Valentine Craftiness

Kate painted on bubble wrap and pressed card stock down on top of the painted bubble wrap.

The result was some pretty unique hearts.

 I folded a paper plate in half and cut out the center and a heart shape to create a fun hat for Kate.  Thank you, Pinterest!

 Both girls made contact paper placemats.

One morning, there was a 90 minute snow delay.  Reagan used that extra time to loop all of these Valentine papers together to create a pretty chain decoration.

Love was the theme of the story hour at Barrington Books last week.  The kids made love bouquets!

I love all of the love!

Bubble Wrap Painting and Shaving Cream Marbling - Reading Mural

Last summer, we made a floral reading mural to keep track of the books we read over the summer.  Every time we read a book, we would add a petal or leaf to the mural with the title of the book written on each petal or leaf.  We also added butterflies and a sun.  It was a very popular activity with C and R, plus it kept them writing (they wrote the titles) and reading all summer.

Creating a reading mural is on our Summer Bucket List again this year, but we didn't get to it until this week, so unfortunately, it won't have all of our summer reading titles on it.  Oh well, better late than never!

To create the background for our reading mural, I cut some waves out of poster board.  I put some blobs of blue, green, and purple poster paint on the surface and R painted the waves.

C wasn't in the mood to paint, so R did the whole thing.

Once she was done painting, we placed bubble wrap on top of the wet paint and she pushed on and stepped on the bubble wrap to create a bubble effect in the ocean waves.

I cut some fish shapes out of white card stock.  Then we decorated the fish using the shaving cream marbling technique.

I began by giving C and R a tray with shaving cream and a few squirts of acrylic paint.

They used popsicle sticks to swirl the paint (don't over-mix - you want the colors to maintain their individual identities!).

Once they were done swirling, they took the card stock fish shapes and pressed them in the mixture, then pulled them out and put them aside for a few minutes.

We typically wait at least ten minutes to let the color set, and then use a popsicle stick to scrape off the extra shaving cream.  I have posted this technique many times; it's always a favorite around here and the results are so pretty!  Sometimes we use food coloring instead of paint; both work wonderfully.

Each fish will represent one book read.  We will continue adding fish until our ocean is full.  Here is a sneak peek with just a few of the fish on the ocean waves background (before any book titles are written on the fish):

I love the contrasting colors!

You may have noticed that this reading mural is tiny compared to the one we made last year.  Well, my due date is five weeks away and I thought it was best to not be too ambitious with getting every book read on the mural.  If need be, we can always expand with more poster board waves and fish that may or may not be marbled!

If you want to see more marbling, check out the gorgeous fall leaves made by Little Wonders' Days by clicking here!

Bubble Wrap Painting Easter Art

I have a ridiculously large stash of bubble wrap left over from when we moved over a year ago.  Whenever possible, I try to think of different ways to use it up.  This week we did some bubble wrap painting.

I gave C and R bubble wrap, paint, large sheets of white construction paper, and paint brushes.  They began by painting the bubble wrap.

Then, they pressed the painted bubble wrap down onto the construction paper, repeating this until the paper was covered to their satisfaction.

R completed one (the colors she chose remind me of Mardi Gras):

C completed two works of art, one with stripes and one with purposeful egg shapes:

After the paint dried, the purposeful Easter egg picture was covered in clear contact paper to make a placemat. 

I cut out Easter egg shapes from the other two works of art.  R then decided she wanted a placemat, so she arranged her egg shapes on clear contact paper and we covered them with another piece of clear contact paper.

C still has some Easter egg shapes left that we will use for decorating or something else yet to be determined.

I really love the way the eggs came out.  I think we will try to use bubble wrap to decorate real eggs for Easter this year. 

We all enjoyed reading Here Comes T. Rex Cottontail by Lois G. Grambling.  When the Easter Bunny gets a cold, he asks T. Rex to deliver eggs for him on Easter morning.  T. Rex began preparing for the big day by practicing his hopping and he accidentally stumbled and fell on the Easter Bunny's basketful of eggs that had been colored for Easter.  T. Rex's friends search to find eggs and together they all color the eggs they manage to find.  The surprise comes after the eggs are all delivered, and I'll let you read the book to find out what happens!