Olympic-Inspired Painting

What do you get when you mix a Langley play date with a closet overhaul? Olympic-inspired painting, of course!

Haha! I’d love to say I’m joking, but sadly, I’m not…

Admittedly, I have not watched one single bit of Olympics coverage this time around. Until this morning, that is. Grae and I headed out to Langley to visit my friend Steph and her little man / Gracen’s favourite hug and kiss recipient, Tate. While we were there, Steph had the Olympics playing in the background and I remembered how much I love the Olympics (and how much I’ve been missing out on by not watching).

Fast forward to this afternoon.

Now back at home, I was attempting {for the second day in a row} to reorganize the one and only {catch all} storage closet our teeny tiny house has. I came across the pipe insulation Pinterest told me to use as a wreath form (works terribly, by the way… my advice is to splurge and spend the extra few bucks!) and was feeling badly about just turfing it when I had an idea… We could chop it up and use the pieces as stamps!

So, long story short, with the Olympics on my mind and pipe insulation in my hand, I thought it’d be fun to have Gracen paint something reminiscent of the Olympic rings. Here’s how our project took shape…

First we gathered our pipe insulation, our IKEA MALA paints (which coordinate perfectly with the Olympic ring colours), some card stock, a pair of heavy duty scissors, and a tray.

Next, I chopped up the pipe insulation into pieces approximately 3 inches long.

We gave our paints a good shake, squeezed out a dollop of each, and placed one insulation stamp on each paint blob.

Then my little lady set off to work on her olympic-inspired painting…

This is her first completed masterpiece.

They progressively got more abstract after that…

Here are her four pieces in the order she did them, starting from the top left and moving clockwise. While they certainly don’t look just like the Olympic rings, I’d say they definitely have an Olympic vibe to them, wouldn’t you?

And of course, the most important part – she had fun. Just look at that silly little face!

♥

While I know that pipe insulation isn’t something everyone just has on hand, many other household objects could be substituted… Cannelloni noodles would work. As would paper towel or toilet paper rolls… And heck, if you’re feeling crazy, you could even chop off a little bit of the end of a pool noodle. ☺

Simple Fun: Rock Painting

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Every year as a child, my brother and I would spend a week or two at my Baba’s (which means grandmother in Ukranian) house a few hours from home. My Baba, who is probably one of the most talented, creative, do-it-all women I know, always made sure we had adventures to go on, activities to do, and projects on the go. One of the things we’d always do was paint rocks. It’s such a simple idea, but it was something I truly looked forward to each year.

So today, I got out a couple painting projects of my own and set Grae up with a little rock painting station.

First we gathered our materials… A few big rocks we found around the yard (washed and dried), some acrylic paint (kids’ washable paint works too but the designs disappear with rain), a few paint brushes, and an old towel.

Gracen thought it was pretty special that she had her very own painting station just like Mama. She’d paint a rock, then move it to the edge of the towel to dry, and then paint another. And when the tops were dry, she flipped them over and painted the bottoms.

Fresh out of rocks but still wanting to paint, I gave her a cement block we had lying around.

And after it was painted in pastels, it was time for a strawberry creamsicle break. The verdict? She loved them so much that she asked for another. My first instinct was to say, “Let’s have something different to eat now”, but then I reminded myself that all they are is plain organic yogurt and strawberries pureed. So two popsicles it was.

These are our little artist’s finished pieces.

After they were completely dry, we found special little places around the yard to tuck them in. With these little surprises hiding around the yard, maybe weeding won’t be so daunting…

♥

Moon Painting

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I’ve had tons of fun little activities and cooking projects I’ve wanted to do with Miss G over the last couple of weeks, but all the gorgeous sunshiny weather we’ve been having has allowed for little more than bike rides, outdoor play, visits to the beach, and afternoons at the pool. Darn weather!

Though we’ve been soaking up every moment of our summer, today’s dreariness was a welcomed change. Our house was cool, and we stayed in all morning playing and having fun {without melting}.

The first little activity we tried was what I call moon painting. It’s super simple and involves three basic things everyone with munchkins probably has at home – a tray of baking soda, food colouring dyed vinegar, and a few old medicine droppers / syringes.

See why I call it moon painting? The vinegar and soda mixture bubbles up and leaves little crater-covered splotches when it settles back down again.

Gracen really, really enjoyed this activity. I demonstrated how to using the dropper, and she picked it up very quickly (although it did become harder near the end when there wasn’t as much of the vinegar mixture left). She’d drop a little vinegar onto her tray, then point in excitement as it fizzed up in mound of bubbles. Afterwards, she’d announce the colour of her newest splot.

