen table, so here they are! They are simple and make a perfect centerpiece for us :)

Sunset Painting

O(5) sat at our kitchen table and painted while watching the sunset over the lake last week.  I've decided to keep our liquid watercolors in the center of our table, so that they are easily accessible (and they are so pretty in their wooden holder).  While she was painting, she said "I'm painting the sunset how I see it...not how everyone else sees it."   Love her!

Valentine's Craft Basket

The girls were THRILLED when we put together this basket full of Valentine's Day card making supplies!  The basket includes pink, white, and red construction paper, heart doilies, Valentine's stickers, glue sticks, scissors, glitter, and Valentine's cupcake liners (E's favorite).

Both girls got right to work!  O(5) cranked out at least 10 Valentine's on the first day.  She was so proud and sweet when she gave us our heart cards.  She made a small one for E (while E was in the middle of a tantrum), and E(2) threw it to the floor.  O ran upstairs and made her a bigger heart to make her feel better because she was afraid E was upset that she'd gotten a small heart when the rest of us got big hearts.  I love my sweet girl.  E later apologized and hugged her sister.

Raining Rainbows

When I saw this fun and simple activity on Jo's blog, I knew it was one we had to try!

To make a raining rainbow fill a clear container with water and cover the top with shaving cream.  Drip food coloring onto the top of the shaving cream.  Then, watch and wait until  the rainbow begins to rain through the cloud of shaving cream. We were so excited when the colors started "raining" down from our cloud of shaving cream!  (I admit that I was more excited than the girls!)



The top of the shaving cream looked really pretty!



After we watched the raining rainbow for a while, we placed pieces of white card stock onto the colored shaving cream to make prints.  The girls loved this part the most of all, and they somehow ended up covered in shaving cream!  We scraped off the shaving cream to leave behind a swirly and colorful print, but I forgot to take a picture of the final product.



Simple, beautiful, messy, and fun!  Doesn't get much better than that!

Art with Anything...Painting with Liquid Watercolors on Salt and Sticky Contact Paper

I recently checked out Mary Ann Kohl's book, Art with Anything, from the library and now I have lots of ideas for art projects with the girls.  This is especially great since O(5) told me that she wants to do a different art activity each day!

Our first activity from Art with Anything was to paint on sticky contact paper with salt and liquid watercolor paints.

First, I taped 2 pieces of contact paper (sticky side up) to 2 cookies sheets.  Then, the girls had a great time shaking and pouring salt onto their contact paper.



After, they completely covered the contact paper with salt, they painted the salt covered paper with liquid watercolors.  I told them to use a gentle and light touch so that they wouldn't dislodge the salt.  However, the salt moved even when they used a light touch which was frustrating for O(5).








Eventually, she stopped trying to use a light touch and had fun filling her paintbrush up with salt!








We let the paintings dry overnight, and then hung them up on the sliding glass door this afternoon.  When I saw them, I reminded myself that it's the process that counts not the final product.  However, when we hung the painting on the door, E(2) rushed over while saying over and over "It's beautiful!  It's SO beautiful!"  Love her!

Painting Like Georgia O'Keeffe

The children at O(5)'s Montessori School study a different artist each month, and at the end of the month I go in and do an art project with them based on that artist. The artist of the month for November was Georgia O'Keeffe. O's teacher read several books about Georgia O'Keeffe with the children, and theyworked with the Georgia O'Keeffe art cards from Montessori Print Shop.

On our art day, we taped watercolor paper to the table for each child and provided them with a live flower in a tiny vase (each child chose his or her flower), a set of watercolor paints, and a cup of water. The kids got right to work!



Before the children started painting, I told them to study their flowers. They looked at the centers of the flowers, studied the texure, noticed the colors, and noticed that the shapes of the petals repeated. I told them to paint the flower BIG and to try to make the petals reach the edge of their papers. 





Here is a link to the lesson plan that I followed.

Both of our girls LOVE painting with watercolors, and I'm so excited the new liquid watercolor set they received for Christmas.  We may be painting like Georgia O'Keeffe at home, too!

Ice-Cream Cone Christmas Trees

The girls and I spent the day with our cousins on Tuesday.  It was great to see our cousins whom we only see a couple of times a year.  The kids spent most of their time playing outside, dressing up, and putting on shows, but they did enjoy crafting for a little while. 

I saw these upside down ice-cream cone Christmas trees on Pinterest and thought it would be a fun and easy activity for them.  They all really enjoyed decorating their trees, especially since they got to eat them once they were done!

Here are a few of their masterpieces...