Salad Spinner Art ~ 3D Spring Flowers

After the cold and snowy winter we have had here we are all so excited for the First Day of SPRING today.  To celebrate we had fun making this colorful 3 Dimensional Spring Flowers Project to brighten up the house.  The girls and I always love doing Salad Spinner projects.  It is so much fun to see the globs of paint spread out all over the paper.  When I was trying to think up a fun and different way to make flowers the salad spinner was the first thing that came to mind.  I absolutely LOVE how this project came out and the girls had so much fun working on it today!

For this project we used Water Color Paper, Blue Liquid Watercolors (these are my favorite paints!), Green Striped Plastic Drinking Straws, Cardstock and Washable Kids Paint.  You can use a Spin Art Set if you have one but we chose to use our Salad Spinner today.  I got mine at Ikea for $2.99 and it is amazing!

First, I put a piece of watercolor paper on a backing tray, sprayed it with water to moisten it and then had the girls paint the whole piece with their blue liquid watercolors.

Next, they took turns (since we only have one salad spinner) dropping slightly watered down paint onto a piece of paper at the bottom of the salad spinner.

Once they were happy with how much paint they dropped onto the paper we put the top on and the girls spun away!

I loved watching them help each other with this part.  They took turns holding the salad spinner down while the other spun it.

Juliette checking to make sure it us just the way she wants it.

After they made their spin art, I used a hair dryer to quickly dry the paint (the most amazing tip thanks to Jackie @ Happy Hooligans).  Then I traced around these flower cookie cutters we have and cut them out.

I had the girls trim the bottom off of one of the straw then I glued the flower onto the top part of a bendy straw, this way it could be moved all around and kind of sticks up from the paper to give it a more 3 dimensional effect.  Then we glued the whole straw onto the blue water colored paper.  (I did the gluing for this part since we were using a hot glue gun)

The girls cut fringe on a strip of green construction paper to add some grass and leaves to their flowers.

We had so much fun working on this project, doesn't it get you so excited for SPRING!!

For another cute flower craft be sure to check out our Cupcake Liner Flowers.

This week I'm  linking up to:

 The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn,  Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase,  Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, We Made That.

 

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Pasta Painting

I was cleaning out the pantry and found a box of expired lasagna noodles.  I felt bad throwing them out so we decided to try painting them instead, I figured at least we could put them to use before the tossed them!!

 The girls had a lot of fun painting piece after piece.  The ridges added a fun texture for them to work with.  They also loved how cool they looked when you held them up to the light.  It was like a stained glass window effect. 

Recycle Every Day ~ stART

 

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too!

This week we have been talking about Earth Day and ways that we can help do good things for the Earth.  Emily and Juliette  really enjoyed Recycle Every Day!, by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  This is a great story about a little bunny, Minna who needs to make aposter about recycling for school.  She wants her poster to be picked to be in the Community Recycling Calendar.  Her family helps her learn about the different things that they do to recycle each day of the week.  Finally, she is inspired to create her poster. 

I loved the theme of this book, because all of the different ways that Minna and her family recycled are things we can and in many cases already to in our home.  Emily liked seeing the bottle returns since we just recently took a huge bag to our recycling center.  We also use our tote bags when we go food shopping.  

I also love the illustrations in this book the last page has a list of the different recycled papers and materials that are used throughout the book.  We are working on collecting them so that we can use them to make our own pictures.

For today’s project we made a Puffy Paint Earth Day craft.  I got the idea for this project on Pinterest from Itsy Bitsy Learners.  

Emily’s Puffy Paint Earth

These were fun and easy to make, first I cute out the hearts for the girls, then the girls traced and cut out their handprints.  Emily traced hers and Juliette cut out one while I cut out the real ones (she likes to just cute everything into really small pieces, but it was still good practice in using the scissors!)

  Juliette’s Puffy Paint Earth

Next I gave them each a paper plate and some green and blue homemade puff paint.  First they painted the green on to look like the land and I microwaved it to make it puff up.  Then they painted the blue for the water and I microwaved it to make it dry and puff up.

Finally they glued on the hands and heart to show that they love the Earth.  This was a fun project and looks so cute hanging up for Earth Day!

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The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Also, be sure to check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

Hand Print Leprechauns

I love hand print crafts and when I saw these cute Hand Print Leprechauns on Pinterest, I knew I had to try them with the girls.

I painted their fingers with orange paint  for the beard and their palm with peach  for the face and then added a little orange where their hand met their wrist for the hair.   Then they made their handprint of the middle of a piece of white card stock.

