Letter H Craft: Hotdogs

This year I'm the nursery coordinator for our chapter of our homeschool co-op, Classical Conversations. Part of that job involves coming up with simple "Letter Crafts" for each week. I haven't posted about them so far because for the most part, I have been using other people's ideas.

(like this cute little apple tree craft that I found at Learn, Create, Love)

For letter "H" though we made a hot dog craft that I came up with, and since the kids got a kick out of it, I thought I would share.  I made an easy template for the bun and hot dog and cut copies out of card stock and construction paper to be glued together.  Then the kids glued on pieces of yellow and red yarn for the condiments and bent the sides of the bun upward to look like a real hot dog.

Pretend food is the best!

MaryAnn F. Kohl: Art with Young Children and a Giveaway

It's a treat to be able to interview someone you admire who is an expert in a field you care about.  That's why, even though this is a busy season in my life, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to interview MaryAnn F. Kohl, author of over 20 award-winning books about children's art and a contributor to Family Fun magazine (among many other distinctions).

MaryAnn recently sent me a copy of Scribble Art to review, and the girls and I have been having a ball trying out the activities there.  So far, we've done salt painting, made an easy piñata, and tried tissue paper collages (my favorite so far!)

The thing I love about MaryAnn's books is her obvious and genuine care for children.  It is tempting as a parent or a teacher to gravitate toward art projects that "turn out well," with end-products that make adults feel that the time has been worthwhile.  MaryAnn, on the other hand,  sees art from the perspective of a child and knows that it is the creative exploration that is often very special to children. That's why in Scribble Art, you'll find oodles of ideas for open-ended art experiences.

Who knew that there were so many possibilities for art mediums and canvases around the house?  Liquid starch, flour, sawdust- even insulated telephone cable find their way into over 100 activities that children can do independently for the sake of fun and beauty.

I'm finding it can be a great boon to have this arsenal of fun lying about the house, by the way.  The other day, as I was making dinner and needed to work uninterrupted, I found the tissue paper collages to do the trick nicely!

So let's turn now to MaryAnn and hear her perspective on doing art with young children.

1.  Can you tell us a little about the role art has played in your own life personally, both as a child and an adult?

When I was little, I was constantly coloring in coloring books and on blank paper, and at times, on the walls. My mom provided me with scissors, glue, paper, and wonderful crayons all at my reach on a shelf we called the coloring shelf. As I grew, I had some talent with drawing, though I was never super talented, but I enjoyed it enough that I was often complimented on my work. This encouraged me to volunteer to do covers for classroom books or decorate invitations for the Halloween Party. When I began teaching, I found that even the most rowdy child would quiet down and become focused when doing art, and by art, I mean actually creating unique work with materials on hand, not copying something I the teacher had made. So I made sure art was a big part of everything we did. When I had my own kids, art was important from the beginning. Playdough, painting, coloring, and collage were a constant for my kids. They are both very good at art now, and though I don't think it is because of all the activities we had specifically, I do believe that their creativity was honored which has inspired them to go forward in life with that ability.

2.  Each of your books makes a unique contribution.  What about Scribble Art do you especially like?

Scribble Art was the first book I wrote, and has sentimental connections back to my teaching years where all these ideas were tested with kindergarten through grade three children, children I knew and loved. I choose these projects because they were open-ended and I was so excited to write a book to encourage creativity for children where their own unique artwork rather than copying adult made cutesy projects. The book was published in 1985 and it is still my favorite and still selling well around the world (in 9 languages no less).

3.  What tips would you give parents for doing art with very young children?

Start small! Rather than putting out jars of paint for a painting project, start with some shallow jar lids filled with about 1/8" of paint, perhaps three colors tops. Use small brushes or cotton buds for beginning. On the other hand, using big brushes and a bucket of water outdoors will paint thousands of rocks and squares in a sidewalk. Big or small, messy or tidy, start with fewer materials in the beginning, and add more in as the children become adept at using them and learn to handle the wonder of it all.