Pinch…

Drop…

And watch the bubbles!

Moon craters in the making.

We did try using the syringes too, but we quickly learned that they led to great big swamps rather than moon craters, which caused less of a fizz.

So back to the dropper we went.

The end result was a tray covered in colourful craters and a little lady who would have done continued moon painting for the rest of the morning given the chance.

Here’s a little video of Grae hard at play:

And the best part about this activity? Because both vinegar and baking soda are very effective natural cleaners, clean up is a breeze! Who would have thought your little one’s art project would equal a newly-shined kitchen sink?

♥

A Painting Project

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The other day, while shopping for craft supplies, Miss G spotted a shelf of mini wooden bird houses and immediately got excited. Having painted her own bird house before, she knew exactly what these unfinished little bird homes meant – getting messy and having fun, painting-style. Knowing that her cousins would be arriving in a few days, we decided to pick up four. Gracen was very serious about selecting four different houses and was just as excited to choose paintbrushes, paint, and bird seed. Upon returning home {to Grandma’s house}, I quietly tucked the bag of goodies away until the cousins arrived and we were in need of an activity.

With an hour or so to spare this morning and a little drizzle falling from the sky, we decided it was a good time to bring out the supplies. We set up shop out on Grandma Sue’s patio and let the kiddos dive in.

Grae was an old pro. She very seriously collected paint on her brush and stroked it onto her house, trying to fill in all of the spaces.

Korbin had a plan. Each side would be a separate colour. And when he had finished that task, he brushed some white over top to “make it look cooler”.

Miss Kins had never painted before, and although she dived in eagerly, she wasn’t thrilled about getting paint on herself. She painted a little bit of the roof, and then called it quits.

Chay didn’t join us immediately, but once he saw what was going on, he was up at the table in no time and was all about painting the inside of his house.

Taa-daaa! The finished products. I’d say the birds will be flocking to these little masterpieces, wouldn’t you?

♥

Morning Painting

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Yesterday Grae and I took a little walk and picked up a few craft supplies and sensory bin items along the way. Besides a few squishy ocean animals she picked, one of Grae’s favourite items was a little wooden birdhouse she chose out herself. It was just begging for some colour, so today we started our day off right – with some painting. I gave the birdhouse a quick base coat and then Little G got busy. She was very serious about it all and pleaded for more when she had used up all of her paint.

Perhaps she’ll be an artist like her Baba one day?

♥

The Simplest Toddler Activity E.V.E.R.

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Today I introduced Gracen to mess-free sidewalk painting. She loved it so much that she’d finally set down her brush, go running towards her sandbox, suddenly shout “More! More!”, and then turn right around and head back to painting.

I’m always surprised by how many activities from my Kindergarten teaching years can be adapted to entertain and engage my one year old (yay play-based learning!) This activity is something I did with my students to practice number and letter printing and recognition, but it is just as great when done simply for fun. It’s incredibly simple, requires only two things, and has virtually no mess / clean-up. What’s not to love, right?

The trick to mess-free sidewalk painting is that there is absolutely no paint involved. All you need is a paint brush of some sort (I find bigger wall painting brushes work better than artist’s brushes, and rollers are fun too) and a container of water to act as paint. The water will mark the sidewalk, and slowly disappear, leaving a blank canvas ready for more painting fun.

With summer just around the bend, I think this activity will be in regular rotation very soon… Bring on the heat!

Side note: We tried painting the sidewalk in both the sun and shade today and found a significant difference in how long our pictures lasted, so that could be something fun for older kids to explore.

Toddler Painting

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After a long string of beautiful days spent outdoors, today’s rain brought on a welcomed change – a day indoors filled with hide-and-seek, books, baking, and arts and crafts. Gracen LOVES painting, so while she napped, I gathered a few materials in preparation for a messy paint-filled afternoon.

