My preschoolers love to paint – and I love to spice up life a bit! Who wants to eat pretzels from a boring bag clothed up with a plain old clip? Not me!
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…and viola! We have some fun and funky clothespins!
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Do you have any fun painting projects you’ve done with your kids lately?

We are looking forward to the fall and beginning to homeschool our oldest. I love the sounds of this meme, stART. Michelle is a former elementary school teacher who created weekly activities for her kids mixing literature (stories) and art projects. They look like a ton of fun! Here was one of the projects that she did with her daughters this past spring. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired from her collection of book-based crafts. Thanks Michelle, of A Mommy’s Adventures for joining us today.
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This week …

Anna of The Lawrence Girls and Daddy, has three crafty girls.  The stories of their lives and interactions has me laughing almost every time I read her blog!  In 2-3 weeks our little girl will arrive and I am both terrified and curious what life with three girls is like – curious, read her blog!  Till then, Anna and her girls had a recent craft project – blowing bubbles and making art!  What a great combination!  We did bubble art last summer, but used cups.  I know my kids would …

My kids love to paint and I hate to waste stuff.  Every Spring we weed through the cabinet under the bathroom sink and get rid of all the expired lotions and what-not.  Sunscreen isn’t effective if it is old (and one of my kids burns badly – I learned this the hard way!).  So what will we do with all the old lotions and sunscreen?  Make our own Finger Paint!
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What you need to make your own lotion-based finger paint:

Old containers of lotion or sunscreen
Tin to hold the paint
Food coloring

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We used …

We had leftover egg dye from dying our eggs a few days ago, and if you know anything about the Quirky household from reading this blog over the last few months, our preschoolers love to paint!  We used a wide variety of dripping/spraying tools from paintbrushes that we flicked, old toothbrushes that we sprayed, straws that we used as drippers,  and even a cotton ball that we used to smear the dye on our papers.  I loved the effect of the dye on the paper!  If you want to make …

Combine play sand with cornstarch and you get lots of sand fun!  What is great about this mixture is that unlike regular sand, it cakes together when slightly damp.  Almost becoming hard, but smashes back into sand.  All of my kids enjoyed playing with there new “outdoor only” tub!  I will warn you though, they were covered in sand when they were done!  The “clumping qualities” exist on clothing too – haha.  This was messier than regular sand, it didn’t just brush off until it was bone dry (aka when …

Super easy and Super fun! This is a really easy edible art project! Instead of boring plain old syrup on your pancakes, why not paint them! I was surprised by painting their pancakes the kids actually used less syrup than when they drizzled their pancakes or dipped bites in a syrup puddle.  This activity actually makes pancakes a more healthy alternative!  You can also use honey instead of syrup.  What you’ll need: Food Coloring, Syrup, Unused Paintbrushes, & Pancakes! We used an egg carton to …

I think this was one of my kids favorite activities so far.   We went outside to one of our flower pots by the pool where we can easily find bugs, frogs, geckos, etc.  gathered a couple worms, grubs, a beetle and an earwig.  Going on a bug hunt was fun!  Then we dipped them in paint and watched them move.
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Supplies needed:
Half a dozen or so different types of bugs
Tweezers, paint covered bugs are slippery!
Different colors of water soluble paint – so the bugs can live through this experience.
Paper
What to …

Paint is our favorite medium.  It is the good ole’ standby at our house.  As we are learning about birds this week, we decided to paint with feathers.
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Materials Needed:

Paint, we used our shaving cream paint recipe
Feathers
Glue
Paper

Originally we were going to use the feathers as one would use a paintbrush.  Silly me thought my two-year old was up for the fine motor skill challenge.  Once my little fella discovered th joy of getting his fingers wet in the paint their was no stopping them and my older child joined in.  …

This week we are studying birds.  We used birdseed in a tactile or blind, “I Spy” as well as practiced gross motor skills by pouring bird seed from cup to cup.
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Materials needed:

Bucket
Birdseed
items and small trinkets

What we did:
The kids love feeling birdseed sifting through their fingers!  They picked three objects from their pile and would hide them in the bucket, then pass the bucket to the other child who would proceed to find whatever items were requested.  This gave the kids chances to work on giving and following instructions as well …