Beyond the Paintbrush

When I worked in child care one of my favorite things do with the kids was to paint. It's a love I've carried over to mommy-hood and the boys and I usually tackle a couple paint projects a week. A lot of fun can be had with just paint and a brush (or fingers), but sometimes it's nice to spice it up a bit. Here are some of my favorite ways to make painting even more fun.

Marbled Shaving Cream Prints

supplies: acrylic paint, paper, shaving cream, squeegee, and a skewer or a tooth pick
process: spray shaving cream on to pan, smooth out shaving cream with squeegee, squeeze dots
of paint on to shaving cream, swirl paint with skewer, press paper on to shaving cream, scrap
excess shaving cream from paper

Marble Painting

supplies: tempera paint, paper, spoons, container with sides, & marbles
process: lay paper inside pan, drop marbles in paint, spoon marbles on to paper, tilt pan back and forth to roll marbles, or push them around with a spoon

Watercolor Crayon Resist

supplies: water colors*, paper, masking tape, stencils, foam brushes & a white crayon,
process: draw design with white crayon, paint paper using watercolors
*you can do this activity using traditional watercolor cakes or even diluted food coloring. i really enjoy using
liquid watercolors because the are easy to work, versatile, and last forever

Bubble Prints

supples: tempera paint, dish soap, water, spoon, straw, wide shallow bowl, paper
process: mix together approximately 1 C water, 1 T dish soap, and 3/4 T tempera paint, use straw
to blow bubbles, press paper down on top of bubbles.

Bath Pouf Painting

supplies: tempera paint, bath pouf, & paper
process: dip pouf into paint and the press to paper.

Cookie Cutter Prints

supplies: tempera paint, cookie cutters, paper
process: dip cookie cutters on to paper and then press to paper

You may have noticed that all our paper in the examples was egg shaped - for the last couple weeks we have been working on decorating our house for Easter.

These techniques, however, can be adapted for any theme or for no theme at all - just fun. If you are interested in even more paint ideas, here are some from our archives.

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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Comments

KeriApril 5, 2012 at 7:45 AM
I am sooo lazy. HA! :)
Stephen W HowardApril 7, 2012 at 11:02 AM
This is just brilliant. Someday....
UnknownApril 9, 2012 at 8:43 AM
Great Ideas! I've been wanting to do the marble painting & you've just given me the boost to do it this week! Thanks so much! I found you via delicate construction and as a fellow Illinois'an I am now following!!! I'd love for you to come check out The Vintage Milk House! Thanks again for the inspiration! - Kali
MichelleApril 9, 2012 at 4:36 PM
What fun! I love that you made a garland with the finished products! :)
UnknownApril 19, 2012 at 2:19 PM
I love these ideas!
Your newest follower from Mingle With Us Blog Hop. :)
UnknownApril 24, 2012 at 1:57 PM
How cute! And such a variety of ways to paint! Art usually get "put aside" here. I should make more of an effort to work it into our days! Thanks for sharing!

Joyfully Weary

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