4. As a mother, I often feel my blood pressure rise when art starts to get messy because I envision myself spending the rest of the day cleaning it up.  I would love to hear about how you dealt with the tension between creative art and cleaning up messes when you were a parent of young children.

Do messy type art on days you are ready to handle it. Otherwise, skip it for the time being. The smartest thing is to set up the art area ahead of time to catch the mess. For example, tape an old shower curtain to the floor or over a wall near their little work table, or keep a damp sponge on their work area for them to wipe their fingers; wear a fitted apron or cover rather than a big shirt with rolled up sleeves that get in the way. Plan ahead to prevent problems. Sometimes I put a loop of masking tape on the bottom of a paint cup so it won't tip over, or certainly only fill it half way, not to the brim. Ideas like this make things easier. And if possible, working outdoors is always nice and much easier to clean up. Encourage the kids to help with the clean up too. Part of being a child and being given wonderful experiences is to participate in setting up, mixing, cleaning up, etc. They love to wash the tables with a big soapy sponge!

5.  Would you also give us some tips on doing open-ended art with young children in a group setting?

I like to place materials on the center of a table that everyone can gather 'round together (usually no more than 6 at the table at a time). Everyone can reach in and use what is available, and everyone cleans up their own mess. I rarely show them any finished product they should be trying to achieve; I would rather just see what they do with the materials. Most materials shout out how they should be used, so you don't have to say much. For example, if you have contact paper peeled away and sticky, and there are cotton balls and scraps of paper on the table, the kids will automatically stick the cotton balls and scraps to the sticky background. Let the materials you choose dictate how the activity will go. Sometimes you need to give a little demo or a brief explanation so they aren't left completely in the dark with new or unusual materials. But try not to make a sampale for them to copy, because they will copy it, and at that point, the whole purpose of creativity and unique thinking has gone out the window.

6.  Which of your books / activities do you especially recommend for the youngest crowd?  (2 to 5 year olds)

Preschool Art is the best book for the 2-5 year old group, but it costs more than Scribble Art, and Scribble Art would do very well for that group too. My website also offers reduced price eBooks, which is another option.

7.  Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would love for everyone who is interested to join my mailing list. I send out a very nice newsletter once a month called the ArtsyKidsNEWS, with four or five art projects that go well with that particular month. Halloween/Autumn/Harvest is coming up soon and will be sent by email, free of course, at the end of September. Each month one person wins a free art book! Sign up on my website, home page, lower right corner:

http://www.brightring.com

I'd love for your readers to visit my Facebook page too. 

Go here:

https://www.facebook.com/maryannfkohl?ref=hl

or go here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/MaryAnn-Faubion-Kohl/84206837844?ref=hl

MaryAnn has such a gentle touch in her thinking about children and mothering.  Wouldn't you loved to have had her for a teacher (or a mom-coach :)?  To hear more of MaryAnn's kind voice take a look at the beautiful interview that Tinkerlab did recently.

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MaryAnn has graciously offered to give a copy of her book Mudworks (the bilingual edition) to one reader here at Having Fun at Home. To be entered in the giveaway, take a look at MaryAnn's website Brightring  and leave a comment on this post about something you saw there.  (make sure to leave an email address so I can contact you if you win)

For additional entries,
1) Like MaryAnn's Facebook page.
2) Like Having Fun at Home's Facebook page

Leave an extra comment for each of the above.

The giveaway will close at midnight on October 1st.  At that time I will chose a winner using Random.org

Update: Giveaway closed.  Winner is #21 Jennifer!  

Invitation to Blow Bubbles

This set-up was part of the girls' joint birthday party that we had the other day .  We filled the sandbox with homemade bubble solution (corn syrup helps the bubbles to not pop as easily).

The bubbles kept some of the kids busy while others played the one and only party game  (more about that later!)

