As many of you know, during the school year Samir attends daycare full time. Now that we're both out for summer, I wanted to keep some of the structure from daycare and create some memories for us. I stumbled upon several websites, one of them being The Artful Parent (go ahead, google it and take a look! I promise you'll love it!) I decided to undertake the task of doing an art/craft project with Samir every day for the summer. Here's the ones we did this week, with instructions. Feel free copy or adapt as needed for the kiddos in your life!
Tie Dye
This was kind of a preliminary run before we do real tie dye on clothing later this summer.
Pretty basic stuff....you put a paper towel on a piece of foil or wax paper. We had more foil, so that's what we used. The idea is just to have something underneath so it doesn't bleed everywhere. Next, you drop food coloring straight from the bottle all over the paper towel. I guess there is such a thing as too much, but I encourage it to be a trial and error type of thing-it's more fun that way!
Then you use a dropper and drop water all over the paper towel so the color bleeds. The original posting I borrowed this from recommended using a straw and covering one end to transport and drop the water. That was a little over the two year old's ability though.
Our finished towels!
Art Apron
After the tie dye, I decided Samir REALLY needed an art apron. So I made it one of our activities! I was planning on buying the apron at Michael's or Hobby Lobby, but lucked out and found this one in the dollar bins at Target. Score! I had some fabric paint left over from a project I did with my students, so I put his name on it and then let him go to town decorating it.
Salty Watercolors
I loved this one! I actually had to buy watercolors for this one. Why had I never tried them with Samir before? Easy use, easy clean up! First you squeeze glue all over a piece of paper. I recommend poster board or card stock because regular paper doesn't hold up well to all the liquids. Then you dump salt all over the glue. I put the paper in an old cake pan for this so Samir could do it all.
Next you pull out the watercolors and go to town! To make it easier for Samir, I put drops of water in the watercolor tray so it was already really liquid-y and ready to go.
Older kids will be a little more advanced at this. Essentially you want to put the watercolor to the salt and see it spread through the crystals. Samir did okay with this on the first one, but then kind of scrubbed the second. Again, perfectly okay, just a different effect.
When they dry, you have a crystalline effect! So pretty in my book!
Flubber
A co-worker had made this with my students before school let out and they loved it. So this one pretty well spans the ages in likeability! There's lots of flubber recipes on the internet, but this is the link to the one we used http://www.ehow.com/how_2087562_make-flubber.html
All you need is borax, school glue and water. And food coloring if you want to color it.
A note for the mommas: flubber is super fun to play with and much easier to clean than play-doh!
Moon Prints
The website I found this on called these moon prints. I'm assuming because the effect is similar to the craters in the moon.
Brush Mod-Podge (or watered down school glue) all over a piece of paper. Again, I recommend posterboard because this is a lot of liquidness! Then rip and crumple up tissue paper and put it all over the glue. Let dry a few hours until tacky, or overnight for complete dryness. You can use printed or colored tissue paper if you want, the end result will just look a little different.
Now, paint the the tissue paper. You can use a brush or finger paint. I was feeling adventurous and chose finger paint.
I took this picture in an effort to show you the craters. This was really so abstract and embellished, I think it would be pretty darn cute framed!