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.

 

Re-purposing Kids' Art

I don't like to throw anything away that my kids make.  As a crazy sentimental mommy, I would keep forever and ever a little scratching done on a Post-it note, if it was scratched by the hands that belong to these faces:

The faces that belong to those hands are pretty cute, so, needless to say, I have stacks of paintings and colorings and markerings and stickerings.  I know I can't keep it ALL,  but, I can't bring myself to just pitch their creative endeavors.  So, a way to get rid of some of the stacks of stuff, without just moving it to the trash...

I have had these on the wall for a long, long time and it was long past their time to go.  We started by cutting out little rectangles from the paintings with the goal of making notecards.

Rectangular cuttings all ready to go.  I did bring myself to throw away the scraps, though it was a challenge.  Told you I was crazy sentimental...I wanted to keep the SCRAPS of their paintings.

We then glued the painting pieces to blank notecards purchased at the Dollar Store...

Once we did the gluing, I did put the notecards under a bin of magazines to help flatten them out. 

We also cut some longer strips from the original paintings and then folded them in half to make another type of notecard.

So, there is painting on both sides and blank on the inside.

Sending off their art work in the mail truck sure seems better, to me, than sending it off in the garbage truck.

For Reading.

Dollar Deals

A while ago I spotted paintable, wooden birdhouses at Joann's for the bargain price of $1.00.  So for a grand total of $2 and some change, I scored two birdhouses that I decided to save, literally, for a rainy day.  I saved the birdhouses and saved them, rainy days came and went, and we just never got around to painting them.  There arrived a day, however, when I had two very cranky kids on my hands.  Though it was sunny outside, we got out the paints and started in on our birdhouses.

 Nothing chases away the crankies like some paint.

These birdhouses were a steal at $1.  What a find!  The kids even handled it fairly well that we would not be housing actual, real birds in their birdhouses.

It was especially fun to watch Eli paint.  For the first time ever, I noticed that he had a specific plan.  Eli painted the entire roof orange before moving on to the rest of the birdhouse.  What fun to watch his mind work in a new way!

The kids were so focused on their painting that I actually did get to drink some of my coffee.

It was also fun to watch Eli invent this little game.  He would dip his birdhouse in the paint and then stamp the tablecloth.  Again, so fun to watch his mind work!

Finished products.

A cheap mantle display.

So, don't forget to check the bargain bins at your favorite craft store for a rainy....or cranky...day activity!