Spray Away Chalk Letters

We use spray bottles a lot around our house.  Most often we use them to help de-tangle and de-frizz our curly haired girls.  (we also use them to spray out wrinkles because we hate to iron!)

One problem though...spray bottles are just too fun.  It's hard for little girls to resist spraying them all around the house.

The last time one of them gave the playroom floor a good soaking and caused the other one to slip and go flying I inwardly vowed that I was going to find some fun outlets for spray bottle spray that wouldn't make me grumpy.

For our first non-grumpy spray bottle activity, I tried a simple literacy idea.  G is often better at telling me the sounds that a letter makes than remembering its name.

So for a little review, I wrote out the letters of the alphabet in chalk on our back patio and gave the girls each a spray bottle. When it was their turn, I named a letter and their job was to find and spray it away.  We went back and forth until all the letters were erased.

 Simple, fun, and no grumpy mom at the end= what I was shooting for.

Do you have any more spray bottle ideas for us that fit this equation?

Sticker Resist T-Shirts

Ever since I discovered the fun sticker and tape resist art technique that bloggers like Putti  Prapancha have featured, I've been giddy with all the possibilities.  We've done thank you cards, and tape resist collages, and just yesterday we tried our hand at sticker resist t-shirts.

Michaels has been had some pretty decent t-shirt sales, and I bought up a bunch of them the other day.  I got out our big pot of foam alphabet stickers and let the girls dig through to find the letters of their name.  We made sure that the stickers were pressed on nice and firm and that the names were centered decently well.

Then I got out the acrylic and fabric paints we happened to have around the house (acrylic paint works just fine on fabric, by the way...the only real advantage of fabric paint is the softness and flexibility) and told the girls to dab on colors close to the foam stickers.

They needed to guidance (and help in little G's case) getting the paint into all the little corners and crevices, but we got there eventually.

Since the girls like using lots of paint, I let it dry for about 4 hours before I ventured to take off the stickers.  I think next time, I would choose slightly larger alphabet stickers, but mostly, we were pretty happy with our t-shirts.  I like how they look kind of like a celebration of children's arts and crafts.

Excuse the bed heads on our top picture; we were excited to try them on as soon as the girls got up this morning. :)

Leaf Man Activity : A Book and a Craft for Lois Ehlert

I know we've done a successful project with the toddlers in my home school co-op group when I overhear them reminiscing about it together later on.
  "Remember when we made leaf man?"
"Yeah.  Mine was a leaf LADY!"
 I overheard this conversation among them this past week, and I knew then that it had been a good activity.

The Book
 Leaf Man was such a simple activity that I hadn't bothered to blog about it, but since it seems to have been a hit, I thought I should.

First, we read the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  The story is pretty simple; not much happens, but the illustrations are the beautiful nature collages that Ehlert is known for.  It seemed to capture the imagination of the toddlers well enough, at any rate.

The Craft
After story time, we went outside to collect nature materials to make our own little leaf men.  Leaves, sticks, seed pods, lichen, and the like.
I cut out a basic gingerbread man shape out of brown paper and attached it to the end of a popsicle stick.
We talked with the children to help them arrange their nature materials on the gingerbread men and glue them down.  Each little man was finished off with two plastic googly eyes.
After the glue dried they were all set to act out the story from the book or to make their own!

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle: Art Project

I figured Eric Carle's The Tiny Seed would capture the attention of the two-year-olds I would be teaching at last week's homeschool co-op.  The bigger challenge was finding a craft or art project that would be simple enough for toddlers but still related to the book.

We decided to make a flower collage out of paper we colored with the shaving cream marbling technique my girls had enjoyed so much last year.  The marbling makes a fun textured look that is similar to Carle's art style.

I gave each child a cookie sheet and squirted a pile of shaving cream on top.  I asked the toddlers to show me where to squeeze some paint, and then let them stir the paint into the shaving cream with the back end of a paintbrush.

The trick is to stop them stirring before the paint is too mixed with the shaving cream.  You get a much better marbled effect if it's not too homogeneous.

