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Friday, April 13, 2012

Umbrella's

Today we made umbrella's!  It is hard to believe it took me this long to do them by the name of my blog! :)  I have an umbrella template that I had no idea what to do with.  It had 3 circles cut out of it as well.  Then it hit me, why don't I put different colours behind it and do some matching!
Little Monkey has done this one before (probably over a year ago) so I had to step it up a bit.  I figured why not match by 2 attributes?!  His umbrella had colours and numbers and Little Cousin's had just colours.
















This one went really quick.  Maybe tomorrow we will add some blue puffy paint as rain drops.  It is a great one to have laying out or on a felt board.  

Friday, April 6, 2012

Hoppy Easter :)

I just wanted to share these with you.  We printed the yellow one out and added our finger prints for extra eggs.
Hoppy Easter Green
Hoppy Easter Yellow
Hoppy Easter Blue

Happy Easter to you and your family!

Shaving cream and paint!

We finally got to our shaving cream and paint project!  I have to say, this was one of my favourites so far. I love the colours and it was pretty easy.
Materials: (I got all but the squeegee at the dollar store......really I should get something for all the advertising I do for them)  :)
Shaving cream
Acrylic Paint
Card stock (or any heavier weight paper)
Paint brush, spoon, or toothpick
Squeegee (I washed off the one we use for our windows.  You could probably use a piece of stiff cardboard in its place if you don't have one.)



Next we sprayed the shaving cream all over the tray and smoothed it out with a spoon.  It was brought to my attention that if you are doing this with little ones you could use whipping cream.  That way if they put it in their mouths it isn't too bad.  *If you do use whipping cream, leave me a comment and let me know how it works.*



Then we added our paint.  Little Monkey really liked doing this part.  Once the paint was on we used the handle of another spoon and swirled all the colours together.  Once they were somewhat mixed we pressed our paper into it.  We did two pieces of paper.  One I traced a bunny and an egg on and the other one I just left blank.  I didn't let Little Monkey see what I had traced on the paper in hopes of surprising him later.



Once we pressed the paper into the shaving cream I took the paper off and laid it on the table.  I let it 'dry' for about 5 minutes.  That gave me enough time to clean off the tray so I had a space to take all the shaving cream off!  After about 5 minutes I used my squeegee to remove the shaving cream from the paper.  Little Monkey got very excited when he saw that there was a bunny and an egg underneath all the shaving cream.






I absolutely love how this turned out. The colours are great and once the shaving cream was off the paper it dried so fast!  I really liked the idea of surprising Little Monkey with an outline on the paper.  This is one of those projects I am going to bring out again and again.  
I hope everyone has a great Easter.  We are decorating eggs tomorrow night.  Oh and a tip for decorating eggs with little ones.....put the egg in a whisk!  The egg will be contained so there is less of a mess trying to get the egg out of the dye.  I will post pictures of Little Monkey and Little Princess using this technique.





Thursday, April 5, 2012

Spring and sun

Today was going to be a post about shaving cream painting.....but the sun came out so we went outside instead.  I wasn't sure if it was going to be a long trip out because yesterdays attempt lasted 30 minutes and Little Monkey was cold!  The sun came out in full force and we had so much fun exploring.  Little Cousin came over to play as well.  As soon as Little Princess woke up from her nap she was out with us too.  We spent the morning drawing on the fence with chalk and digging for worms.  We have a good size garden that hasn't been touched all winter, so I thought, why not let the boys help me dig it out.  I knew if I just asked them to help me dig it up, it would never happen.  As soon as I mentioned that there might be worms, Little Monkey was over there so fast!  Little Cousin was perfectly happy watching from afar as we found more and more worms.  Little Monkey insisted on picking them up with his bare hands....ewww.   After I got over the initial shock, I too was picking up worms with my bare hands.  The mocking ('you don't need a shovel silly mommy') from Little Monkey probably helped me get over my squeamishness towards the worms.  We talked about what worms eat (dirt....and sometimes mommies veggies) and we also had to have a conversations about being gentle.  There are some wounded worms in our garden now!
It was so nice to get out side and run around and not worry about making a mess or trying to clean everything up right away.  I am going to start stock piling outside fun ideas this weekend so when the sun shows up again we will have new exciting things to try!









Tomorrow I have shaving cream painting on the to-do list.  If the sun is out in full force again, it might have to be put off until I need a Rainy Day Distraction :)

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Tissue paper and beans

We stuck with the egg theme into today.  Little monkey surprised me and wouldn't leave the table until his whole entire egg was covered!  That doesn't happen often.  I think it might have been because I let him also add the beans (or as he calls them seeds), which he had been eyeing since yesterday, to his egg.
Materials:
Egg template
Cardstock
Tissue paper (a few different colours)
Beans ( I just bought white beans and put them in the bag with a little food colouring and shook them up)
Glue




I let the boys scrunch up some of the tissue paper, but they were more interested in sticking it onto their egg shape.  I really love the colours of the tissue paper....I may will have to go back to the dollar store to get some more.  Little Monkey filled up all the spaces he could.  I think I like this one so much it might have to go on the mantel.





Up next, shaving cream art.  I have never done this before so I am very excited about it. :)
Here is a picture of what I originally dyed the beans for: