We cracked out the Christmas glitter paint and foam Christmas stamps to make some festive art.
Foam stamps.
Usually I would put the paint onto sponges so that the stamps don’t get overloaded with paint. Unfortunately we were out of sponges, so some of the pictures were a bit gloopy, but they still look nice. And importantly the kids had fun!
Paintings hanging up to dry.
We ran out of wrapping paper, so we broke out our little foam rollers, paint and a roll of plain brown paper and got down to having some fun.
Rolling paint onto the paper.
We used blue, purple, green and pink paint. I tried for one roller per colour, but the kids quickly put the rollers in all the colours…
A used the pink paint to make a heart, while L made long green and blue stripes. The boys dabbed the paint here and there, rolling all the colours together, and rolling paint onto themselves. Luckily I had stripped them down to just their undies in preparation for such an event!
Making a heart.
Painting stripes.
Fun with rollers.
During a morning at playgroup the boys did some cute little paintings using cotton buds (also called q-tips or cotton tips). Later, we tried it at home.
Painting with a cotton bud.
Paint on the tray.
I had cotton buds in the bathroom, so we got out enough to have one cotton bud for each paint colour. We put a blob of paint on a plastic take-away container lid, and the boys got started painting.
They had lots of fun spreading the paint with the cotton buds. After a while T1 also used his fingers to add some paint to his page, but mostly they stuck with the cotton buds.
Once they had finished, I threw the used cotton buds out, and washed off the paint trays. This was a cheap, simple and fun activity to do with my toddlers.
T2’s painting.
T1’s painting.
Crayons, wax and oil pastels are great at repelling water coulour paint. This property makes them a good choice for writing secret messages. White is the best colour to use on white paper as it is hard to see the writing before adding the paint! Unfortunately A chose to use a white oil pastel and our paper was more of a beige colour (blank newspaper print), so the messages weren’t quite as secret as they might have been 🙂
My message for L and A.
A wrote out all of the sight words that she is currently working on in white oil pastel. L drew a picture and wrote messages. Then the kids used their water colour paints to bring the messages to life.
Writing her sight words.
Painting on the water colours.
We had fun writing messages to eachother, which were then ‘discovered’ by adding paint. This is also a great activity for practicing spelling words as well as sight words.
A word ‘discovered’.
Words appearing through the paint.
Potato stamps.
There were some potatoes going soft at the back of the cupboard. I used two of them to make some stamps. Each potato I cut in half, and then cut a basic shape into the flesh of the potato. I used a small, sharp knife to cut away the extra potato, so I had to be very careful.
We used giant paint pads to apply the paint to the potato. These kind of stamping pads are great because they prevent excess paint getting on the stamp, and also avoids waste.
Potato on the paint pad.
A stamping.
A used the potato stamps to stamp randomly all over the piece of paper. It looked very interesting, and she had fun. We will save this paper as wrapping paper.
Finger painting palette.
In order to make finger painting available for Baby T, I tried making some home-made edible paint. It probably wouldn’t taste very nice, but I just wanted something that wouldn’t hurt him if he put it in his mouth! So I mixed up a runny mixture of cornflour, water and food colouring, making it thick enough to feel like paint but thin enough to spread. It’s just a runny version of the slime we like to have sensory and messy play with.
Dipping her fingers.
Drizzling paint onto paper.
Finger painting.
The kids had a good time spreading the paint around in the tubs, drizzling it to make patterns, and swirling it together. They squished their fingers through it, and then made some paper prints from it. The paper soaked up the coloured water from the cornflour, leaving pretty patterns on the paper. They also used it to paint directly onto paper.
Paint in the tub ready to use for prints.
Once they were finished, it all washes off with soap and water. This was an inexpensive, easy and fun activity for a lazy Saturday afternoon.
A print.
L’s finger painting of a red sunset.
Foam dabbers.
It’s easy and fun to make your own Christmas wrapping paper, as long as you don’t mind a little mess along the way! We used glitter paints in silver, gold, green and red, and white paint mixed with glitter. The kids applied the paint using little foam dabbers, basically a foam piece attached to a handle for easy use. We could have done similar painting using pieces of round sponge, but I find the handled variety a little less messy for the kids to use.
L painting a tree.
A painting.
L used the dabbers to make spotty Christmas trees and lines, while A just put random spots all over the paper. A also made one picture of flowers out of spots, which we won’t use as wrapping paper, we will place it up on the wall instead.
A’s lovely flower picture.
A spotty calico bag.
