oodles of bubble wrap

 

My parents traveled to spend Christmas with us this year -- it was fantastic -- and they didn't want to carry much luggage, so they mailed most of their gifts ahead of time. Thus, we ended up with lots of bubble wrap!

 

We've been painting it....using it to make prints....and cutting it out in shapes to make stamps. Please share if you have any bright ideas for bubble wrap! I'd love to think up all kinds of ideas to re-use Christmas leftovers, but I may have to brainstorm all the way 'til next year if I want to be of any use, 'cause I think most people's wrappings are in the trash or recycling by now!

 

The Rock Menagerie

This is "a yellow dog," specifically designed as a Christmas gift for a dog-loving member of the family.

rockin' out!

Funny-Face Pet Rocks(invented by Nora)....she even drew her own plans:

They just make me smile. (This is a pair of whales.)

We just painted rocks with acrylic paint; varnished them; and hot-glued the rocks together the way Nora instructed. We did not have nice, smooth river rocks in our vicinity, so I confess that I bought a bag at Michael's for $2.49. But if you have beautiful rocks near you, by all means, just use them instead! (The paints, we already had on hand in our giant paints box.)

Don't worry....he's friendly.

Newspaper Flowers

 

Below are simple instructions for lovely newspaper-and-button flowers, easy enough for a child to make with just a little help. I saw this craft on the blog Imagination Station.

 

Printmaking, Preschooler-Style

I encountered the idea of printmaking with children on the blog Let's Explore. The prints looked complicated, but after testing the process out, I realized that it is so easy!

 

All you need is:
-- watercolor paper
-- a slick surface (like the back of a folder or placemat)
-- paintbrushes and washable paint
-- tape
-- Q-tips

 

The basic idea is that your child paints on the slick surface (we used the back of a vinyl placemat; the paint will wash off easily whenever you want to change colors). Then, she uses a Q-tip to draw a picure in the paint. When a page of watercolor paper is placed on top and then peeled away, her image will be there, in white on the painted paper! Very cool!

 

(A note on watercolor paper: You do need to use this rather than regular drawing paper, because otherwise the edges of your paper will curl up too much as the paper dries. However, your watercolor paper need not be expensive. A glance-over at Michael's revealed that watercolor paper ranged from $16 a pack to $2.99. Obviously, I went for the $2.99. It served our purposes just fine.)

Just follow our easy steps below....

THE STEPS:

1) Tape around the edges of your watercolor paper. This is so that,

 

no matter how crazy your child may go while painting, you will still end up with a nice clean edge like this:

 

(I think peeling the tape off at the end may have been Nora's favorite part. Magic!)

 

2) Set your child up with the painting surface (in our case, the back of a placemat). Have your child fill in the entire area with a layer of paint.

3) Using a Q-tip, let your child draw whatever picture she wants. But, explain that if she wants to make a print, she'll have only a few minutes to draw because the print needs to be made before the paint dries. (We abandoned a few pictures to live out their lives as "mere" paintings, because I didn't want to nag at Nora about the time while she was enjoying her creativity. Paintings that she finished more quickly went into second lives as Prints.)

4) Genly place your watercolor paper atop the placemat. Again, gently, rub the back of the paper, being careful not to let it shift (or your image will blur). Nora wanted to help with this step, but she is three, and simply could not do it without rubbing her image into oblivion. Once this became clear, she was okay with me taking over.

5) Peel up the watercolor paper to reveal your image. COOL!

Then hang them up and enjoy:

 

They Came from the Produce Section

Here's a weird little craft we can claim completely as our own. Can you tell?:

 

While grocery shopping the other evening, just the two of us (the boys were at home), I mused to Nora, "Wouldn't it be fun to paint potatoes to look like penguins?" Nora sighed, rolled her eyes heavenward slightly as if to say, Do you see what I have to live with?, and then said, "Sure, Mommy." So we picked up a couple of potatoes and made these little guys. Nora decided to make each member of our family: Daddy, Mommy, baby Soren, and herself. She is the one with three eyes, "because I want to look funny," she explained. This craft was a blast and she had fun playing with her potato penguins for days, until they (sans googly-eyes) went into the compost bin. (The new red potatoes were starting to ooze slightly. Their time had come.)

Want to make your own little family of penguins?

You'll need:
a couple of potatoes (as many as you want penguins) -- we used 2 russets and 2 new red potatoes
white and black non-toxic, washable paint
paint brushes
glue or glue stick
googly eyes
a piece of orange construction paper

Step One: Paint your penguins. I painted the white "bibs" first, and when these dried, taped over them so that Nora could paint the black part without stressing out about accidentally covering over the white. She enjoyed painting them once, and then I confess that I gave them another coat that evening after she went to bed, because I am a neurotic perfectionist when it comes to things like hand-painted root vegetables.

