homemade fingerpaint

 Homemade fingerpaint goo lol

Had the little guy add in some food coloring and mix it up and viola! Homemade fingerpaints!  Super easy and fun.      The recipe :              3 Tbs Sugar
                                                  1 tsp salt
                                                  1/2 cup cornstarch
                                                  2 cups cold water
                                                  your choice of food coloring

Mix all ingredients together in saucepan until warm and the mixture thickens.  Let cool then add some food coloring and TAA DAA! cheap fingerpaint!

Spider Web

Ely watched a Curious George show where they made spider webs, sooooo we made our own!! Ely practiced his cutting skills by cutting the yarn and pipe cleaners and gluing the pom poms and eyes on!! Quick activity and fun.

egg letters

Printed off this fun abc game from http://preschoolexpress.com/theme_station.shtml  Ely colored them all and then I cut them out.  He has lots of fun matching the capital and lowercase letters to form the eggs!

hand print tree

Double fisted always gets the job done faster!

When we were done with all our green pages, he wanted to paint more!

Our handprint tree!  Ely painted about 15 pieces of paper green.  I gave him some different green shades so he could mix and experiment a little as well as a sponge brush and a big brush.  After all the pages had dried I traced around his and my hand and cut them out.  I used this as a template to cut out all the other hands.  I then cut and pasted some nice quotes about nature.

outside cooking

Enjoying outside time.  Im always trying to find fun things to do outside to enjoy the fresh air.  So while we were lounging around outside this idea hits me.  Lets pretend cook!  I got out a pan a whisk a large bowl, an empty shaker that I filled up with some dirt, some measuring cups and spoons and filled a soap dispenser up with some water and soap.  He gad lots of water, soap, the shaker of dirt and some flour to cook with.  I turned a box into an oven by drawing buttons on one side and atimer on the other,  He was instantly transformed into Chef Ely and played for about 2 hours!

Tinfoil

Oh Tinfoil!!! How wonderful you are!  Painting on tinfoil is an experience.  all the paints smear together and dont dry as fast which makes it easy to work on color combining.  we also added some salt for texture and even some dry penne noodles.  Easy and lots of fun!

Bug hunt

Found this at the Dollar Store! We went on a bug hunt!  During the hunt we talked about where bugs hide and why.  We caught a pincher bug and a beetle.  We talked about them and we were unsure what they ate so we created an experiment.  We gave them a few choices and watched to see which was the winner.  We recently caught a little spider and have been having fun learning all about them.  We checked out some spider books and talked about a spiders life. 

penne pasta

Stringing penne pasta on yarn. I had a plastic yarn needle tied to the end.  After we got some strung on we decided to paint them differnt colors and add some glue and glitter!  Great for small motor skills

Stars

Painting both sides of some stars I cut from a dollar store board to hang from his cieling!  He loves all things space right now so were hand decorating a theme throughout his room!  We also watched the magic school bus episode on star formation so we can talk about what makes up a star and the different types.  Lots of fun!

Color combining and science

Color combining and a science experiment all in one!!  Filled 3 cups with vinegar and added red, yellow, and blue to the cups.  Ely used the eye dropper to squirt some in a tub of baking soda and watch the colored bubbles form!!.  We used the three colors and combined them in different combos to form orange, purple, and green bubbles! Lots of fun!

butterfly art

We were working on a Butterfly theme so we had read a couple of butterfly books and then on to the artwork!!  I incorporated the concept of symmetry by having Ely paint half a butterfly and then folding it to squish the paint onto the otherside making a perfect symmetrical butterfly!

cinco de mayo!

Made look a like Mexico flags to hang around the house for our Cinco De Mayo celebration.  We also did some art and signs by gluing different types of beans.  We got a book about Mexico from the library and a spanish english kids dictionary to talk about the culture.  We also made Maracas from our beans by placing them inside an empty water bottle.  the next day we put a wet paper towel in there and placed the maraca outside a few days later we're able to watch the beans sprout and talk about the different plant parts and how seeds sprout!

Mothers Day!

We made coffee filter flowers for Mothers Day!  They came out great and it was a lot of different skills used and lots of fun!!  Take coffee filters and let them color whatever they want on it wither markers.  Then we used an eye dropper to practice small motor skills and he dropped water on them and watched the colors run.  We used this opportunity to talk about absorbtion.  While there drying Ely put on a couple beads on to the pipecleaner (another great small motor skill)  We talked about patterns and he tried to make different patterns out of the beads he put on.  Then I just twisted the part with the beads to make a leaf shape and then attached the coffee filter by twisting it around a pinch in the center. Voila! beautiful forever flowers!!

rock art

A fun outside activity when you want to enjoy the sunshiny day!!  You can make bugs or letters or numbers or whatever out of the rocks then display anywhere you want!!