Homemade Gift #3: Candy Cane Playdough

Today's mission was to make the Candy cane playdough found on The Artful Parent (here is the link to the playdough post). I loved the idea and thought that would be a perfect addition to the little gifts I'm giving my day care kids. They turned out super cute. I used a playdough recipe that I've had for awhile and have never tried. It turned out a little too oily so I'm not going to post it (I have a few more I want to try so I'll post one when I find the perfect one). I used peppermint extract for the scent and I love it. Then added a little glitter for fun, twisted it up and stuck it in a jar. How fun!!!

I started off twisting them all cute like this...

...then got lazy and finished them off like this.

Homemade Gift #2: Child-made Books

My kids are so lucky to have 2 sets of wonderful grandparents who they spend lots of time with. With my husband being gone as often as he is (this last time it was 2 1/2 week straight!), I don't know what I would do without the help! For Christmas, my kids make all of their gifts for their grandparents. One of the gifts to my parents is a book about all the fun things they do when they spend the night there. It turned out cuter than I imagined it would and I can't wait for my mom to open it. I wrote what my son told me and then they colored the pages. I laminated it and then had it bound into a book at the office supply store. Here's a few pictures of what it looks like.

"Hand"-made card

I again, found this on Pinterest and knew that I just had to make them sometime. I figured Christmas was perfect since we are trying to do as many hand-made gifts as possible. And what's more hand-made than a "hand"-made card. :)

Process not Product

One of the things I have been learning over and over in my classes is how art should be about the process and not the end product. Process Art. I've got a few great books with tons of fun ideas that I can't wait to try out. Here's today's:

What you need:
Paper
Ruler
Something to color with (we went with markers)

How to:
Draw lines all over the paper (lines must go all the way to edges of the paper)
Color in the areas

Pretty simple huh?

My son did this one on his own. Next time, I'm going to do all the lines and then have all the kids help color it in. 

My 3 year old's attempt

My 5 year old is having fun with it!

Another Process Art idea:

Put a few dots on the paper and using a ruler, draw lines going out to the edges of the paper from the dot. This is my son's. This one was his favorite (mostly because he likes using a ruler). :)

More Snowmen

To go with the snowmen theme from yesterday, today we made snowmen with cotton balls.
Nothing too crazy but the kids had fun with it. We used skittles for the eyes and buttons and glittery snowflake stickers.

I drew a template with pencil to help.

Yes, my child is always naked. Well, except for when she's in a princess or Tinkerbell costume. Today it was Cinderella which came off for the project so she didn't get glue on it.

Apparently this one's eyes and nose flew off when the snowman sneezed.

Pin It

Snow Paint

It's time to come to terms with the fact that it is winter. The snow from last weekend did not melt and since it's been in the teens and twenties the last few days, it's time to accept the change in season. The kids keep asking if we can go out and make a snowman. Since there isn't enough snow yet and it's too dang cold, I decided to do some snowman making inside. I have 2 snow paint ideas that I've wanted try and decided instead of choosing one, I would do both.

First is the glue and shaving cream paint but I added glitter to it to make it fun (the little stuff, the big glitter flakes didn't work out as well). You can kind of see the glitter in the pictures if you click on it and see it larger. We just used paint brushes to make snowmen and snow on black paper. I didn't measure anything, just dumped in a bowl till it looked like enough. This stuff has a really cool 3D puffy paint type of look to it.

  

Leave it to my daughter to turn it into a finger painting project.

Some of the other snowy designs

Pin It



The second recipe I just learned about last week in class and thought it looked interesting. It's equal parts of flour, salt and water. Mix it together (adding a tiny bit of water as needed until it's paint consistency). I then added glitter (both small and large). The kids cut snowflakes (I helped with most) and then they used small paintbrushes and painted the snowflakes. It took awhile for them to dry but once they did, the texture turned out SO cool! I admit, I made a bunch of my own snowflakes like this to decorate my front window.

Just after painted- still wet

After it dries, it has a really cool texture!

Pin It


I think our indoor snowmen pictures were a success.