Bubble Wrap Letters

I never know whether to start with a picture of the final product, so that you know whether you want to even keep reading...or, if I should save the picture of the final product until the end to build the suspense.  Oh the dilemma.  Well, today, we'll start at the end.

Letter prints made using bubble wrap.  I liked how they turned out so much, we framed and hung them up.

And now, back to the beginning...

I laid a print-out of the letters underneath the bubble wrap and then traced the letters onto the bubble wrap using a marker.  You can see Abby's little hand popping bubbles.  Really...who can resist?

I then cut out the letters and taped them to the waxy side of freezer paper.

Let the painting begin. 

Each kid chose two colors of paint.  I was concerned that if we used too many colors we would end up with brown gloppy letters.

Get your letter nice and covered with paint...

...and then press a piece of paper onto the bubble wrap.  Thankfully, my husband and I named our children good bubble-wrap-letter names.  An "E" and an "A".  Nice symmetrical letters.  For a non-symmetrical letter, like an "R," for example, be careful.  I am writing this at 5:30 AM, so I can't even picture what you should do.  The bubble wrap letter should be drawn and cut in the reverse of the actual letter, right?  Right?  I am so confused and again, so thankful I had the foresight to name my children with symmetrically lettered names.  I hate to say it, but I guess you non-symmetrical people are on your own.

Some finished products:

 

 For the last set, we just pressed paper onto the bubble wrap letters in a random fashion, using up the paint that was there. 

And here's what happens to your "A" bubble wrapper while you are focused on your "E" bubble wrapper.  Ok, so clearly I knew it was happening since I documented the process with pictures. 

Back to the beginning.  I absolutely adore these!

So, if nothing else, let this be a lesson in choosing names for children.  Symmetry is key.

P Pumpkin Painting

On Monday, a firetruck and some firemen came to visit Eli's preschool.  While this type of event would bring joy to the hearts of most little boys, Eli is not fond of firetruck and firemen for undetermined reasons.  I think it has something to do with the mask, which does cause complications as we near October 31st.  Anyways, to avoid Eli having to seek therapy 20 years from now because his parents forced him to go to school on the firetruck day, we kept him home.  Upon learning that he was going to stay home, Eli told me, "Since I am not going to school, we should do some homeschool."  You got it, buddy.  Since "P" was the letter of the day at school, it became our letter of the day at home.

I had some leftover canned pumpkin in the fridge and my vision was to use that pumpkin to "paint" the letter P. 

We started by putting the "P" printout on a cookie sheet and then covered it with plastic wrap.  Abby is pretty curious at this point.

We got out the pumpkin and started making some observations...

Smelling

Touching

Listening

And tasting.  That would be the appropriate face after tasting pumpkin.  It's amazing what some sugar and spices can do to that stuff.

When the observations were complete, we started our "painting."

I had envisioned that we would paint on the pumpkin in the shape of the P.  It was hard to get it to spread, even with the plastic wrap.  We decided to take the plastic wrap off to see if it would work better.

No plastic wrap covering and still kind of a rough go for spreading.  We did eventually use our hands a bit, but just for a bit.  Neither of my kids like to have messy stuff on their hands.  Weird.  I imagine that if they were into being messy, this would have been loads more fun.  However, the 30 seconds of using their hands did seem to be super fun for them....just a fast super fun.

Our end products.  Not quite what I had pictured, but fun nonetheless.  Abby's was more the idea of what I was going for...painting INSIDE the P outline...but she did have a bit of help from me.

Our conclusion:  

Pumpkin probably works better in baked goods than for painting, but I still think we would do this again. 

A is for Autumn

Here's an easy "A" project that we did this week.  I don't have any pictures of us doing it, since I decided to just enjoy the moment and not wield my camera.  It was kind of nice.

So, I guess we will go backwards by starting with Eli's final product.

We started this by project by painting the letter outlines with glue.  You can find the letter pages here.  The kids thought it was pretty crazy to PAINT with a PAINTBRUSH using GLUE.  Fun times.  We then took our papers outside, covered them with leaves, and finally shook the extra leaves off.  To finish, we thought of "A" words, with me making sure that "autumn" was one of the final words chosen.

And Abby's Art.  

She was much more meticulous than Eli, putting her leaves on one at a time.

We also did this with a picture of a tree.  As I have mentioned before, I can't draw, so I did a Google Image search using "tree outline" and found a nice leafless tree.  Oh the woes of the those limited to stick figure drawings.

 

All in all, this was a fun autumn art project.  

And...it was perfect for a boy, specifically MY boy, as it lasted about 60 seconds.  

Awesome.

 

Cucumber Letters and Pride

We played with our food today.

Tomorrow is Eli's first day of preschool.  Since he is a really young five-year old, this is his second year doing preschool, so there are not as many unknowns, but it's still a big day for us.  I had grand plans at the beginning of the summer to work with Eli every day while Abby was napping.  I even have a copy of this book all ready to go:

Let's just say...it didn't happen.  I have kind of felt today like I am cramming for a final...checking to see which letters Eli can remember and hoping it's enough to show that he did actually learn something during his first year of preschool.  Poor kid, if we didn't do school stuff over the past weeks, I could have at least let him enjoy his last day of summer.  The cramming continued as we got out our magnetic letters and I quizzed Eli while making lunch.

Love these!

Today for lunch, I happened to be cutting cucumbers into strips, as opposed to our usual circles.  With "letter recognition" and "fit a summer's worth of learning into one day" on my brain, I saw letters when I looked at the cutting board.

I would make letters for the kids and they would tell me (HOPEFULLY) what they were.

Turns out that you can make a lot of letters with cucumber strips.

When we got around to actually eating lunch, I asked Eli to make some letters for me.
Where you see the arrow, he bit off a piece to make this "F."  It was fun to watch his thought process.

"Mom, just let me eat, please."

With another chomp, the "E" from the previous picture becomes another "F."

And...not to be outdone by her brother...

The results of our cramming?  He knows most, but certainly not all of his letters.  If I am really honest with myself, I am afraid that this will make me look bad.  He has the same teachers this year and THEY will know what HE knows (or doesn't know) and then his teachers will know what his mother did (or did not do) with him over the summer.  I am thankful for another reminder today (in line with years and years of reminders) of the prideful state of my heart and thankful for God's mercy to me.  So tomorrow, without even knowing how many numbers he can identify, I will send off my sweet boy to preschool.  No more cramming today...