Gracen and I had so much fun with today’s art project that we actually ended up doing it twice! It’s the simplest technique, but the results are absolutely stunning and in this case, perfect for Valentine’s Day too! {Though my original thought was to use the pieces as art in Miss G’s bedroom…}
One of the little activities I set up for Miss and her friends to enjoy at our Valentine’s tea was this sticky wall colour matching game. The idea came from No Time for Flashcards (an amazing activity resource for kids of all ages) and although I followed Allison‘s instructions pretty closely, I made a couple of little changes along the way.
Needed for the project was construction paper in rainbow colours, a heart-shaped paper punch, permanent markers in coordinating rainbow colours, and clear contact paper {which can be purchased at dollar stores and home hardware stores}.
First off, I punched out tons of hearts and mixed them up really well in order to make the activity more challenging.
Next, I rolled the contact paper out on the floor (paper backing side down) and drew rainbow-coloured hearts inside one another on the non-sticky side of the contact paper (using permanent markers for this part is key).
The following morning I peeled the paper off of the corners, and taped the sheet up to the wall before peeling the entire backing off. As you can see, I attempted to make it look cute by taping it to the wall with my black and white polka dotted washi tape, but it simply didn’t cut it. The ugly masking tape had to be brought out, but it worked perfectly.
When Miss G’s little friends came over, they began popping up the hearts all over the place {somewhat to Grae’s dismay}. And though most of them didn’t get put in the ‘correct’ places, they had a lot of fun with it. In fact, at one point I think we had 3 toddlers pressing their faces onto the sticky wall and slowly pulling them away before sticking them back on again. ☺
Of course, once everyone had gone, she got straight to fixing things. The beauty about contact paper is that the paper hearts can easily be removed and reattached if need be.
Grae worked hard on her project for a good long while and it’ll stay up for the next while for her to revisit when desired, which I know will be often.
♥
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A little tradition we started back when Gracen was just 5 months old and we were living in Kuwait is an annual Valentine’s tea. Today we hosted our third celebration with a bunch of Grae’s good buddies, some awesome mamas, delicious treats, and some messy fun. The sun was shining, us mamas got to sneak in conversations in between chasing toddlers, and the kiddos played happily.
Here are some snapshots from our morning…
Tea.
Heart-shaped pretzels made especially for us by SweetSalt.
Banana berry muffins {adapted from this recipe}.
Mmmm… Fruit.
Strawberry crispy hearts.
Hearts.
Treats for the mamas.
Tea for toddlers.
Berry-scented play dough.
Hard at play.
Water bead fun.
Aftermath.
Crafting.
A happy girl post-party.
Kind of crazy that we’ve had two teas here in Vancouver and next year we’ll be back to where it all started, but I’m looking forward to it.
Take a peek at last year’s tea here.
♥
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Today, while enjoying some downtime together as a family, I put together a quick and easy sugar cookie felt board set for Miss G… A sugar cookie cutting and decorating set. All it really required was a few sheets of the cheap {recycled from plastic bottles} felt, a pair of sharp scissors, a plastic cookie cutter, and about 40 minutes of {interrupted} time. Because Valentine’s Day is coming up, I went with a heart-shaped cutter, but any shape would be fun.
To start off, I traced the cookie cutter onto the tan felt several times, placing them as I’d cut out cookies from rolled dough (making sure to leave a decent amount of space between each). The only tricky thing is that in order to keep your ‘rolled dough’ piece intact, you have to very carefully cut the shapes out without cutting through the borders.
Here’s what you should have when your shapes have all been cut out.
Then I quickly rounded the edges to make the rolled dough piece look a little bit more realistic.
Next, I cut out smaller hearts in different colours (and two sizes) to act as the frosting.
The last {and easiest} job was creating ‘candy sprinkles’ by chopping up thin strips of felt.
Miss was dying to get her hands on her new game, and began placing the cookies into the dough immediately.
Then it was straight to cutting them out using her cookie cutter.
Next up – the best part… Decorating!
Almost as much fun as the real thing… If only felt cookies tasted delicious. ☺
You can find our easy and inexpensive felt board tutorial here and some of our other felt board games here.
♥
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After putting together our ‘Will you be my Valen-slime?’ favours this afternoon, Miss G and I got out a few things and put together a really simple Valentine-themed slime sensory tray.
Slime is just one of those things that never gets old. Miss G’s spent quite a lot of time playing with it in the past, but was every bit as thrilled to play with it again today.
Her favourite part of today’s set up was definitely the heart-shaped cookie cutters. She’d imprint a bunch of hearts, watch them slowly melt away, and then loudly exclaim, “MAMA! THEY DISAPPEARED!!” before making more.
My favourite part was that because this batch turned out just a tad firmer than our last, there was zero mess. It didn’t stick to her hands, it didn’t goop up the bowls and kitchen utensils, and it didn’t cling to her clothes. (A seemingly messy activity sans the mess = win!)
We left this out for most of the afternoon and evening, and Miss G came back to it again and again before it finally had to be sealed up just before dinner. But before that happened, she wanted a guarantee that her tray and container of slime would be left out and ready for her to enjoy first thing the next morning.
Okay, so not the most traditional of Valentine’s Day treats, but when you ask a two year old what she wants to give her friends for Valentine’s, you have to be open to the suggestions. And those just happen to be heart wands and sparkly slime this time around.
Luckily, fun-to-play-with slime is a cinch to make and requires ingredients we always have around the house. Plus, we’re slime experts after whipping up 50+ slime treats this past Halloween.
Detailed instructions can be found here, but basically all you have to do is mix the glue, glitter, food colouring, and some of the water together…
And the other bit of water with the Borax separately.
