Contact Paper Window Art

Young Toddler +

Contact paper window art is one of our favorite rainy day activities.  While you can use foam, paper, and a variety of other things on contact paper for window art, tissue paper is by far my favorite.  It really just glows if there is any ambient light outside (in all the days pictured it was gray/rainy out) and tissue paper comes in such vibrant colors as well that you just really can't go wrong!  Oh, and a good pack of pretty rainbow tissue paper can be found at Michaels as well, though I did spy some on my last trip to the Dollar Store.

In the first photo, S was a bit younger, so I opted for precut shapes.  If you have a younger toddler, it can be a good discussion of which shapes are which.  You could even structure it as a mini-scavenger hunt ("can you find the red circle?").  S already knew her shapes and was actually calling out requests to me for this project.

Now that she's a bit older and working on scissor skills, I took the cue from Valentine's Day to teach her how to cut hearts from folded paper (it is a bit like magic to a 3 year old to unfold the paper and find a heart!).

One of her very own cut out hearts!  Beautiful work, if I do say so myself.  :)

 S is also a pre-reader and working on sounding out three and four letter words, so I cut out all the letters to the word "love" in honor of Valentine's Day and scrambled them.  I left it to her to sound out the word and figure out the right order.  She carefully made the sound of each letter in the word, then searched for it and put it in order on the contact paper.  It may be a little backwards, but hey, for a 3 year old, I'll take it!

One or two of the hearts up there were the ones I'd demonstrated for her, but all the rest are hers!  She was especially proud of the giant heart.

The finished product!

Another window art activity that we've done in the past is one where I start, and she finishes.  This is one we've done a few times - I cut out two kittens, and tell her that they are sad because they need toys to play with.  She then scouts the house for items that are small and would stick and "creates" toys for the kittens.  We've also done one where I cut out a tree trunk and she cuts and adds the leaves to the tree.  The cats are cut from a foam sheet.

And lastly, my favorite kind of window art is the tissue paper stained glass.  S doesn't yet have the patience to fill all of a space with paper yet, so we decided she would do all of the paper cutting and some of the sticking, and I would help her finish.

We use tissue paper for other art projects as well, but this is definitely my favorite way to use it!  So pretty!  And though we've left the contact paper up for several weeks at a time, we've never had any trouble with it leaving residue on the windows that doesn't easily wipe off with window cleaner.

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

Infant +

 As she's gotten older, S has gotten more and more interested in holidays.  The Dollar Store is an amazing place to get holiday related items!  I searched for Valentine's Day items that would be fun for either X or S, or better - both!  I tried to come up with items that could be used for open ended play.  I set up the table and let them at it!

The first thing S noticed was all the boxes.  X went straight for the petals.  He's still not stellar with standing, so we set him on the floor with a few petals.  He desperately wanted to taste them, but was also just mesmerized with watching them fall to the ground.  S quickly decided that most of these items were more fun to play with on the floor...and truthfully it was more fun to play with on the floor...so everything left the sensory table pretty quickly!  It was a little like Valentine's Day exploded in our art room (and don't worry, it took less than 2 minutes to clean up because they were all big pieces).

By far the biggest hit, ultimately, for both were the petals.  This was just two bags (one white, one red), so for a total of $2, you could have a lot of fun!

S noticed that most of the items dropped straight to the ground, while the petals floated gracefully.  I had her make some guesses as to what makes something float vs. drop.  Here she is commenting on the different shape, size, and weight of two things - one that dropped and one that floated.

S brought some of her plastic "guys" out to play and had fun enclosing them in various containers and giving them to me for my "birthday".  She enjoyed being able to open and shut all the containers by herself - something that she's recently mastered.  This was my crab present.  He was inside the smaller heart box, which in turn was inside the larger heart box.  

Because the lighting isn't ideal in our art room, I couldn't get my shutter speed up enough to capture the falling petals, but S and I were pelting X with handfuls of petals.  He thought it was equal parts hilarious (getting them in his hair and on his face) and amazing (watching them float to the ground).

S also enjoyed getting petals dumped on her.

X is always happy when he finds an item he can make music on (preferably if it's an item he can "drum" on).

While we had fun with all the Valentine's Day items, our favorites were the petals.  If you get roses yourself for Valentine's Day, you could always strip them once they're done blooming and play with the real rose petals (which have the added bonus of smelling amazing!), as I did with S when she was much younger below.  Real rose petals also make a fun special occasion addition to a bath.  Petals are just so much fun to watch as they float, and they're such a safe item to throw - they really appeal to infants-preschoolers.

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Making Valentine Heart Crayons

Preschooler +

 When thinking about S's valentines this year, I wanted to find something non-candy, and preferably something that we could make together.  I found several heart crayon valentines on Pinterest and they sounded perfect!  Unfortunately for us, S does not have many crayons that are broken/without paper, so I needed to buy some new sets.  Because these valentines were going to be for preschoolers, I wanted to make sure the crayons were big and thick - easy for little hands to draw with!  This meant A LOT of crayons...  We first decided to dump them all out and sort them into color piles.  This was a good opportunity to discuss color "shades". 

There were definitely too many crayons that needed to be peeled, so I did the majority of that work because it was HARD.  Weirdly, certain shades/colors were doused with glue and took forever to peel (mostly the yellows and blues), while others peeled easily with just a tear or two.  S had fun helping me break the crayons into pieces (we tried out all sorts of methods - breaking by hand, breaking by stomping with feet, and we even brought out a small hammer and cookie tray for her to practice hammering them to pieces).  Again, because of the vastness of the work, I did need to help quite a bit with breaking.  

A batch ready for the oven!  In all, we needed to make SIX batches to make the valentines for everyone on her list.  From what I've read, it's important to use a silicone mold (this certainly made it easy for us to remove the crayons once they'd cooled).  I found this one at Michaels.

S had fun stacking the crayons as they came out.  Interestingly each one is totally unique.

 Another shot of the finished products.  They are so beautiful! 

The aftermath in our living room...hahaha.

S is just learning how to write, and writing each valentine would be far too much work, so I had her make two on one page and copied them onto cardstock paper with a Xerox.  She'd drawn the hearts and colored them in herself once the copied valentines came home.

Of course you can choose whatever shaped silicone mold you want and make crayons for any occasion (or just for yourself for fun!).  You'll need to peel and break the crayons to put them in a mold - the more you spread out the colors, the more quickly the finished crayon changes color as you write.  We cooked these in our oven at 250 degrees F for 15 minutes.  You'll need to do less or more time depending on the thickness of your mold.  I am also happy to report that subsequent meals did not taste like crayon, though while these were cooking there was a faint gross smell of melty crayon, so I just ran the oven fan while they were cooking and for about 20 minutes afterwards and that seemed to take care of it. 

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.