Snowflake Painting

I saw this project on Pintrest, and the girls had fun painting. We didn't have the right kind of pine trees in our backyard, so my dad cut some branches for us. It turned into a regular day of painting after the initial prints, and everyone had a lot of fun.

Ghost Prints

Princess Mirror Craft Project

Piper received this Melissa and Doug craft kit for Christmas from Uncle Greg and Aunt Rory. We finally got around to doing it today. She thought it was lots of fun and has a blast using the glitter glue. It was very messy though. I was impressed that she kept the glitter off the mirror part and put all the stickers on except for the first one that I did. The finished product is god-awful and garish, but she loves it. When you're two more is more, not less. :)

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Pumpkin Time

We currently have seven pumpkins at our house, two itty bitty ones from the pumpkin patch, and five from Walmart. It was cheaper to buy them at Walmart than the pumpkin patch actually. Erick and Piper carved one of the big ones last week, but I was indulging in a much needed nap, so I didn't capture anything on film. Then after a few days he gave it away to some of the neighbor kids.

So yesterday I decided to let Piper decorate a pumpkin by herself, no carving needed. I had some puffy Halloween stickers that she loved. She was even able to get them off the paper herself this time. Yay! Lately she has been infatuated with ghosts, and talks about them all the time. Fortunately there were plenty of ghost stickers.

I will warn you that although she was occupied with this activity for quite a while, after she finished, she dragged that darn pumpkin around and the stickers started falling off all over the house. I'll probably still be finding Halloween stickers at Christmas.

Nature Collage

The other day we went for a walk and collected many different items from nature. Piper is really into examining everything outside whether it's a rock or a bug. We picked different wildflowers and collected small rocks. We even found a couple of different pinecones that had not been ruined from last fall. I got some leaves off of trees for her, and she picked up sticks and bark from the ground. She had a big bag of things to carry when we were finished.

Afterwards I let her glue the collection on to a piece of cardboard. In reality, she was more excited about squeezing the glue out of the bottle than putting the things on the board. I helped a lot by pressing things down so they wouldn't fall off later. She did like sprinkling the birdseed on at the very end and would have done that forever had I let her continue.

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Easter Eggs

We decorated our Easter eggs tonight. I wanted something easy that only took one step. Have you seen the Easter coloring options lately? There's glitter, wax, stickers, plastic wraps, and more. Our kit was a basic dye pack with oil. It gave the eggs a tie-dyed look. All I had to to was dunk the eggs in a couple cups of water and we were done. Oh, and I also had to remove Piper from the top of the table every five seconds, and wipe up the spilled water, and save the eggs from being cracked or dropped, and so on.

Ooey, Gooey, Oobleck

I did this activity with my first graders last Friday, so I thought Piper would enjoy playing with it too. Knowing that she loves to get messy, I knew this would be right up her alley. I did not add the food coloring to her mixture, and it was a little thin at first, but eventually it was the perfect consistency. If you have never done oobleck before, you have to try it to understand how very cool it is. I use it to teach about solids and liquids in the classroom, although it is actually neither one. It is a non-Newtonian substance (feel free to Google that if you really want to know more)

Oobleck is based on a Dr. Seuss book called Bartholomew and the Oobleck. In the book it was really bad if you ate the oobleck, but our oobleck was made out of cornstarch and water, and was harmless. I thought it wouldn't taste very good and Piper would keep it out of her mouth, but not my child! She decided it must be dinner and tasted it every chance she could.

Here is the recipe if you are inspired to get messy yourself.

Oobleck Recipe

2 cups of corn starch, 3 drops of green food coloring, enough water to make a thick mixture (about the texture of pancake batter) I usually measure equal amounts of water and corn starch, but mix water in slowly.

Arts and Crafts Project

We took a hot chocolate canister after it was empty and I let Piper paint it. Then we filled it with beans and voila...a new toy made espcially by her.

Christmas Crafts

I'm trying to come up with some craft ideas for Piper to do this Christmas. Yesterday we worked on tissue paper art. She put the paper on the contact paper, then I cut it out. They turned out okay, and she had fun making a big mess.