Then pour the two mixtures together, knead it together a bit…
And watch oozy gooey slime form. It’s honestly so easy that Miss G can do almost everything (save the measuring) on her own.
For packaging, we like using these 125 ml mason jars because they’re the perfect size and can be reused for something else afterwards (plus they’re pretty cute!)
Filling the jars with was Miss G’s favourite part of the process this time around, especially when she discovered that she could create all kinds of silly noises by forcing the slime down into the jars.
Though she’d asked for red slime with red sparkles, this is what our finished product looks like {even after using a half a bottle of liquid food colouring}. Luckily the pink and red combo is perfect for the occasion and Miss G was pleased with how it turned out.
For the tops, we created simple paper circle inserts that include a little ‘Valen-slime’ saying and a sparkly red heart. Here are a few close ups…
‘Be mine, Valen-slime.’
‘Be my Valen-slime.’
‘Will you be my Valen-slime?’
Surely we’re the first ever people to give out slime on a holiday centred around love and friendship, but who wants to be run of the mill anyways?
Sparkly Slime
(This is essentially the exact same recipe we used last time, but in a bigger batch. This recipe yields 24 – 26 mason jars of slime – perfect for a class of kids – or in our case, 12 mason jars and a big batch to use for sensory play.)
In addition to our annual Valentine’s Day tea, Gracen and I have a couple of other Valentine’s parties and classes to attend this year. And since we don’t do the whole candy thing just yet, it means getting a little bit more creative with the ‘treats’ she hands out. When I asked her what she’d like to give her friends, she responded with Valentine’s slime (thanks I’m sure to our Halloween version for her ballet class friends) and heart wands (thanks to a Kiwi Crate package we received from our most recent PBK story time). And because both take a little bit of prep work, we started early… More time left over to figure out what we’ll bring for the 30+ kiddos in her Strong Start class, right?
These little wands are beautiful and easy to make, and although some may think they’re a little ‘girly’, we believe that hearts and magic are for everyone. ☺
Here are the materials we used for the project… Wooden dowels, adhesive glitter foam sheets, acrylic paint, a paint brush, and some ribbon. The best part is that we picked up all of these things at our local dollar store, so not only were they inexpensive, but we only had to make one stop – always nice with a toddler in tow.
First off, we started the project by painting our wooden dowels. Miss G does not always enjoy having her hands covered in paint, so we attached clothespins to the ends of the dowels so she could rotate them as she painted without painting her fingers. When she declared a dowel done, I went over the stick with a couple of quick strokes in order to smooth out the globs.
Then, because the tips were not painted where the clothespins were, I was able to stick the dowels into chunks of {gingerbread} play dough to dry upright.
A couple of days later, when our paint was good and dry (it actually only takes about an hour), we came back to our project. We started by drawing a heart shape onto a piece of cardboard and cutting it out to use as a tracer.
Next, using our newly-made tracer, we traced hearts onto the backs of our foam sheets. Gracen was happy to do the first few, and let me do the others when it came to this job.
With some strategic placement, we were able to fit 4 hearts onto each of our foam sheets, but of course it depends on the size of your tracer and the size of your foam sheets.
Next, we cut out the hearts.
Now to actually assemble a wand, you need two foam hearts, a wooden dowel, and a cute little helper.
This right here was Grae’s favourite part of the whole project… Peeling the backings off of the hearts!
With one heart shaped peeled, we placed the sticky side up on our work surface and placed the unfinished end of our dowel in the centre of the heart, up maybe an inch or inch and a half from the bottom.
Then Grae peeled the backing off of another heart, and we carefully placed it on top of the dowel, making sure to line up the hearts as closely as we could.
With the heart in a good position, Grae pressed everything together firmly.
Next up – the ribbon! We chose 3 colours, looped them in half, and cut them slightly shorter than the length of our exposed dowel .
Then we stacked them up and tied them onto the dowel at the base of the heart, giving them a little tug to coax them into falling downwards nicely.
Then, with a different, slightly narrower ribbon, we tied a bow right above the previous ribbon knot…
And finished off all of the ribbon ends with v snips.
And there you have it. Sparkly heart-shaped wands for Miss G’s little friends.
♥
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One of the things I’ve been doing to encourage independent play {and creativity} in recent months is keeping a fun, inviting, and well-stocked ‘creative table’ for Gracen. All it is is her little table (or sometimes a tray or even the floor) with an assortment of materials available for her free use. Sometimes it’s paper and glue and embellishments (like in our Christmas tree creative table), sometimes it’s play dough and cookie cutters and decorations, and sometimes it’s a tray of baking soda with droppers and dishes of different coloured vinegars. Naturally, some creative table set-ups are more open-ended and some lend themselves more to a finished product, but either way, the purpose is for Gracen to explore materials, experiment, and create freely while enjoying the process.
Today, Miss G and I did a little bit of shopping for this year’s Valentine’s Day projects (yes, we’re thinking about it already), and though I intended on holding off on a Valentine’s themed creative table for a while yet, my little lady popped up from her afternoon nap and her first words were, “I want to craft now. Grae Grae gets her new craft things!” And that was that. A Valentine’s creative table it was.
Together we gathered up all sorts of pink and red craft supplies… Smelly markers, sparkly foam shapes, bingo dabbers, stamps and a stamp pad, doilies, construction paper hearts, and some glue.
As she does with most creative projects, Grae dove right in.
The immediate favourite? The foam stickers. She plower through the initial stash and asked for more right away.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, she came and went as she pleased, adding to her pieces as she wished.
Here are a few of the pieces she declared ‘finished’…
While it won’t be around until the big day (I try to change up our creative table supplies every 4 to 7 days or so), there’s no doubt it will be enjoyed, added to, and revisited for several days to come.
♥
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