Starter Art Kit from Discount School Supply

What I'd Put in and Why

When I surveyed readers on Fun at Home with Kids' Facebook page, most people were interested in me running a series of posts reviewing Discount School Supply products that culminated in a shopping list.  If you haven't seen all of the posts in the series, here is a list of them:

Golden Glitter Slime (and Dragons)

Painting the Bathroom Mirror

Pretend Baking:  Painting a 3D Cake

Baby/Toddler Colored Rice Art

10+ Ways to Use Fingerpaint
Make Your Own Puffy Paint Shirt

Like my Sensory Starter Kit shopping lists for Target and the Dollar Tree, I'll include what I would put in with a list of alternates.

Before we get into the list, I'd like to say the reason behind it is that Discount School Supply charges a bit for shipping (understandably, since paint is heavy!), unless you purchase $79 worth of supplies - then the shipping is free.  I know that $79 sounds like a lot to spend, but the supplies last quite a long time.  You guys know how often we use our liquid watercolors, and our bottles are still around half full.  I generally find that if I plan well, one shipment from Discount School Supply will last us at least a year, if not longer.

Some other helpful money saving tips:
Discount School Supply's Facebook page announces a promo code for the week just about every Tuesday.  You could also try submitting a craft/activity to their website - if your craft/activity is chosen, you'll be sent a $50 giftcard to use at Discount School Supply.  And finally, don't feel like you need to buy every color of every paint.  We generally stock 3-4 paints per color - the one exception being liquid watercolors.  I definitely LOVE rainbows, so I had to have a full set of those.  :)

All photos used courtesy of Discount School Supply

1.  Liquid Watercolors

 We use our liquid watercolors constantly (in lieu of food coloring, but also as watercolor paint).  In fact, you can click here to see a long list of activities that feature them.

2.  Washable Tempera Paints and/or Fingerpaints

If you have a very young child, fingerpaints may be the way to go.  If your child is older - they may prefer tempera paints to fingerpaints.  Fingerpaints are a bit goopier and are slightly translucent whereas tempera paints are much more like what you think of as a traditional paint (we have and love the Confetti Fingerpaints).  S enjoys both, so we have a few colors in each type, but you may want to go all fingerpaints with an infant/toddler or all tempera paints with an older preschool aged child.  For ideas on how to use these sort of paints beyond unstructured painting, check out our post on Painting the Bathroom Mirror and 10+ Ways to Use Fingerpaint

3.  Paper

We have a butcher paper dispenser/rolls from Ikea that we use, and we alternate between using that, watercolor paper, and construction paper.  Discount School Supply has really nice large sized high quality construction paper.

4.  Brushes

Now that she's older, S likes having a variety of sizes of paintbrush to choose from.  She would probably most enjoy this set currently.  However, when she was younger, she really liked having chubbier brushes.  She has been using the Wacky Painting Tools and Foam Rollers like crazy as well, so those are some other types of brushes to consider as well.  And if you're going for a set of fingerpaints only, well, you already have the painting tools you need.  :)


The above are sort of the base supplies necessary to create lots of art.  Here are some added bonus supplies that are also fun:

5.  Tissue Paper

We love using this in art projects - especially when making Contact Paper Window Art.

6.  Contact Paper

To see all the ways we've used contact paper click here.

7.  Make it More Additives

We used the Make it Shine to make our Golden Slime and we use the Make it Puffy to make our Puffy Paint Shirt.  We love these and they're a fun way to make a set of paint even more exciting.

8.  Biocolor Paint

You will want to get some of these if you're looking for permanent paints to use in a variety of settings with an older child.  These were also necessary to make our Puffy Paint Shirt.

9.  Plastic Glitter

We used this to make our Golden Slime and it's amazing.  It is the best glitter I've seen.  I love that it doesn't dump everywhere and that it is plastic and is therefore glass and metal free!

10.  Seashells

We have a set of Medium Sea Shells that we use frequently in sensory bins and small worlds (you can see some of them in our Fizzing Hidden Ocean World!).

11.  Stamp Ink

The Colorations Stamp Ink is truly the most washable stamp ink I've ever encountered.  S enjoys inking her hands and stamping that way as well as using the stamps - so I REALLY appreciate that it doesn't stain her skin.

12.  Kid Safety Scissors

S loves practicing her scissor skills and she is old enough/careful enough that we feel comfortable with her having metal safety scissors.  We both appreciate how well/cleanly they cut.  We also have some of the Colorations Plastic Scissors - which we love for playdough play.  These plastic scissors are ultra safe - the blade is plastic - it won't cut hair, etc - but they do not cut paper (particularly thin paper) very cleanly because they are plastic.  If you are concerned about your child getting hurt with scissors (or cutting their hair - ha!) then the plastic scissors may be a better choice.

