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!

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!

Christmas & Winter Crafts for Kids

 We are in the full swing of Christmas here!  I'm busy working on my December Daily album and we are jet-setting up and down the east coast to visit friends and family.  Lots going on and so little time!  We've managed to fit in some fun Christmas crafts and activities but I haven't found the time to upload the pictures yet.  Hopefully soon.  In the meantime, here are some crafts from last year to tide you over!  (You know...for the all two of you who read my blog!)  Links are after each picture.

Hope you all are in the Christmas spirit and are enjoying life as much as we are!!

Christmas Pom Pom Crafts

Christmas Tree Craft

Winter Crafts



Snowflake Crafts

Preschool Painting Fun

I'm sure it's no surprise that Anna loves to paint and do crafts.  She would do them all day long....picture after picture, craft after craft.  Sometimes, though, I don't run out of ideas (like after the 10th activity of the morning) or either I just don't feel like getting all the stuff needed together.

Thankfully, I found Learn.Create.Love.  It's an amazing site with awesome painting printables.  Anna actually asks to browse the site by name to see what she feels like painting.  Below are just a few of our recent creations.  You just have to check out the site!  It's a go-to when I need something quick, easy and relatively mess free for my preschooler!!

Making Mini Books

Anna is really into storytelling right now and is starting to make up her own stories.  Most of her stories closely follow other stories that we have read or she has heard....and most of them are about Dora, the Snow Princess or Mariana the Mermaid (all from Dora books).

I want to continue to encourage her storytelling so I put together these little mini books following this simple tutorial from Playful Learning.  

After the books were assembled, I invited Anna over to make up some stories with me.  We talked about how stories have a beginning, middle and end and we talked about some of her favorite stories.  Of course, all the Dora stories were the top of her list so she told me a few stories and I wrote them down for her.

She wanted her little books to have a picture on the front so we looked online and I printed off several pictures that correlated with her stories.

Below is the story of Dora and Mariana the Mermaid.

Anna carries these books with her everywhere and reads them to anyone who will listen.  She's quite proud of her books and I love that she loves them.  We will definitely be making many more!!

Preschool Journal: R is for Rainbow

Anna is still loving her preschool journal.  She carries around with her most places and asks to write in it a lot.  I let her draw, color or whatever she wants in it any time, but I'm always trying to think of new and creative ideas for her to incorporate into the journal.

One day last week she was really obsessed with rainbows and wanted to put one in her journal so I decided to cut out some shapes for a rainbow and let her put them in the correct order.

She loved gluing them down (she loves gluing anything).  My shapes aren't obviously the best, but she didn't seem to mind!!

After she put together the rainbow, I had her write a letter "R".  Below the rainbow is her "R".  I don't really correct her as she's writing her letters, but sometimes I will have her trace the letter after me so she can see how the letters are made.  I'm not that concerned about how she writes them.  I just love that she loves to write, color and draw.

Preschool Journal: Big and Small

This is another entry in our preschool journal.  

Anna and I were talking about big and small things one day and we decided it would be pretty cool to trace our hands to see the size difference.  I traced our hands, but she filled in our names and wrote "big" and "small" at the top of the pages.

Spooky Ghost Counting

Happy Halloween to everyone!!  We are busy having Halloween parties, making pumpkin cupcakes and eating lots and lots of candy!!

I still managed to sneak in a little learning fun at our little Halloween get together today!  I found the haunted house printable at Sarah Jane Studios.  I just cut out her template and traced it onto black construction paper.  Then I cut out and numbered some yellow windows and some numbered ghosts.

I covered both the house and the ghosts with contact paper so I could use tape on the back of the ghosts.  

Both my kiddos have loved playing with the little ghosts and the house.  Drew loves taking off the ghosts and putting them back one.  Anna loves matching the numbers up!!  

Hope everyone is having a fabulous Halloween!!

http://sarahjanestudios.com/blog/2012/10/halloween-traditions/

Preschool Journal: My Favorite Things

These pictures are probably Anna's most favorite thing ever.  She loves the pictures and she loves looking at them in her journal.

Her preschool class had each child create an "all about me" page using their favorite "things" and Anna requested to add one to her journal book.

All of the images are just printed from Google images.  I printed a thumbnail of each one and then cut them out for her.

She carefully placed each picture in her journal.

With her favorite...the mermaids....front and center!!

The journal has kind of turned into her own little "scrapbook" and I love it.  I'm sure it will be fun to look back through all her pictures, words, letters, drawings, etc.  in a few months!  They grow fast, don't they!!

Five Little Pumpkins

The "Five Little Pumpkins" story has been repeated numerous times over the past few weeks in our house.  Seriously....like every other minute.

So I decided to just enjoy it and Anna and I made a little picture to go along with our story.  

I drew some pumpkin shapes onto a piece of paper and she drew some faces and colored in her pumpkins.

While she colored away, I cut out a "gate" for our pumpkins to sit on.  Then Anna colored some grass, sky and a moon on our picture.  And of course...it just had to have a witch (please excuse my awful representation of a witch!)

Then we told the story using the pumpkins!  

Anna loved this!  We've done this little activity too many times to count!  Hurry up Halloween!!  :)

And in case you don't know the Five Little Pumpkins, here's our version...

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first pumpkin said, "Oh my, it's getting late."

The second pumpkin said "There are witches in the air."

The third one said "But we don't care."

The fourth one said "Let's run and run and run"

The fifth one said "I'm ready for some fun"

Then whoosh wind went the wind

And out went the lights

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight

Making Pumpkins: A Color Mixing Experiment

I love trying to incorporate some learning into craft activities and this one is perfect for preschoolers.  

We have done lots of color mixing activities, but I figured with Halloween right around the corner we could do some mixing to make some pumpkins.  Mess free pumpkins, that is!!

You only need a ziploc bag, some yellow and red paint and a marker if you want to give your pumpkin a pretty face!

Have your kiddo squeeze some yellow paint into a ziploc bag.  (I'm pretty sure the squeezing part was Anna's favorite!)

Then add some red paint.  And squish away.

Soon you'll see your orange "pumpkin" appear!  

After we mixed our colors to make orange, I handed Anna a sharpie marker to make her pumpkin face.

Simple, easy, but educational!  Love it!

Our Fall Family Tree

Drew and I painted leaves for our fall family tree one afternoon.  It turned out to be such a cute little project and the kids loved looking at all of our family.  It was pretty simple to complete too....you know my style...simple and easy.

Here's how to make one:

Start by painting some "fall colors" onto a piece of paper.  Just let your child paint away (unless you have an older child who could actually paint leaves freehand).

While your child is painting, cut out a tree with some branches.  Tape it up to the wall and then tape a piece of contact paper over the top with the sticky side out.  

After the painting has dried, cut out leaf shapes from the paper.  I think it's pretty cool how the colors are all mixed. 

Then print off some pictures of your family members, tape them onto the leaves and laminate the leaves.

Stick the leaves up on your tree and then play around.

My two really loved seeing all of our family!

Happy Fall!