Watercolor Resist Hearts

The other day, I had another family over for dinner (Hi Kim!) and had a wide variety of ages kids to entertain (1-5).  I wanted to be able to do a project that they could all participate in at their own level, but still come out of with a great product.  And it would be great if it could be fun and somewhat kid centered.  This is what I came up with: watercolor resist painting with a  heart motif.

I differentiated for the different ages by letting the older ones do more of the project themselves and the younger ones do less. To start, I cut heart stencils of varying sizes out of a box and I drew the hearts on some watercolor paper. Then, for the littlest ones (1 and 2-years-old), I outlined the hearts with oil pastels. I let the bigger kids do the oil pastels themselves. Then everyone got to paint their pictures with watercolors and see what happened to the oil pastel lines. On the second and third rounds, the older kids (3 and 5-year-olds) traced the heart stencils, did the oil pastels, and used the watercolor paints all by themselves. Everyone enjoyed themselves and they all produced some great art on their own.

Sensory Bin of the Month: Valentine’s Bin

I know it isn’t quite Valentine’s Day yet, or even February for that matter, but I couldn’t help myself.  I went to Dollar Tree the other day and there was a ton of fun things to make a Valentine’s sensory bin, so I scooped some up and went home and put it together.  And, I must say that this one is a hit.  After our snow village, this one seems super clean.  It also seems that the pink and red is irresistable to my girls.  The first night they played with it for at least an hour and a half straight and then all this weekend it has been broken into and played with every day.  I have eaten a lot of “love soup” this weekend.

In this bin, I have a set of ten little heart boxes, some sparkly foam glitter hearts (table scatter), some plastic red hearts (also table scatter), a bag of fake rose petals, and some random gems that I found in the girls’ room in a little box.  All of those were from Dollar Tree.  Then to add a bit more interest I dumped in some dry white beans and barley from my pantry and a few bowls for scooping things into, a couple of egg cartons, and two pairs of kid chopsticks.

We have scooped, sorted, cooked, hoarded, patterned, and dumped with this bin and it was broken in to again today. This just might be the easiest and most loved sensory bin yet.

December and January

Boy, the last month has sped by and I’ve been busy trying to catch my breath and get back into a normal routine.  Which of course had been completely forgotten in the two weeks of vacation and Christmas craziness.  So, we’ve been retraining.  And I’ve been making cakes.  Because all of the nephews and niece have birthdays in a three week span.  So, I leave you pictures of the three cakes I made and promise new posts in the next week: a craft and a sensory bin. Enjoy!

Thomas Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting for Miles’ fifth birthday

Spiderman Chocolate Chip Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting for Drew’s fifth birthday

Princess Crown Yellow cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting and Sugar Cookie embellishments for Chloe’s third birthday