3D Painting

Toddler+

I just love spring flowers!  Every once in awhile we treat ourselves to a fresh centerpiece of daffodils or tulips, but it costs enough that we don't keep a fresh bouquet on our dining room table constantly.  So I thought - why not have S paint a centerpiece for us?  This also got me thinking about how most of S's painting is two dimensional.  I thought she might find painting in three dimensions unusual (and maybe a bit more interesting?).  

I knew I wanted to making something spring-themed, and I immediately thought of daffodils.  I'd seen several renditions of homemade craft daffodils on the internet (and by that, I really mean Pinterest) using egg cartons, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I wanted to use all recycled materials, so I raided our recycling container for anything that might be useful.  I ended up settling on some thin cardboard for the base and the white sturdy paper (not so much cardboard but somewhere between that and cardstock in thickness) that the Hanna Andersson unders came in (hahaha).  I wanted the stems to be sturdy, so I used the corners of the orange juice container for those.

S and I observed and counted the petals and leaves on the daffodils in our deck planters (the ones we planted together in this post).  We made sure that the replicas I was making were true to the original.  S also helped me determine the placement of the flowers, grass, and Easter eggs (she had to have Easter eggs, of course!).  After cutting all the requisite shapes, I used my hot glue gun to give structure to the whole thing (regular glue would not have been supportive enough, I fear).

Then she was ready to begin!  She has recently learned the difference between 2D and 3D and kept exclaiming "it's so weird to paint in 3D, Mama!" over and over.  So cute.

She had to bend and twist her hands and body to get into the little spaces; she needed to bend and move the parts of the flowers.  It was a lot more challenging than painting a 2D project for sure!

She had SO much fun painting the ground brown.  She spent a painstakingly long time getting it just right.

Here she's spun the piece around to get to some different parts of it.

After painting the ground so very carefully, she ended up wanting to take a break and finished the project the following day (this is often the case with projects she's taking her time on - she'll spent 30-45 very focused minutes before wanting a break.  To her credit, she does come back and finish (also doing a nice job) the following day).  Here's her final product!  The tiny gold glitter is a bit hard to get out of the shaker, so she had me dispense the glitter on the flowers; however all of the other painting was done totally by her.  We just love the bright colors of our new spring centerpiece, and S had a great time mixing things up by painting in 3D!

Follow along with us on Facebook or Google+

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

Foam Window Art: Mix and Match Spring Flowers

Older Toddler+

We just love window art - and of course it doesn't hurt that we have an enormous wall of windows in our living room.  ;)  

Foam window art is another way to brighten up your house, and it's so fun to be able to make art on unusual surfaces like windows.

Foam sheetsare fairly inexpensive (in fact, I've recently seen large multicolored packs at the Dollar Store), so we like to use them in a lot of our play.

S loves to cut foam with her scissors, but since she's still learning the ropes of cutting shapes, she prefers to have some precut shapes to work with.  For younger children, it's fun to practice shapes/colors with foam window art.  Older children might like building blocks or more elaborate scenes.  Because it was a rainy winter day, but we're at least getting closer to spring, we decided to make a field of spring flowers on the windows.  

To do a project like this, you'll just need some precut foam shapes, and a shallow dish of water.  

Your child simply dips the shape in the water and then places it on the window.  The water makes the foam stick to the glass (this also works on bathtub walls - so it's a fun thing to incorporate into baths as well)!  Depending on how dry your house is and how often the shapes are disturbed, they can last for around 24-48 hours on glass.

I provided S with several different shaped sections of grass, different length/width stems, different sized/shaped leaves, different colored/sized flower centers, and different colored petals.

 There was a little troubleshooting involved as well as S soon figured out that if the foam did not have a good amount of surface contact with the glass it wouldn't stick.  She needed to space her flowers out a bit more to get petals on all of them.