It's also helpful to make sure that the shaving cream is spread over a large enough area so that it will cover an entire piece of paper.

After the paint was mixed, I gave each child a piece of white card stock and told them to press it straight down onto the shaving cream.

We lifted off the card stock and wiped the shaving cream off the paper.  (Try to get as much off in the first wipe as possible to keep the blurring minimal).

After the cardstock had dried, I cut out a flower center, petals, stem, and leaves.  The toddlers used glue sticks to glue them on to a brown piece of construction paper.

What other fun activities, crafts, or art projects have you tried to go along with Eric Carle books?  

Rainbow Hats from Egg Cartons

This really was kind of a ridiculous idea.  I'm not really sure where it came from except that a lot of my blogging friends have been doing egg carton activities and rainbow activities lately.  I made the connection that there are six colors in the rainbow, and that there are six eggs on each side of a carton, and decided we should make rainbow hats.

I cut a carton in half and removed the middle egg dividers.  Each girl got to paint half of the carton with the colors of the rainbow.

After they had dried, I punched a hole in each end with a hole punch and tied a piece of ribbon to each hole.  I tied the ribbons in a bow under each girls chin to make a little rainbow hat.

Something about the hats gave M the giggles.

Little G though stayed very pensive.  She apparently takes her rainbows very seriously.

I was a little disappointed that the girls didn't play much with the hats after they tried them on the first time.  Oh well, maybe they'll pick them up again in a week or so.  Or maybe this is just one of my crazy ideas that was fun to make, but dies a quick death (I've definitely had those before)

Have you had any simple costume ideas lately?

DIY Suncatchers with Clear Glue

I was thinking the other day about the Elmer's glue suncatchers my aunt used to make with my cousin when she little.  I had been trying to think of something colorful and a little translucent we could make them with when I noticed some pretty and bright drinking straws at the grocery store.

Here's what we did:

First, we filled a yogurt container lid with clear Elmer's glue. You can use the regular opaque kind also, but it won't be perfectly clear when dry.  (Even toddlers love squeezing the glue bottle)

Then we cut up the straws into little pieces.  (Be prepared for the straw pieces to "jump" around when you cut them. )

You can arrange the straws in a design or just sprinkle them randomly.  It will look prettiest if you fill as much of the lid as possible.

Set to dry.  It will take several days, maybe even a week, to harden.  Pull the suncatcher out of the plastic lid.  It may curl a little after you take it out.  If so, you can put it under a heavy book for a couple of hours to flatten it out.

Use a needle to push a piece of thread through the top of your suncatcher and attach to a suction hook so that you can hang it on a window.  So pretty!

For another drinking straw activity, try using them with playdough!

DIY Playdoh Toy: Use Straws

A big bag of bright straws for a dollar fifty caught my eye the other day at HEB.  First, we used them to make suncatchers (more on that later...the glue is still drying).  But today, I decided to cut the straws to all different sizes and take out the playdoh.

The girls set to work seeing what they could create.  Pushing the straws into the playdoh is a pleasing sensory experience, and the possibilities for fun art and play are pretty limitless.

I particularly like the lacy look of a sheet of pressed doh after you poke the circles out with a pen point (or something).

Flowers on our Sticky Wall

We had fun with our sticky table a while back, and since then I've been inspired by Mama Smiles' post to do a sticky wall.

Since it's a beautiful Spring here in Texas with lots of bluebonnets, evening primrose, and paintbrush everywhere we drive, I thought it would be fun to make a sticky wall garden.

We used muffin liners for the flowers, and the girls had fun painting and coloring them.  Unfortunately, the liners flatten out quite a bit when you do this, but they still looked mostly "floral" even after they were smushed.

I cut stems and leaves out of construction paper and the girls had fun "planting" the flowers on the contact paper that I had taped on the wall.

I think they look kind of like hollyhocks!

