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. 

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 )

Exploring Alternate Canvases ~ Rock Painting

I love the idea of exploring alternate canvases.  The girls have had a great time painting with every possible item under the sun like yarn, spaghetti, forks, bubble wrap, duplos, the list could really go on and on.  But, we always seem to paint on the same thing…plain old paper!

So when I noticed that my sister had a pile of really big rocks sitting in her backyard I had to take a few I knew they would be perfect for the girls to paint on!  I planned on putting them throughout the garden and having the girls paint on them outside, but the mosquitoes are so bad this year that we have not been able to spend much time in our back yard.  Even bug spray does not seem to keep them away.  So we brought the big rocks inside!

First, I scrubbed all of the dirt off of the rocks.  We did this with our art group and each child was able to pick the rock that they wanted to paint on.  Then I gave them a paint palette and set out a bunch of different brushes and they got to work creating.

Emily decided to paint a rainbow on one side and make a lady bug on the other.

Juliette was happy to swirl all of the different colors around on her rock.

I am still hoping to try this again outside, I think it will be fun to use washable paints and let them keep painting new pictures on the rocks throughout the yard.  Maybe we will be able to get a really big rock/boulder as a canvas too!

What alternate canvases have you  tried having your children paint on?

stART ~ To Be Like the Sun

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.

This week the weather has been BEAUTIFUL and we have been busy tending to our garden and planting some more seeds.  I found To Be Like the Sun, by Susan Marie Swanson at the library and knew it would be perfect for when we planted our sunflower seeds.  I love that this book tells about the lifecycle of a Sunflower Seed written in a lyrical free verse.  The illustrations gave us so much to talk about and after reading this book we were ready to plant our own Sunflower seeds and make our sunflower paintings too!

For our Sunflower Painting we used empty plastic Snapple bottles.  The bottoms were perfect for making a flower print.  Both Emily and Juliette were able to dip the bottom of the bottle into the thin layer of paint and make the prints on the paper.  Emily went over each one to make a fuller flower. Next, the girls used a pencil eraser dipped in brown paint to add the sunflower seeds to the middle of their flowers .

Finally once the paint was dry Emily used a marker to make the stems and leaves for her flowers.

Juliette’s Sunflowers

Emily’s Sunflowers

stART ~ I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More!

 

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.

This week we read I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!, by Karen Beaumont.  This is a really cute story about a child that is not allowed to paint anymore because his mom found him painting all over the floors and walls.  So he decides he is going to paint is body instead.  He is just going to paint his head, but can’t resist covering his entire body in color!  I read this book to our Art Group and then after each child was able to paint their hands and then print them onto a piece of paper.  Or they could trace their hand on the paper and paint just the paper.  Off course since painting your hand with paint is so much fun, they all opted for that option!  Emily did decide that she wanted to try both since there was room on her paper.

   

Juliette’s Hand Painting

Emily’s Hand Painting