13.  Foam Paint

This foam paint is such a fun sensory experience.  We also love playing with shaving cream paint, which is similar in appearance, but foam paint is much drier/fluffier in texture and the color is much richer.  We love using our foam paint for full body painting (hands and feet at the same time!) and we have also made a beautiful 3D pretend cake with it.

Well, I hope that gives you all plenty of options.  I do not make any commission off of the sale of any of these products, nor was I paid to write this post (I did receive some free product to use in writing some of the previous posts, but was not asked or obligated to write this post) - I just am a fan of Discount School Supply and their product lines.  We've tried a lot of paints/glitter/etc in the last four years, and these are hands down our favorites!

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

Baby/Toddler Colored Rice Art

Other posts in this series include:

Golden Glitter Slime (and Dragons)

Painting the Bathroom Mirror

Pretend Baking:  Painting a 3D Cake

10+ Ways to Use Fingerpaint

Make Your Own Puffy Paint Shirt
Starter Art Kit from Discount School Supply

You know the saying every child is different?  It's so true!  By the time she was a year old, S was already quite interested in art.  She'd fingerpaint and color with markers with the intent to produce a drawing.  It was amazing and so much fun.  X loves markers, too...but to dump not to draw!  Nevertheless, I like to engage him in art activities from time to time, because one of these days I just know it will click for him!

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We often like to use contact paperin lieu of glue, and given X's natural desire to examine handfuls of sensory materials and drop them, I thought I would create an art invitation that allowed him to make art while getting to DUMP!

S and I colored rice according to our usual method with liquid watercolors (we chose just three colors this time) and we presented X with three containers - one for each color.  I cut large squares of cardboard from our recycling and covered them with contact paper (sticky side out - I used tape along the edges to secure the contact paper to the cardboard).  We then placed one sticky canvas on either side of our splat mat (one for X and one for S - though we knew X was liable to wander between the two).

X investigated the sticky canvas, and then set to work examining handfuls of rice and dropping them.

S was much more intentional - at times placing single grains of rice - while X was randomly dropping large handfuls.  Love this shot of my two curly headed babies!

And I've always got to get a picture of those chubby baby feet and toes!!!

Towards the end, (with sister's assistance) a digger arrived to help scoop the loose rice.  X thought this was a great turn of events!

Once they were completely done with their art pieces, I added one final layer of contact paper (this time sticky layer down) and taped around the edges.  Even as finished/sealed pieces of artwork - they were still fun.  You could touch and roll some of the grains of rice and the loose bits in between the two layers of contact paper made a quiet rattling noise.

My sweet baby with his (unintentional, but beautiful nonetheless) artwork.

The rattling noise inspired S to dance.  And dance she did all around the living room with her piece of art!  (S never can pass up a good opportunity for an interpretive dance.)

This was a fun way to involve little X in some art play and despite appearances, it was super easy to clean up!  Most of the rice was on the splat mat, so I made a funnel and dumped it back into a container to save for another day.  Any remaining stray grains of rice easily vacuumed up!

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

Simple Small Worlds: Insect World

You can read about our other Simple Small Worlds here:

Fizzing Hidden Ocean World

Froggy World

Farm World

Dinosaurs and Sticky Mud

Dragon World

Butterfly World

We are once again so excited to be reviewing another Safari Ltd product!  Today we're playing with another one of their brilliant TOOBS - the Insect TOOB.  Safari Ltd provided me with their Insect TOOB free of charge, but all opinions expressed in this post are my own and were not influenced by the free product.

One of the things that S and I find super fascinating about insects is their ability to walk on walls!  It's always so impressive to watch them scale the walls of whatever container we've placed them in for observation - so I wanted to bring that element into this small world.  To that end, I cut strips of contact paper and lined the inside walls of the world with it.  I flipped each strip sticky side up and used scotch tape along the edges to keep it in place.  It really added a cool element to the small world, I think.  (A roll of contact paper is around $5 and you can read about some other ways that we've played with it here, here, and here.)

Insects are everywhere, in all sorts of different environments, so this is a great small world to make with  gathered natural materials from the yard/surrounding areas of your house.  Whether you live in a forest like us, or near a beach, or in a big city, a rural area, or a desert - any of the materials you find outside are things that make up your insects' environment!

For the materials in the bin, I took a walk around the perimeter of our house and gathered interesting supplies.  I clipped a branch off one of our Western Red Cedar trees, grabbed some cool looking large stones, and a patch of moss.  

