Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Shapes Painting :)

For this craft, I searched my house for little plastic toys that were different shapes (circle, triangle, square, star) and gave the kids a pie plate which I had poured green and white paint in it (I found that using an old pie plate is easier than using a paper plate because I just need to wash it out when the kids were done instead of throwing it away and using a new paper plate everytime). The kids took the shapes and dipped them in the paint to make shapes on a piece of construction paper...eventually D stuck his hands in the paint and made a big mess, but he still had fun doing it!! This was pretty easy to do and the kids really enjoyed it so I am going to do this craft pretty often with the kids. It's also a good way to teach children about shapes and colors as well :).

Tree on a Snowy Day!!

I found this craft online and thought it was super cute!! Basically all you do is take a plain white piece of paper and cut a wavy line horizontally through the paper. Glue it onto a vertical piece of light blue construction paper, and cut off the excess white paper. Take your child's hand and paint it brown, but also paint a little down the wrist to make the trunk. Let them make the print wherever they want on the paper. Once the print dries, I gave D a small paintbrush and a small cup of white paint so he could paint snow falling from the sky. He had so much fun painting, and as usual ended up painting himself more than the paper!!!

Handprint Cactus!

I came up with this craft while I was watching Mister Maker, and he had made a cactus by tracing a mitten shape with his hand. I decided that instead of tracing a mitten shape, I was going to use handprints to be the cactus.
I took a sheet of yellow construction paper and had the kids spread glue on, and used a mixture of light brown sugar and cinnamon to make the sand. Once the glue dried, I painted each hand green and the kids made handprints to be the cacti. It's a cute craft that is super easy to make :)

To add extra detail, take a thin black marker to draw on the spikes on the cactus, or you could use a bit of dark green paint and a bit of light green paint for the handprint...it depends how elaborate you want to go :)

Painting with Food Coloring

This was a last minute craft I thought of to keep D and my daycare kid, L, quiet and not fighting!! All I did was gave each child a coffee filter, and a few cups of water dyed different colors with food coloring. The coffee filters ended up being only lightly colored, but it was still pretty and the kids enjoyed the craft. :)