Kool-aid Art

I remember reading over and over again on the blogosphere last summer about creating art with Kool-aid on a rainy day. Since our warm, rainy days came a little early this year, Baby Bear and I entertained ourselves by creating one of these art pieces on one of these days.

Baby Bear pouring a packet of Kool-aid out onto his paper. He thought this was the best part of the whole process!

He actually got a little mad when I set the paper out in the rain because he wanted to keep pouring the Kool-aid.

This is what it looked like when I brought it in from the rain.

This is what it looked like after it dried!

This would probably be fun for an older child to create a pattern on the page and see how it turns out. Although Baby Bear loved pouring the Kool-aid, he didn't like letting the rain do the rest of the work. We'll have to try it again in a few months to see what he thinks then. Since he loved the powder Kool-aid so much, I think we'll try salt writing some time soon.

Straw Flowers

Happy spring! If your weather is anything like ours, it feels more like the first day of summer today! Aside from playing outside a LOT today, Baby Bear and I celebrated the first day of spring by using this painting with cut straws technique from Putti Prapancha to paint some spring flowers. To keep Baby Bear from trying to suck from the straw, I folded the uncut end over into a handle and taped it in place. I showed Baby Bear how to made a couple of flowers using a straw and then handed the straws to him. Most of the flowers made it onto the paper, but a few ended up on his body as well. In the end, the toddler version of straw flowers looked more like fireworks, but it was still pretty cool!

Pretend Play: Doctor

While enrolled in my university's education program, I was required to purchase a science kit for one of my classes. This kit was jam packed with tools, materials, and lesson plans for every age group to conduct hands-on science lessons. It was fantastic! Now, though many of the materials are used, I still have this kit and it's remaining tools, including a stethoscope that I recently gave my son for pretend play.

I showed him how to put the pieces in his ears and hold it up to his heart to listen to his heartbeat. He thought this was great! It wasn't long before he started pulling it out and using it with his stuffed animals. So, of course, I had to make him a complete doctor bag!

I used an old make-up bag and filled it with the stethoscope, a large medicine dropper, an oral syringe, a thermometer (non-mercury, of course), a medicine measuring cup, extra large plastic tweezers, a large craft stick (tongue depressor), and lots of band-aids.

He liked the oral syringe, but he thought it needed to be filled with water and used as a squirt gun. Now, it's in with his bathtub toys

Optimus Prime needed a band-aid.

His pony needed one, too.

He put the stethoscope into the pony's ears, so I helped the pony listen to his heartbeat. :)

Paging Dr. Batman! This is now one of my all-time favorite pictures! It's not easy finding pretend play accessories for boys in most stores' toy isles, and the ones you find online can be expensive. A homemade doctor's bag is a great way to help boys  pretend, too. (Also would be great for girls!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Since we've been focusing on rainbows so much this week, I figured I should do something green for St. Patrick's Day. I cut a couple of shamrocks out of green foam sheets and handed Baby Bear some green glitter glue to decorate them. He loves the bottle the glue comes in, and using it requires a certain amount of hand strength, fine-motor skills, and hand-eye coordination. I also grabbed a sheet of white paper for some extra decorating. It didn't all stay on the paper, though. What painting activity would be complete without a little body art? He was green for St. Patrick's Day!

Rainbow Party Platter

I know I've been focusing on rainbows a lot for St. Patrick's Day this week, but this theme works so well for helping Baby Bear practice his color words. I swell with pride when he points to something green and tells me, "Geen." So, for this rainbow activity, I made a food rainbow as a side dish for dinner. It only took a little more prep than just setting the food out on a platter. Baby Bear must have liked that we all shared the big, colorful dish because he actually ate at least a little of every food on the platter, which is uncommon for him. This food tray could be done with an assortment of foods like what I did, or it could be done as an all fruits or all veggies tray. It would make a nice platter for a St. Patrick's Day or rainbow-theme party.

Rainbow Sugar Cookies

Not long ago, a friend of mine pinned a picture of these cookies to one of her Pinterest boards. They were perfect for both St. Patrick's Day and spring, so I repinned them and then made them! I took a store-bought roll of plain sugar cookie dough, divided it into 4 bowls, and colored each hunk of dough a different color. Then, I grabbed a small glob from each bowl, rolled the globs into a ball, and rolled the ball like I was making a playdough snake. Finally, I swirled the dough together and followed the package's baking directions. It was more work than I expected, but I was happy with how they turned out. This batch was a trial run for cookies I'll be making for a St. Patrick's Day party. Here are some things I learned while making the cookies:

• The food coloring makes the dough a little stickier. The first few cookies were hard to roll, so I kept my hands lightly coated with flour, and I lightly coated my rolling surface with flour like I would with homemade dough. This helped a lot.
• Don't roll the dough too thin while rolling it like a snake. Swirling the dough together into a cookie becomes a lot more difficult when the roll is too thin. The cookies that looked the nicest when finished were the ones I used thicker rolls for (I would say about 3/8").
• The original page this recipe came from suggested twisting the dough as you coiled it together. I found that it was easier to twist the dough as I rolled it into a tube.

Reverse Rainbow

Getting Baby Bear to paint the colors of the rainbow in order, or even just in an arc, wasn't really a possibility. So, we made a reverse rainbow picture. I drew a rainbow, sun, and clouds with white crayon on a white paper. Next, I made some water colors (with a little less corn starch and a little more vinegar) and colored them red, yellow, green, and blue. The plan was to have Baby Bear paint the colors of the rainbow around the rainbow. Then, Baby Bear took my plans, scrapped them, and ran with his own. My son is an original, that's for sure. :)

This is how the paints started out...

... and this is how they ended! At least some of it got on the paper. :)  I used the paintbrush to smooth the paint across the paper as Baby Bear poured onto the paper. It wasn't at all what I intended, but he had so much fun! Plus, we still ended up with a St. Patrick's Day rainbow picture... a Baby Bear original!