Three Dimensional Wrapping Paper

For some reason I had always had in my mind the idea that wrapping paper needs to be flat.  But of course it doesn't.  I recently wrapped up a gift in white paper and let the girls glue on all kinds of things:

pom poms,
confetti
ribbons
and googly eyes!

Have you ever let your kids go three-dimensional with their gift decorating?  What things have you glued on?  

Post-it Flags on the Window

 M came up with this idea herself, and showed it to her little sister.  She and G had the window well-decorated before I even saw what they were up to.  (the post-it note flags were sitting out in the play room, leftover from a craft we did last week- shows you our pace of cleaning up around here, I'm afraid).

Collaborative Art: Watercolor Resist Collage

Here's a project that my four-year-old and two-year-old both participated in, and I think would have worked well if we had a wider age range too.

Toddler Craft: Post-it Flag Lions

Lions are some of our favorite animals at the zoo, and it seems that the girls are often talking about them or incorporating them into their pretend play.  The other day as I was sorting through our junk drawer while the girls were roaring at eachother, and saw the yellow post-it note flags. It struck me that here was an easy craft idea!

Sticky Table Ideas

I think I was first introduced to the concept of a sticky table over at Chasing Cheerios.  Since that time though, I've seen lots of variations including a fun pumpkin vine sticky table at Teach Preschool.

Catch the Shark

We have a new game around here. It involves exercise, uproarious laughter, and cleaning -believe it or not.  Just a simple thing, but it helps cure cabin fever when we've been in the house for a long time.

When I vacuum with my cordless sweeper (It's a Shark- I love it for a quick pick-up) the girls chase the vacuum and try to push the off button (which is on top of the sweeper and easily accessible) while I dart and dash madly about the room trying to clean as much of the carpet as I can before the vacuum gets "caught."  We have a fairly large living room; so we can get some pretty amazing exercise this way.

(No one sponsored this post- I just really love my sweeper and this fun little game :-) 

Sending Get-Well-Soon Hugs

I really like finding new ways for the girls to send get-well wishes to sick people that they know. So good for them to be thinking about other peoples' struggles.

 When I saw this post about sending long-distance Valentines hugs on Pinterest I thought it would be a great concept for get-well cards too. The ribbons between the hands are measured to the lengths of each of their hugs.


What other ways have you found to help your kids send cheer to sick people?

Roll a Rainbow

Players take turns rolls a die with the colors of the rainbow on it; whichever color turns up, the player gets to fill in that color on their rainbow.  Whoever fills in all the colors on their rainbow first wins.

This activity only worked so-so.  I colored the sides of a die with dry colored dry erase marker.  As you might imagine, the colors rubbed off after a while. I think it would have been better just to paint a die with acrylic paint, but for some reason I didn't have any red; so we did it this way, and it worked ok.

 I suppose instead of using a die, you might put various colors in a bag, and let each child take turns reaching in to draw out a crayon.

The Activity Mom did a similar activity recently, but her version is a little more educational.  You can check it out here.

Rainbow Squish Monsters

I don't know what it is lately (maybe it's third trimester pregnancy), but messes around the house put me in such a grumpy mood these days.  (That's not to say that there AREN'T messes, I'm just not very good natured about them :-)

So when I remembered that unopened package of finger paints that craftprojectideas.com had sent me a while back, I felt a little tempted to send it back into hiding.  But then I remembered a fun idea I had seen on someone's blog a while back (can't remember who- sorry!)  about using finger paints to make symmetrical squish paintings.

I got out the popsicle sticks and we dabbed blobs of finger paint onto the middle of a piece of paper.  We folded the paper and SQUISHED (definitely the fun part).

When we opened up the page, we had the fun of figuring out how to turn the shape into a monster.  I gave the girls googly eyes to put on where they wanted, and they instructed me as to where to draw details on with a marker (ears, feet, hands, horns, etc).

Much less mess than finger painting- and not without imaginative and sensory appeal!