We love to read and love to do art & are participating in Michelle’s st+ART activities found in her blog, A Mommy’s Adventures, with the book, My Purple Toes, by Blair Hahn.   My Purple Toes is about a Dad who decides to be silly and enjoy being different by painting his toes purple .  He then discusses the reactions of his family members (embarrassment and giggles) to his purple toes and the fun places his toes get to go wiggle.  Want your own copy?  Leave a comment below for a …

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?

Want a craft project that reminds you of cooler days?  We are pretty warm right now in Texas, and I was thrilled to discover a fun “wintery” science experiment.  Pam of Troop Petrie created some fun and whimsical snowflakes with her kids using borax (which is a staple in homemade cleaners) and pipe cleaners.  As borax is a chemical and not edible this would definitely need to be a “well-supervised” experiment.  Here are Pam’s snowflakes and directions.  Thanks Pam for submitting a guest post today!
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We made borax snowflakes, it was …

My preschoolers love to color with crayons and love to paint – why not do both? This post was adapted from the post on resist crayon paintings on The Activity Mom several months ago. It has been mulling around in the back of my brain as a craft activity waiting for the perfect moment. This craft is really quite simple, even my 18 month old joined in on the fun. First you color your paper with crayons, then you paint over the crayoned drawing. We …

Painting with toddlers can be a challenge.  Our youngest wants desperately to participate with her older siblings during craft times, and yet, she still has a tendency to put things in her mouth. Time for edible paints! French’s sent us some honey mustard (yummy!) and Quirky kid A has had fun playing with “paint” while eating her veggies! This was a great time to train her to “paint” only on the paper and not on the table. We’ll work on not putting “paint” in her mouth …

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 …

We had a lot of fun decorating eggs this past weekend, it was part of a trial run before my last min “the night before Easter” dying eggstravaganza! We made several different types of egg decorations, polka-dots, painted, striped, little “men” and speckled. The kids had a blast and we even learned something about color theory in the process.  Maybe some of our eggs will inspire you.
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What we used to decorate our Easter Eggs:

White vinegar
food dye
a dozen or so eggs
medicine dropper
tacky glue
rubber …

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 …

This is my preschoolers favorite way to paint!  Basically, it is what it sounds like; shaving cream mixed with paint.  We usually mix the shaving cream with tempera paint as it has the smoothest consistency and is the cheapest!  We have three tubs of primary colored paint: red, blue and yellow that we mix to get a whole host of colors.  When mixed with the cream, the colors look more neon and bright.