Painting with Water Beads

My two kiddos love to play with water beads.  I'm not a big fan because it seems like I chase those little beads around the house the whole time they are playing with them.  They are quite bouncy.....

So one afternoon I decided we would try to paint with them instead of just pouring, scooping, etc.  

And it turned out super fun.

It's kinda like marble painting, but better because the water beads bounce all around the paper.  They seem to move a little easier when covered in paint than the marbles do.

Anna really enjoyed it....and Drew enjoyed making a mess, so it was a win-win for us!!

You don't need much paint at all....just a few squirts.  The water from the beads makes the paint the perfect consistency.

I put paper in these shallow plastic containers and they were great for little hands to hold.

See....Drew enjoys just squishing the water beads and making a mess.

It was fun....and a new way to enjoy water beads!!

Watercolor Resist & Reading: Heart Edition

We have been working on reading some simple words recently so this little watercolor resist activity was a lot of fun for my little lady!!  

Super simple, super easy.

And we're still loving hearts at our house...just fyi!!

I started by cutting out some hearts from cardstock and then wrote some words, names, numbers and phrases on the cardstock with a white crayon.

Then I gave her the hearts and water colors and told her to find the hidden word/message.

I did encourage to try to use one color per heart because it makes it much easier to see the letters and word.

Fun, fast, easy and educational!  My kind of activity!

Valentine's ABC and 123

Anna is all about Valentine's day this year.  She asks me almost every day if it's Valentine's yet....or if tomorrow will be Valentine's.  I'm not really sure why...we don't really do anything special.  Right now, she is obsessed with this heart punch I have.  She punches hearts all day, draws pictures on them, writes "I love u" on them, colors them, gives them to us.....

So today, I thought we would do a little "heart learning".  I punched out enough hearts for both uppercase/lowercase letters, as well as numbers 1-5.

We played a matching/memory game with our letters..

We sorted them out by upper/lower case and then matched up the "baby" (lowercase) with the "momma" (uppercase) letters.

And then we matched up the correct number of hearts with each number.

It was fun...she was learning...and I'm sure we will do this again soon!

Color Sorting for Toddlers

We are really big into color sorting at our house right now.  Drew really loves to play with these little transportation counters we have and loves to sort them by color.  He even tries to "trick" us by putting a color in the wrong cup and waits to see if we will notice.  Then he laughs hysterically...which is adorable.

We have several different cups floating around our house and I also made the cups on the right side of the picture using leftover Tupperware and some paint.  

And you don't have to have any particular type of object or counter to make this work for you.  Just gather up some of your little ones toys in the corresponding colors.

Making snowmen...

Wow!

It's been a while since you've seen me around, huh? 

Nothing new here....just staying busy with the kids....trying to unwind from the schedule of the holidays....and trying to enjoy the little moments.

Oh...and I started a new blog.  It's more about my addiction to paper crafts and Project Life and isn't so very "kid-craft-related" but check it out here if you are interested http://stephaniemakes.blogspot.com.

Ok...

We've been doing lots of crafts and activities; none have just made the blog yet!!

This little fun snowman craft came about because we got the slightest little bit of snow last week and my kids are craving more!  They really want to build a huge snowman, but we figured a pretend one was all we would be able to make on a 60 degree winter day.

We started out with some buttons, googly eyes, stickers and pipe cleaners to make our snowman.

Then we used white paint on blue paper to "stamp" circles as the shape of the snowman.  As you can see, Drew is a little more artistic with his interpretation of a snowman.  He was having fun, so we just roll with it!!  :)

Next we added our eyes (lots of eyes in Drew's case), buttons, arms (and legs too for Anna's) as well as some noses.

This is Anna's "snow girl" complete with hands, feet and bows in her hair.

Is this is Drew's snow-monster, I mean man!  

Art and crafts are always fun.  I always love to sit back and let them just create away!!

Play Dough and Stamps

I put together a fun little play dough activity for Anna the other day and it turned out to be a hit.  Who knew that stamps work so well with play dough?  We pulled out our homemade play dough and all of our stamps and went to town!

Our lowercase alphabet stamps were lots of fun and Anna loved spelling out her name (over and over and over again).

I also worked with her on some of the words she knows, as well as some beginning sight words.

Then we pulled out our princess stamps and made some pretty pictures.  She also liked using a pencil to make little dots all over the play dough.

The images were pretty cool.  Try it!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to all of you!!  I hope 2013 is the best ever!!