And here she is with her completed field of spring flowers.  They really brightened up our living room on an otherwise gray and rainy winter day.  :)

And here's an older picture of her with the foam square set that we use as building blocks.  We worked together to make a house and she used her cutting skills to make smoke coming out of the chimney and a front door for the house.  I'm not sure what it is about foam window art that makes her squinty, but it sure seems to!  Hahaha.

The foam is totally reusable for another day of window/bath art and can of course be used on paper with glue for art projects (or for contact paper window art).

Follow along with us on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or Subscribe by Email!

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

Learning about Spring Bulbs

Older Toddler +

I'd wanted to try something like this with S this spring, but X was a high-needs baby to say the least, so I never got around to buying bags of spring bulbs last fall.  Thankfully Home Depot sells sprouted bulbs for those of us who weren't on the ball!

S has been a long-standing fan of bulbs.  She's a strange child, I know (she used to pretend to be a carrot when she was 2)!  When she was 2.5 years old, she told me she wanted to learn more about daffodils, and lo and behold, there actually is a book (and a good one!) on that very subject:

I'd found these awesome deck rail planters last year and we grew strawberries in them.  This year I wanted to try some bulbs since I love tulips and daffodils and there's really not another great spot in our yard for them.  S LOVES to help me plant plants.  If you have not involved a toddler in planting, I really recommend it as an activity.  There's the dirt, which they obviously enjoy, but there's something about plants that most kids find enchanting.  

Ah, pink rainboots and dirt - does it get much better?

S helped pack down the soil down once we'd finished.  I opted for four types of bulbs: narcissus, tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth.  They each look unique and S had a fun time learning the names of the two types that were new to her (narcissus and hyacinth) and identifying the different plants in each planter by their leaf shape.

I pulled one example bulb of each from the soil and we brought them inside to rinse off.  Bulbs are some of my favorite "kid plants" because they are not very finicky (beans and peas are awesome as well).  You can plant them high or low, crooked or straight, tear some roots off or leave some roots exposed, and they will still grow!

Because of this hardiness, I thought we'd try growing them hydroponically.  This is our first go at it, and at a week out, everything is still alive, though our hyacinth's leaves are starting to yellow a bit (it's still blooming beautifully).  I think the trick is to make sure that your water level isn't too high.  The roots should be in the water, but the bulb should not be submerged.  From what I've read about bulbs online, the yellowing we're experiencing with the hyacinth is a result of bulb rot (too much water surrounding the actual bulb).  Now mind you, we haven't tried growing these bulbs from dormancy.  I don't know if they would be able to grow hydroponically the entire time (though we intend to try this next spring).  What I can say is that they will survive at least a week and bloom like crazy inside.  :)

To make an indoor bulb garden like ours, you'll need:

A clear container to see the roots!  I bought this one at Michaels with a 40% off coupon (I think it was originally $16?).  You could also use a glass drinking cup and just do a bulb per cup if you'd rather not buy an expensive planter.

Glass beads or pebbles - the point being that you need something that has big enough gaps between for roots to travel and something that the bulbs will sit on so they are not submerged in the water.  The glass beads/pebbles also protect the roots from overexposure to air.

In general, if you are taking away the soil (what plants use to get minerals) -- you'll want to add those back in with a liquid fertilizer.  Bulbs store nutrients inside - moreso than seeds (seeds just have a little bit of food stored to get them started) - so they should be fine with just water.  However, since we're planning on trying to grow beans, peas, and maybe carrots next, I have liquid fertilizer, so I added about a tablespoon of the stuff to the container shown above.  I got the liquid fertilizer at Home Depot and I think it was around $7. :)

S is THRILLED with her indoor garden.  The first thing she checks on every morning is her flowers. They smell beautiful and look pretty neat in their glass container.  

It's been interesting to be able to compare the indoor garden (in full bloom at this point, minus the tulip which still has a lot of growing left to do) to the outdoor garden (still completely dormant).  It's amazing what a difference heat (and a little fertilizer boost!) makes to bulb growth!  Inside our house, they think it's already spring, so they are blooming away.  :) 

Follow along with us on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or Subscribe by Email!

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