To decorate him, they glued a green square and rectangle on the top for his hat and added a black rectangle and a yellow button for the band.

 

To decorate the border we made shamrock finger prints.  Just dip your finger in some green paint and make three finger prints close to each other.

Emily also used some green heart stickers to make shamrocks too.  Then she used a green marker for the stems and gave him a smiling face with a black marker.

 

Emily’s Handprint Leprechaun

 

Juliette’s Handprint Leprechaun

Juliette enjoyed these so much that she talked about making them all day and told everyone we saw about them!

stART ~ 10 Little Rubber Ducks

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

This week I was the Special Reader for Emily’s Preschool class and I don’t know who was more excited about it, Emily or myself!   Emily and I picked out 10 Little Rubber Ducks, by Eric Carle to share with her class.  This book  was inspired by a real shipment of bathtub toys that fell off of a container ship and floated to various places.  In this story, 10 Little Rubber Ducks are made in a factory and packaged and shipped.  Then on their way over the water a fierce storm knocks a box overboard and into the ocean.  The 10 rubber ducks float in various directions until the 10th one finds a real duck and her ducklings.  I love the fun way that this book incorporates ordinal numbers, as well as directional words (over, under, north, south).  Emily, Juliette and I think Emily’s whole class LOVED the special squeaking sound that is on the last page of the book, it definitely adds a special touch especially when you are reading it to a group of kids!!

To go along with this book I set up a project for Emily to do when she came home from school.  I love Eric Carle’s illustrations so we made ducks in the ocean inspired by the cover of this book.

I gave the girls a  duck template (click on the picture above for a free download) that I drew on a piece of construction paper.  

First they glued on pieces of yellow tissue paper for the body and orange tissue paper for the beaks.

When they were finished the glued on a blue wiggly eye.

For the water Juliette decided to finger paint the piece of paper.  I gave them a few different shades of blue and some green to make it look like the picture on the cover.

Emily used the same colors, but she decided she wanted to use a brush.

When everything was dry the girls glued their ducks onto the water backgrounds.

Emily’s Little Rubber Duck

Juliette’s Little Rubber Duck

Juliette loved this project and was so proud of it, she asked if she could hang it in her room when it was ready!

Rubber Band Splatter Painting

I originally saw the idea for this Splatter Painting project on Pinterest, from Teach Preschool and knew  that I had to try  it out  with our Art Group. 

To set up this project I put a piece of paper inside each baking tray and put three rubber bands around each tray.  I started by painting the rubber bands with the paint then the girls  snapped them to make the paint splatter all over the paper, but very quickly the girls wanted to add the paint on their own to do it again and again and again. 

Emily loved snapping the rubber bands and even used both hands to do two at a time.  They experimented with moving the rubber bands around on the tray and even sliding the paper out and around the other way to mix the colors.

Emily’s finished painting.

All the kids from 21 months to 5 years old  loved this activity, except Juliette who was in a mood!  Oh well maybe next time :)

stART ~ Not A Box

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

I love the book Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis!  I love how it inspires children be able to use their imaginations and creativity to do or be anything that they want.  The simple line drawings are perfect for the suspense of the story.  We love guessing what his box is and what he will do next.  One thing is for sure, this is NOT a box!

To go along with Not a Box we got creative with two large boxes that I had.  Pushed the table out of the way and put down a table cloth.  Then I gave them paint, stamps , foam rollers and paint brushes and let them create to their hearts content.

This was one of the best projects we have ever done, I think they would have painted all day if we had more boxes. 

Clean up was CRAZY but totally worth it, here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what the house looked like afterwards :)

stART~ Snow Day

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

Emily took the book Snow Day, by Lynn Plourde out on Library Day and we really enjoyed reading it together.  Even though we have not had any snow yet the girls can’t wait for it to come.  This book is written to tell the story of a snow day from the moment a child rubs the sleep out of their eyes to when they snuggle up to a good book at the end of a fun day in the snow to get ready for bed.  It is written in a poetic form that is fun to read and flows really well as the story of this special snow day unfolds.  

For our art project we talked about some of the things we can’t wait to do once it finally (hopefully at least once!) snows here.  After discussing our favorite things to do in the snow the girls were given a piece of paper, crayons and oil pastels to draw a picture of their favorite thing about the snow. 

When they were all finished we added the snow!  The girls used white paint that was mixed with glue and a q-tip to dot or spread the glue onto the paper. 

Finally they added the sparkling finishing touch…GLITTER!

Emily making snow angels in the snow

Juliette going sledding ( she drew this picture all by herself )