Though you can absolutely use dirt from outside (or grass or whatever other material!), I like to "recycle" our old coffee grinds into "dirt" because I feel like the grounds are less messy and look prettier than real dirt.  My system for accumulating used coffee grounds is to lay the wet grounds flat on a sheet pan and let them air dry for 24 hours.  From there I transfer them to an open Gladware container.  You could also dry them in the oven on very low heat if you wanted to be faster about it.  You'll see me use our coffee ground dirt in other posts (I just haven't written them up yet).  It also doesn't hurt that they smell faintly of coffee.  Yum.

I also grabbed some smaller polished stones that I'd bought a bag of (I think at the Dollar Store?) and keep in a container for sensory play to add some more detail to the world.

S really enjoyed the sticky walls and had lots of fun sticking and unsticking the various bugs. 

I liked the different textural elements in the world - hard stones, scaly tree branch, gritty coffee ground dirt, and soft moss.

Here caterpillar is going for a little walk.  He's thinking he might want to climb the wall!

There he goes!  We love that Safari Ltd miniatures are perfectly sized for little hands.

The colors are so vibrant and the models are so realistic.  This is the only way I'd let S touch a centipede!  In real life those suckers are mean!!!!  

S enjoyed taking all the little bugs on a tour of their environment.

After taking turns with most of the insects, she decided that centipede was her favorite (probably because she isn't allowed to hold the real creatures).

Here she's having a heart-to-heart with centipede about reforming his aggressive biting ways (did you know that a real centipede bite is rumored to be comparable to a bee sting?  Ouch!).  She told me he'd decided to be nice to her and his other insect friends and was not going to bite!  She played with him for around an hour.  And I'm happy to report that, true to his word, he did not bite her.  ;)

S was so enamored with the two butterflies that came in the Insect TOOB that they'd (earlier) flown away to another area of our house and we almost forgot to include them in our photo shoot!  So we decided they would make a quick visit to insect world before Mama put away her camera.  Here they're sunning themselves on the rocks.  With such vibrantly colored wings, it's no wonder S spirited them away!

The cohesive groups of creatures presented in Safari Ltd TOOBS always inspire me to incorporate books with our small world play.  Here's S investigating a book from our insect book round-up.  :)

Disclosure:  As I mentioned above, Safari Ltd did provide the Insect TOOB to us free of charge.  I was not paid for this post.  All opinions are my own; I am not swayed by compensation.  I only review products that are relevant to my blog and that I feel my readers would be interested in learning about.

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

Baby Play: Exploring Sticky

You can find the other posts in our Baby Play series here:
Exploring the Kitchen:  Part I
Exploring the Kitchen:  Part II
Exploring Float

Inspired by an image I saw on Pinterest from this post, I thought contact paper would be a cool sensory experience for little X.  I wanted to be sure to discourage mouthing the contact paper because whatever it is that makes that stuff sticky cannot be good for little stomachs!  I decided to flip our sensory bin (an underbed storage container I bought from Fred Meyer for $9) and cut a strip of contact paper that would fit in the middle.  I also made sure to line the rectangular strip on all sides with packing tape so it wouldn't lift up easily.

I can't resist rainbows, and given the opportunity, must include them wherever I can!  So I decided to go with several different textured items, all of which would stick fairly well and all of which we had in rainbow colors!  X immediately noticed the stickiness.  He touched it a few times before gravitating to the ball pit balls.  He rolled the blue one around a bit, listening to the sound it made sticking and unsticking as he moved it around the contact paper.

Then he decided he needed to hold the ball, so off it came.  Once he was in possession of the ball, he was interested in inspecting the other items on the table a bit more.  He looked at the soft feathers first.

Then he just explored the plain contact paper. 

Next he opted for two hand sticky exploration and let sis hold the ball.

Since X had moved on from exploring the objects to exploring just the contact paper, S decided to make a little rainbow sculpture with them.

And then, my favorite series of photos of the two of them, possibly ever, happened.  After pondering for a minute, X launched himself onto the sticky table so that his belly was "stuck".  And then he just hung out there.  Sis, from the background chirped "Oh, that looks like fun!"

Ready?

Yep.  They're awesome.  They hung out like that for a minute or two while I died laughing.

X did let me tickle him with a feather while he, uh, explored the table with his stomach.  :)

And after they were both done exploring sticky stomachs, sis had the idea to walk across the sticky table, which I thought was rather brilliant.  It made a crazy noise as her hands and feet unstuck, so it managed to entertain both her and her brother.

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Contact paperis definitely a staple around here (and a roll is only around $5!).  You can see us using it to make Contact Paper Window Art and to help us decorate a Giant Egg as well as in some upcoming posts that I haven't gotten around to typing up yet.

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