Today we had Art Day at home.
For Art Day, we went shopping at Michael's to get some new art supplies. The shopping itself did not go well... craft stores are terrible places for toddlers. (Too many bright and shiny things that may or may not be breakable.) Next time, I may shop the night before and let Sydney stay at home with her dad (who also hates craft stores, by the way).
Once we recovered from the shopping, though, the art projects went really well. We were doing two different kinds of projects: painting and gluing.
For the painting, we bought a wooden picture frame ($1) and a wooden puzzle ($3) to paint.
After painting those, Sydney just enjoyed painting some pictures. She had been having some trouble with paint the last few times we tried it, becoming upset any time the paint got on her fingers on clothes, so this time I emphasized that it was okay to get messy while doing art. I guess I was successful in the sense that Sydney decided to start painting her hands and then using her hands to smear paint on the paper. The thing I thought was really funny was that the first hand-painted project she did just involved brown paint and she kept saying, "I got dirt on it," so I think she was pretending the brown paint was mud. She later branched out into red, blue, and green with the brown.
For the gluing project, I decided to keep it simple since this was only the second time we had worked with glue. I put glue on the paper and she smeared the glue all around and then I cut one inch squares of paper from some old stationary cards I had and she put the squares on the paper and then we did another layer of glue and she put more squares on. A sort of mosaic collage, I guess.
Here are the finished projects from the day:
"Mud"
"Butterflies and Coffee"
The Puzzle Pieces
The Picture Frame
i'm glad she decided it's OK to get a little dirty sometimes! looks like she was having alot of fun being creative
ReplyDeleteThe picture frame looks awesome.
ReplyDeleteLooks so fun! We will definitely join you next time! :)
ReplyDeleteKara, I was thinking about Peter and I finally remembered how I let Sydney paint at his age... it required two garbage sacks... one over the chair part of the high chair and the other over the tray. Then I taped the paper to the sack on the tray (so it didn't slide around) and put some paint on the paper and let her smear it all around. Then I took that paper and quickly put another one down. At the end, she went straight to the bath and then later I could throw away the garbage sacks and be done with clean up.
ReplyDeleteI just read another idea for painting with toddlers. You put them in an empty bathtub in their diaper with pieces of paper and paint. That way you can just wipe the bathtub down once they are done painting. I might try it that way!
ReplyDeleteI like that idea, too. I'll have to remember that one for Jack.
ReplyDelete