We started out by using straws. (Have I mentioned that this girl has a thing for straws? Naturally, it was her first choice.) I plopped a few little drops of paint on the paper and demonstrated moving the paint by blowing through the straw. You should have seen her gorgeous little eyes light up! Although she was able to do it, I would definitely try to have a much longer, larger straw next time as it took a lot of effort and aim to really be effective. (Do they still have those giant Slurpee straws at 7-11? Because if so, they would be perfect!)
Eventually, she moved to just dragging her straw through the paint, which gave a just as good (if not better) result. As you can see, she was pretty thrilled with it all:

With our straw painting up on the drying rack, we moved on to using Q-tips. I dropped little splots of paint on her paper, handed over the Q-tips, and let her go. She set to work without a moment’s hesitation, and announced, “More!” as soon as each paint blob had been smeared.
Next, we tried sponges. This one was especially fun because she ‘jumped’ her duck and rabbit-shaped sponges from one paint splot to the next, leaving a rainbow-coloured trail behind them.

After A LOT of jumping, we moved on to painting with a golf ball (marbles work well too!) I trimmed our paper slightly so that it could fit into a deep baking pan, splattered some paint on top, and placed the ball inside.
With just a couple of instructions, Grae figured out just what to do. She gently tilted the pan back and forth, running the ball through the paint splots. The result was really cool – little multicoloured tracks all over the page.

With our paper fully covered in tracks, I decided to grab a pinecone (a rare case when having little bowls filled with collections of things stored in your kitchen is actually convenient) to use as a brush of sorts. Since we were nearing the end of our painting afternoon and we’d already used a lot of the paint, I handed over the entire tray and let Gracen go to town. She dipped and stamped and dipped and drug her pinecone until there wasn’t much left of it.
Haha! I know that this would be some parents’ worst nightmare, but I’m a fan of getting messy once and a while. Plus, what are you going to do? Let all that leftover paint go to waste?! With the go ahead from Mama, Gracen cautiously tipped the tray of paint over onto the brown packaging paper we were using to protect the table.

No painting afternoon is complete without finger painting, is it?
And here are the finished masterpieces:

I’d say it was a successful rainy afternoon. ☺

Finger Painted Butterflies

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Crafternoon project numéro deux involved lots of paint, pre-cut out paper butterflies, chubby little fingers, some symmetry, and a whole lot of mess. Of course Miss G was all over it.

Squeeeeeeeze…

Spread it around…

Marvel at the beauty of your artwork while whispering ‘wooooooooooooow’…

Then fold it over and smush!

Open it up to reveal your beautiful butterfly!

Now do it all again.

Over and over if you wish.

Finger Paint Fun

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Today was a freezing cold, wet, windy day in Vancouver. It was miserable, really. But it couldn’t have been more perfect. Gracen and I had a wonderful day. We stayed in our pajamas until afternoon, played games and acted silly, read book after book, ate a delicious lunch, and got messy with some serious finger painting action. I don’t know what’s taken so long… We’ve painted her hands and feet and stamped them, we painted with brushes, we’ve done mess-free finger painting in zip-close bags, but we’ve never done full-on finger painting. My poor girl’s 18 months old and she’s never finger painted before! Bad mommy. So today we got started. And Grae loved it.

Ready and waiting.

Cautious in the beginning.

Getting into it.

Woohoo! This is fun!

Amidst a masterpiece.

Tie-dyed hands.

Le pièce de résistance.

So proud. (It turned out so beautifully that we headed out to Ikea to pick out a frame for it. There’s something special about having your little one’s artwork up on the walls…)

I told Grae she could choose its spot and showed her several potential places on her bedroom walls, but she simply shook her head at each suggestion. She took the frame from my hands and placed it on top of her little shelf where she insists on keeping all three of her other frames (I’ve tried moving one to a new location while she’s in another room on several occasions, but I always come back to all three back on the shelf).

I see much more finger painting in our future…

Homemade Finger Paint

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In preparation for Little G’s Valentine’s Day tea, this morning we experimented with making our own finger paint. I found the recipe on Pinterest a long while back, and knew it would come in handy one day soon.

Gracen carefully added all of our ingredients into a large measuring cup first…

And then enthusiastically mixed it up!

Then we warmed the mixture on the stove…

Separated it into small bowls, added a few drops of food colouring, and stirred it well. It looks pretty, right?

We’ll have to use the paint a little more (right now we’ve just got in zip-close bags for mess-free painting), but I’m not sure that I’m sold on this recipe. Although it’s very quick and easy to make, uses ingredients that most people already have in their kitchen, and has a great texture while warm, ours turned out like Jello when cooled. It did soften up again when stirred well, but I think next time we’ll try cutting down the amount of corn starch a little. The other important thing that the recipe doesn’t mention is that the mixture needs to be stirred constantly while heating. We didn’t do that the first time around and ended up with a clumpy, bumpy mess! We’ll have to see what it looks like when we actually put it on paper…