Big, Messy Art Party

Margaret's third birthday party was all about her favorite things: creating art, making a mess, and covering everything in rainbows.

The balloon banner was an easy and inexpensive way to make a big statement. I used a tutorial I found online to assemble it.

Get Messy!

Shaving Cream Color Mixing - We filled the sensory table with dollar store shaving foam, sprinkled confetti throughout, and offered cups of liquid watercolors and droppers for color mixing.

Fizzy Painting - We made fizzy paint by mixing corn starch, baking soda, water, and food coloring. The kids painted it onto the concrete with big brushes and sprayed it with vinegar to make it fizz.

Wacky Painting - We rolled out and taped down large pieces of butcher paper and offered up trays of tempera paint and a variety of odd painting implements such as potato mashers, dish scrubbers, paper towel rolls, and toy trucks.

A pool of water to wash off and cool down was one of the most popular spots.

We had a sensory pool filled with colored cooked spaghetti, water beads, and partially set Jell-O. We'd planned on the Jell-O being set and cubed up, but it had plans of its own and never gelled.

Baby James thought it was a giant snack tray. (We made sure to keep the water beads out of his mouth.)

A little baby haven in the shade in case things got too rowdy.

Inside, we had lunch and cake. The cups had dried food coloring in the bottoms, so when the water was added, it "magically" changed colors.

The cake? The cake was a disaster. See that big wedge taken out of the back? That's because the whole thing started falling apart while I was assembling and frosting it, and in a fit of frustration, I ripped off a chunk and threw it into the sink. *sigh* Cakes are no friends of mine.

I saw an idea like this online but forgot that the watermelon was supposed to be turned upside down. No matter, it worked just fine this way, too.

The PB&Js would have looked and tasted much better if I'd have used nonpareils instead of sugar sprinkles. Live and learn.

Yogurt pops - Colored yogurt frozen in Dixie cups in layers.

This party was a huge hit! The birthday girl had a blast, and a bunch of neighbor kids stopped by to join in the fun!

December Activity Shelves

This year's December activity shelves revolve, surprisingly enough, around winter and Christmas.

As usual, the top two shelves are filled with themed activities while the lower two hold a variety of non-themed toys.

Our sensory bin is a white dish tub from Dollar Tree. It's filled with white rice scented with almond extract (I'd originally planned to use mint, but we were out), a bit of glitter, miniature mylar gift bows from Dollar Tree, and a scoop that I believe we purchased from Target's Dollar Spot earlier this year.

Our treasure basket holds a few of the same things our Shiny Stuff Treasure Tin held last year (holographic foil tissue paper, a large jingle bell, and a shiny gift bow), but we've also added some other jingly instruments.

There's an art tin with a variety of papers - old dollar store greeting cards, pages from a Christmas picture book that got ruined, a snowman notepad, and festive foam shapes from Target's Dollar Spot after-Christmas clearance last year - as well as feathers, spangles, scissors, glue, and markers.

We have a basket of books about various December holidays and wintry fun, some plush reindeer the kids were given last year at "Story Time with Mrs. Claus" at the mall, and a tree stacker from Plan Toys (purchased for a steal at the consignment store, since it was massing the top piece).

Previous Seasonal Activity Shelves
February and Valentine's 2013
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Sensory Bins
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Treasure Baskets
Autumn 2012
Winter 2012
Valentine's 2013

Previous Seasonal Shelf Activities
Christmas 2012
Valentine's 2013
Halloween 2013

Halloween Colored Glue Suncatchers

We got the idea for these colored glue suncatchers from the fabulous early childhood blog, Teach Preschool.

To make the colored glue, we filled empty condiment bottles ($1 apiece from Wal-Mart) with white school glue and a squirt of tempera paint. You can use food coloring or liquid watercolor to tint, if you prefer. I stuck autumn and Halloween cookie cutters (a Wilton set - $4 at Michael's) to contact paper to hold them in place.

Meg simply filled the cutters up with the glue. I encouraged her to use different colors in the same cutter to highlight features, but she wanted to stick with one color per cutter. Just as well, because the glue did run quite a bit and the colors may have mixed too much. I've read that you can run a bead of hot glue around the inside and outside of the cutters to prevent the colored glue from escaping underneath, but, despite a lot of leakage, our cutters were still nice and thick, so I don't think it's necessary.

The shapes took a few days to dry, but they finally remained firm instead of sticking when we lifted a corner to peek underneath. The oranges and reds dried the slowest, probably because they had more pigment. After we popped them from the cutters (much easier when they're still a bit stretchy, by the way, than if you let them harden completely), we poked holes in the top and bottom of each shape and strung them together with thread to hang in the windows. For fun, I added some faces and other simple (very simple) features with a Sharpie before we hung them, like so:

This was one that we left in the cutter until it hardened completely, and you can see that his hand and tail didn't pop out cleanly.

Autumn Activity Shelves

I've mentioned before that we have a bookshelf in our kitchen full of novel toys and seasonal activities to keep our kids engaged while we're cooking dinner or otherwise occupied on the main floor of our house.

For autumn, it's stocked with:

Art Supplies

glue, feathers, leaf stickers, autumn foam stickers, Halloween cookie cutters to trace, foam leaves, colored card stock and white art paper, and a jack-o-lantern sticker book

The supplies are tucked away in a felt Halloween basket purchased on clearance last year.

Fine Motor Activity

tiny jack-o-lantern erasers, pumpkin ice cube tray, and tongs

Story Props and Book

Seasonal Picture Books

and our autumn sensory bin and last year's autumn treasure basket.

The art supplies, books, and fine motor activity fit neatly inside a basket.

Five Little Pumpkins Child-Made Story Props

One of Meg's favorite autumn books is 5 Little Pumpkins. When I was at Michael's craft store recently and saw some little wooden pumpkin cutouts, I had a feeling she'd love using them to make her own story props.

I offered her orange tempera on a plastic palette, a paintbrush, a black Sharpie, and the cutouts. She chose to prop the book in front of her as she worked.

She put approximately 112 coats of paint on the pumpkins then left them to dry while she napped.

When she awoke, she carefully drew each pumpkin face with the Sharpie. She really studied each pumpkin and tried to replicate its unique features. This is something fairly new for her, copying an image. She's usually adamant that she wants to do things her own way.

She was so proud of how they turned out.

Creating a Blank Book to Illustrate

Recently Jean from The Artful Parent mentioned buying her daughters some blank books to create with. It inspired me to make a blank book for Meg to illustrate that was a bit more special than our typical sheets of paper folded together.

I had a nice clean sheet of white cardboard stashed away in my craft room. It came in a package I'd received, thicker than poster board, but thinner than corrugated cardboard. I showed Meg how to score it down the center on front and back so it would fold nicely, then she cut some white paper down to the same size with her scrapbooking paper cutter. We stapled it all together down the spine.

After it was done being assembled, Meg wasn't happy with the staples being visible on the spine and asked if she could cover them with washi tape. It was a pretty brilliant idea and made the book very pretty. She and her brother worked together to make lovely abstract pictures on the cover and each page. He actually worked on this part more than she did. I think the assembly turned out to be Meg's favorite part.