 

We used an empty egg carton to stand the potatoes in while they dried.

 

Step Two: Decorate. When the paint has dried, add googly eyes and a small triangle of orange construction paper for a beak.

 

 

Soren got really into the filling-the-shaker part. He loved grabbing handfuls of pasta and dropping them into the tube.

And when your shakers are done -- DANCE!!

 

Handprint Octopus

 

This was a fun, quick little craft for a rainy morning. I thought it would be the perfect level for both kids, but Soren (17 mos.) just wanted to eat paint that day. So I distracted him with cars while Nora finished her handprint octopus.

Basically, all you have to do is paint one of your child's hands orange -- except for the thumb. (Hark! Paint not the thumb!) Have her make a handprint on paper; then re-paint the hand and press another handprint right on top of the first, at a slight angle. There you have it -- an 8-legged octopus!

Nora painted a background sheet of blue paper with her famous glitter-water-glue concoction, and we learned that blops of glue, which dry clear, look awesomely like bubbles. That could come in handy for a future art project....

Story Craft: 'It Looked Like Spilt Milk'

 

The childrens' book It Looks Like Spilt Milk lets kids find all kinds of fun shapes in the clouds. What shapes can come about accidentally when kids make their own paint "clouds?"

This is a simple craft. Pour some white kid-safe paint into a paper or plastic cup. Add enough water, gradually, so that the paint is thin enough to dribble off the spoon, but still opaque.

Give your child a sheet of blue construction paper. Let her dribble and dab the paint wherever she wants. (This craft is more about the process than the result -- as all kids' crafts should be. Nora got really into dabbing and dribbling the paint -- she wanted to do three of these. I'll admit, I tried it myself and there was something fun about it.)

 

When your child has dribbled and dropped to her heart's content, fold the paper in half and have her rub the sides together, then unfold. Does she see any shapes in her "clouds?"

 

Nora saw "a dribbly dog."

coffee filter butterfly

You'll need:

-- 6 - 7 coffee filters, stacked
-- a clothespin
--a pipe cleaner
-- a few watercolor paints

1. Let your child paint the watercolors all over the coffee filters (oh, put down some newspaper first). The bottom layers of the filters will catch most of the paint and keep it from soaking through.

2. Peel off the top 3 or so coffee filters (discard the rest). Scrunch the filters into the top of the clothespin, then fan them out a bit to make "wings."

3. Wind the pipe cleaner around the top of the clothespin (for antennae) as shown below:

4. Draw a face on the butterfly; or, if your child is old enough, let him or her draw the face. These are cute enough to be a simple Mother's Day gift from the child -- maybe to an aunt or grandparent?

Making a Painted Stick Garden

When I saw this painted stick garden on the blog Sweet Thing(s),

 

I knew we had to make our own.

Isn't hers beautiful? I especially love the black-and-white striped one. Her children are older than mine, and she primed the sticks with primer first, so she took her stick garden project a bit more seriously than we did. But we still had fun with ours, and it does look pretty cool and artsy! We finished three sticks in an afternoon, and if Nora asks to add more to the garden, we will.

You'll need:

-- driftwood or just dry, fallen tree branches
-- paint and brushes, smocks, etc.
-- spray shellac if you have used washable paint (to make the finished sticks waterproof)

1. Gather a few sticks -- let your child choose sticks with shapes that appeal to her

2. Cover a surface with newspaper, gather your paints and smocks, and paint the sticks. For younger children who may have trouble filling in a whole stick, Sarah recommends painting the stick a base color first, letting that dry, and then letting the child paint over it. You can see from her sticks that she and her kids applied a few coats of paint that they let dry, and then added to -- the sticks have distinct stripes and color areas. They look really nice that way. (Nora wanted to paint hers all at once and she doesn't like to clean the brush between paint colors, so we ended up with a couple of lavender-blue-reddish sticks...they had more of that "painted by a three year old" look, which was fine by me!) Nora wanted to add some feathers, so we did.

 

3. Allow sticks to dry. Since we used washable paint, I later sprayed the sticks with a light coating of shellac so that the paint wouldn't melt off when it rained.

4. "Plant" your garden! We planted our sticks in the decorative rock by the deck.

 

 

Flowering Cherry Tree Craft

So pretty and simple! Check out how to make this pretty tree with your child at No Time for Flashcards.