We have re-usable bags of all shapes, sizes, and colours. Some of my favourite bags are the calico ones, they are lightweight and scrunch up small enough to carry in my bag. They are great for shopping and make perfect library bags, but they can be a bit boring to look at, so we took fabric paint to some new calico bags to make them unique and appealing.
The tin of fabric paint.
Squeezy bottles of paint.
A while ago my mother had given me a tin of old fabric paint tubes. She wasn’t sure if they were any good, but thought I might like to try them out. As we went through the tin we found only a couple of the tubes were dried out completely, but almost all of the nozzles were clogged. For these tubes, I cut the end off them to access the paint. There were also some 3D fabric paints in squeezy bottles that were still fine to use too.
Making hand prints.
We set out our calico bags with a piece of cardboard inside to prevent the paint from seeping through to the other side, and pegged the bag taunt to make it easier to paint. The kids did hand prints, used stampers, paint brushes, and squeezed the 3D paint directly onto the bags to make each one special. They had a ball. And when all the bags were finished, we waited until then were touch dry, and turned them over and did the other side.
Stamping.
Squeezing on 3D paint.
Brushing on paint.
Splotching paint on.
Spreading the paint.
By the time we were finished, we were all covered in paint, but we had had fun. Some of the paint didn’t come off as easily as others, and I needed to use some mineral turpentine to remove it from our hands and brushes. The kids thought it was super disgusting! Next time we buy fabric paint I will be checking to make sure it will wash off with soapy water.
Once fully dry, I heat set the paint with the iron. I used a tea towel over the design whilst ironing to protect the design, and prevent any stray bits of paint adhering to my iron. The finished bags look great, and are much more fun than the plain ones!
Dinosaur stamped bag.
Hand print bag.
Using pieces of Lego or Duplo as painting stamps is a simple and fun activity. I normally use paint on sponges for stamping activities, but since we had recently purchased some large paint pads, we used these to make our prints. L and A used both Lego and Duplo to make their artworks. L tried some stamping using both sides of the Lego.
One of the paint pads.
Duplo on the paint pad ready for stamping.
L stamping.
A stamping her page with Duplo.
The kids enjoyed this easy activity, and made some nice prints. The only downside was trying to get the paint out of the top of the Duplo! A bottle brush did the trick in the end. Once they were clean and dry, the Lego and Duplo went back into the tubs to play with again another day.
Scratch art seems to be very popular with the kids at the moment, and I’ve been asked on numerous occasions to buy some of the scratch art card. I remember making our own scratch art paper when I was in primary school, so I thought the kids might like to try this at home.
A colouring in her paper.
A adding black paint.
We coloured in some sheets of paper using crayons, so that the whole page was covered in crayon. We used a rainbow of colours in no particular pattern. A just scribbled all over her piece of paper until it was mostly covered, and then I helped her fill in the edges. Once the colouring in was done, we used thick black paint to cover the paper, covering up the crayon rainbows. We left it to dry.
There was a shaft of sun coming in our lounge room window, so we positioned the paper on the floor in the sun to help them dry a little more quickly. There were still a few wet patches, when ,unfortunately, our cat came inside. I didn’t expect him to decide, not only to walk through the wet paint, but to lay down for a snooze in the sun, right on top of one the black pieces of paper! I have never been so pleased to own a mostly black cat before. When I shooed him off, he trod a bit of paint along the floor, which I had to clean up, but he took care of the rest himself (no need for a bath, luckily!) And what have I learnt from this? Well, for starters, I’ll make sure I shut the cat outside next time we decide to paint on the floor 🙂
L using a toothpick to scratch out her picture.
So eventually, the paint was completely dry, and L and A were able to set about scratching the black paint off to reveal the crayon beneath. They tried a few different items to scratch the paint with, including the end of a spoon, a matchstick, and some toothpicks. They both agreed that the toothpicks worked the best.
A made a lot of squiggles all over her piece of paper. After all the scribbling, A did draw herself in the corner, which I thought was quite nice.
A drew herself.
L drew all of the members in our family, and called her picture “Family Poster”. She drew A wearing fairy wings, and Big L wearing a tie. A has fairy wings on a couple of times a week, but I can’t remember the last time Big L wore a tie! She put glasses on the sun, and Baby T is in his cot.
The brightness of the crayons were a bit dulled when the paint was scratched off, so we might need to put the crayon on thicker next time. We could also try using oil pastels instead of crayons to see if that works.
L drew herself too.
I really like these pictures. The kids had fun making the scratch art paper, and then using it to scratch out their pictures. This is something that was fun, and we will do again (though hopefully without the help of our cat).
Today We Did 