During our recent visit to Urban Source (I feel like a lot of my upcoming posts will start this way), Gracen selected several sheets of coloured acetate (basically a brightly-hued transparent film) to bring home.  Right away, two activities came to mind…  One of which was this window cling art.

During nap time, I used different objects from around the house as tracers to cut the large sheets into an assortment of shapes.  I placed the shapes, along with a spray bottle filled with water, on a tray next to our large front window, and left it there for my curious little monkey to discover upon her awakening.

Of course she beelined to the tray the moment she was up.  I explained that we could use water to help the shapes stick to the window, and she was off.  A little mist….

And stick a shape on top. 

Voila!  Instant window art. Super fun and super easy.

It didn’t take her long to realize that looking through the shapes was pretty cool too…  “Mama!  Everything is all pink!”

Of course the previous method works well for seeing the outside world in pink, but this is much more effective for making your house turn pink.

The really cool thing about the fact that our shapes are primary colours is that they lend themselves to colour mixing very well.  Grae was amazed at all of the colours she could make by simply overlapping two shapes.

And after experimenting with colour mixing, she tried sorting the pieces into groups based on shapes and colours.

And soon after that, the pieces started becoming pictures of things. The triangles stacked on top of one another became her tree and the tower of large circles became her snowman (if you look closely, you’ll see she is in the process of adding buttons to her snowman’s belly).

This was such a fun and simple activity and as long as you can deal with dirty windows in the name of play, it can stay out for several days to be revisited over time.  The other thing I like about it is that if you don’t have coloured acetate just hanging around the house, you can always reuse project covers, plastic duo tangs (or, as I’ve learned from my American friends, plastic “prongy folders”), scraps of vellum scrapbooking paper, or even plastic packaging.

♥

On a side note, I know that I have seen this idea around the web before… Trouble is, I cannot for the life of me find the link I’m thinking of!  If you know, please pass the info my way as I’d love to give credit where credit’s due.