Summer Art Play Date #4

We had our fourth summer art play date here yesterday.  And, no, thank you for asking, it was not hot like summer should be.  I’m getting quite ready to start complaining.  It did not rain on us, though, for which, I am thankful.  I had a busy day following the play date as I was hosting my friend Lisa’s bachelorette party as well (hooray!), so I didn’t want it to be too messy in the backyard.  So, I pulled out two oldie-but-goodie art projects for everyone to work on.  The kids were super low-key (which was nice) and spent a long time on each project, but especially spent a huge amount of time (at least half an hour) just playing with the play dough on the little picnic table. They also took a break half way through to pick raspberries off the bushes for a little snack.

Flower and Leaf Pounding

Clara and I did this project last fall with the colorful leaves she had gathered, but I thought it would work just as well for flowers gathered from the garden.  I asked everyone to bring flowers from their yards and a rubber mallet.  We laid out strips that I had cut from a white sheet I got at a thrift store on some cardboard.  Then we placed flowers on half of the white sheet, folded it over, and pounded until all of the flowers’ juices showed through.




Then we opened the fabric up and shook off all of the decimated flower petals and leaves. Then we made them into various things. Some were wall hangings on a stick, some were flags, and Clara’s has since morphed into a very colorful cape.

Toilet Paper Shakers

The second project that we did was to use up all of the toilet paper rolls that were left over from our clean mud project a few weeks ago. You didn’t think that I threw those away, did you? This was a project that we did when Clara was almost two with our little at home preschool and they all loved it. Guess what? They still loved it and the toddlers loved it, too.

Gather some toilet paper rolls, markers, dobbers, stickers, etc. Have the kids decorate the flattened rolls. Staple one end. Add some popcorn kernels or beans. Staple the other end. Shake it up, baby, now!