Sticky Pics

On one of our many rainy days recently, I blindly (and with no small amount of desperation) plunged my hand into a tub of craft supplies and pulled out a packet of coloured matchsticks. This sort of lucky dip is not uncommon for me, because otherwise my head spins with ideas of things to do with my kids (thank you Pinterest!) and it takes me ages to choose one! My strategy in this situation is to do a lucky dip and we then have to do some sort of activity/game/craft with whatever I pull out.
So, coloured matchsticks...
Um...
Don't you just love it when your mind, which was previously jammed full of ideas, suddenly empties out completely leaving you totally blank? What was I going to do with matchsticks?


Eden solved it for me: "Mum, let's make some sticky pictures!" (meaning pictures with sticks).
We grabbed some construction paper as it's sturdier than normal paper, some PVA glue, and a texta and got to work. I drew some simple shapes under the direction of my daughters, and they outlined the shapes with PVA. Then it was a simple matter of filling the lines in with the matchsticks.

Rainy Day Play Series: Pumpkin Exploration

            

Winter is well and truly upon us here in the Land Down Under! Which, roughly translated for our outside-of-Aus friends, means that when it rains, it rains constantly. Con-stant-ly.

For those of us with young kids, this can potentially spell disaster. Unless you have pumpkins. Naturally.

Coloured Sand Pictures

Unsure of how to use your new Coloured Sand (see this post for the how-to)? 
We persevered with our planned glitter art, using the coloured sand instead. Eden and I sat down together with Hubby and Ava to make some lovely sandy cards for our family. All you need to do the same is cardstock, a pencil, white glue, a large flat container and your coloured sand.

Mess-Less Toddler Paint Bag

Ava (16 months) LOVES to paint. Man oh man, that girl is into all things arty; the messier, the better. Only one small hitch. I hate the clean up. With Eden (3 1/2 years), no problem! She's super neat, so clean up is always minimal. On the other hand, you could give Ava a thimble-full of paint and five minutes later she would have it all over herself, the couch, your clothes, your keys, the fridge and the curtains - that is, if she didn't eat it straight away. 

Solution? A Paint Bag! 

Simply squeeze some non-toxic paint into a ziplock bag, seal with masking tape/duct tape and you're ready to go!

Winter Chalk Art

  

Oh, the limitations of wintry weather! Although my daughters love playing in the rainy weather all geared up in their raincoats and gumboots (Ava would sit in muddy puddles all day if we let her) the parks aren't too much fun with rain-covered slides and swings, and going to playcentres becomes pricey. So, desperate Mumma that I am, I decided to break out the sidewalk chalk and invite my girls to go nuts redecorating our garage door with it. 

An Invitation to Paint

Sometimes, it's all in the approach. I have found that if I present an activity to my kids in a visually appealing way, they are on board! This is especially effective if I set it up as a surprise - they go to bed for a nap, wake up and ... oh, look! It's a painting station!

Bits N' Pieces Post

Here's a quick look at three simple, quick and cheap activities you can do with your munchkins when time, money and mess are not on the table!

Apology, Announcement, Activity

Apology: We're baaaaack!!! So sorry to all for my long absence, I have been very unwell for the past few weeks and just could not do basics, let along stuff that requires... the thinking... stuff.... hmm. A HUGE thank you to all our friends and family who pulled together to help us get through, and an especially warm, heartfelt thank you to my wonderful parents for their selfless help during the past few weeks - we couldn't have gotten by without you. Dad, thank you for all the 1 1/2 hour round trips back and forth to help us out, the trips to the chemist to get my medication, the grocery stops and lunch pick-ups. Mum, thank you for the sleep overs (which let me sleep in), caring for the girls, driving me to and from the doctor and the hospital, and for all round being the kind of mother to me that I hope to be to my daughters. Love you both ridiculously.

Announcement: All of which leads me to the 'announcement' portion of this post... my husband and I are delighted to announce that we are expecting our third Happy Little Munchkin early next year! We are so excited, and are eagerly anticipating our little bubba's birth - even more than we're anticipating the end of the horrible, horrible morning sickness. All you lovely mums out there, please shoot some advice my way about coping with the nausea. I've (finally) managed to keep down fluids and some foods but it's still touch and go at times, and if you've been there yourself I would love to hear from you. 

Painting on a Grand Scale

I am hoping to make BIG paintings a regular part of my daughter's lives, partly for the memories they create, partly because they make for some great art, but mostly because they are so darn FUN!

As it is, painting is always encouraged in our home; Ava (1) is happy to paint with whatever on whatever at any time, but I think that Eden (3) was getting frustrated with painting on a small-ish scale, or otherwise painting on paper. We had done some canvas painting before, and painting on hardboards, but I thought it was time to change it up.

Buying pre-framed and primed canvas can be pricey, especially large ones, so I was super excited when I found ours at the Reject Shop for $18 for a 75cm x 100cm canvas. We got three (one for each set of grandparents and one to keep).

We used a bit of watered down poster paint/tempera paint in the three colours she chose: I only watered it down so that it was a more runny consistency which makes it easier for little artists to spread across big areas.

Lego Rubbings

Do you remember discovering crayon rubbings as a kid? I remember being in Primary School when my teacher gave us all licence to take crayons and paper and do rubbings of whatever we wanted, inside and outside. We loved exploring textures and discovering that some things made interesting rubbings (leaves, concrete, etc) and others... not so much (tabletops, vinyl floor, etc).
With a view to introducing Eden to this same type of texture exploration, I thought I'd introduce her to the world of crayon rubbings with a Lego board.

Paint: Experiment # 1

Eye droppers are handy little things. We've used eye droppers for all sorts of activities in our home (except as an actual eye dropper, oddly enough), and the most recent of these activities was in a watercolour experiment.

Little Miss E. was all set to do some standard watercolour painting whilst Mummy was cooking, until she spied the eye dropper and asked to use it (she loves transferring coloured water with them, see here for an example with a medicine dropper). Everything was already set up for watercolour painting, so I suggested experimenting with the paint using the eye dropper. Oh boy, did she go for it!

Paper Plate Flowers

Paper plates are a staple in my supply cupboard. I use them all the time - for parties, yes, but also as makeshift paint palettes and for making face masks, hats, and now flowers!

Get Your Inner Artist On!

Who knew that watercolour paper was sooo expensive? It is! From my point of view, $15 for a dozen A5 sized sheets is steep. So when I spotted an A5 size pad (12 sheets) for a happy two-buckeroos, I snatched it up like I was in training for a Gucci samples sale. But what to do with it? The obvious - a watercolour painting - seemed a little uninspired, so we changed it up a bit.

Got some toilet rolls set aside? Get painting!

I saw this great idea here at Mama Mia's Heart 2 Heart and basically copied it! I got a few toilet rolls grouped together with an elastic band, stapled them together (so it was more secure, 'cause they were shifting around), set my little Miss E. up with some paper and paint, and away she went.

A little tip: any time we do stamping with paint, I use a meat tray with a dampened sponge on it to hold the paint. It acts like a stamp pad, but for paint instead of ink.