Outdoor Easel Painting

You have probably noticed from previous posts that we spend a lot of our time outdoors visiting parks and public gardens. We are lucky to live in an area where there are plenty within an hours drive in any direction, so we vary our destinations throughout the week.
Not only do the girls love to run around and explore, and enjoy the play equipment if there is any, but we also take along at least one activity to enjoy outdoors as well. There is no end of things you can do and I find even the most boring every day activities are much more exciting when they are done away from home.

One of the girls current favourites is to take along our table top easels and do some outdoor painting. Today we packed a picnic, a small bag of painting supplies and our easels and did just that. We were a bit lucky and managed to get in a few hours between storm fronts - it's a bit wet and windy on our side of Australia at the moment! 

WE PACKED:

* painting easels
(if you don't have an easel, check out this easy to make cardboard easel from Childhood 101)
* washable paints
* paintbrushes
* empty jar or cup for water

* rags for cleaning up 

(we use old face washers)

* painting smocks

* paint palettes

(I ask for the plastic cosmetic/deodorant packaging left over after night fill at our local supermarket)

* waterproof dropcloth/tablecloth

* paper

* empty shopping bag for any rubbish

Our easels have legs that attach to make them full size, we just remove them to make them table top sized and easy to transport.

Enjoying some (very brief) sunshine and painting away.

Library Reading Corner

We have needed a solution for our library books for awhile. We've tried using a designated bag and then a basket so that they are kept together, but inevitably they would end up all over the house by the time they needed to be returned. Sifting through every bookshelf in our house hunting out library books each week was getting a bit old!

It took me a few weeks of procrastination but we finally have a reading corner in the toy room, and so far the system is working a lot better. We re-purposed a little table found at one of our local charity shops and gave it a new life with a paint colour chosen by the girls.
The end result is bright (very bright!) but perfect for keeping my sanity somewhat intact on library day.

We found this cute little table a few weeks ago which looked perfect for the library corner.

It needed a lot of sanding and some repairs but luckily it cleaned up nicely!

The girls chose an aqua blue paint called 'Shampoo' by Dulux.

The reading corner gives the girls somewhere to sit and read as well as somewhere to store their books afterwards.

The frame on the wall was painted with 'Soft Sun', also from Dulux.

Instead of polystyrene balls inside our bean bag we filled the cover with all of the girls soft toys. Extra storage as well as a comfortable place to sit!

Cork and Popstick Rafts

This idea is not mine but a project Bubble found in a new book the girls bought this week called Disney Pixar Cars, Let's Party!
The minute she turned the page and her eyes glazed over I knew what we'd be spending the afternoon doing (luckily we have a bit of a stash of wine corks...*cough*).
The rafts were easy enough to make that the girls could do it all by themselves and the end result has provided hours of fun, both in the bath and out.

WE USED:

* corks
* craft/wood glue

* paddle pop sticks

* paper and textas

* wooden skewers

* scissors

* sticky tape

First the girls lined up their corks and put a dot of glue on the top of each one. Make it generous so the pop sticks adhere well when dry!

They then carefully selected their pop sticks (very important to get just the right ones ;D) and laid them on top.

Once the glue had dried (ours took overnight) we had two very sturdy little rafts. They made a sail each by decorating a triangle of paper and taping it to a skewer cut down to size. We then pushed the skewer into the middle cork to finish the raft.
(You could cut the tip off the skewer if you are worried that it is too sharp, our girls were OK with them though).

The girls enjoyed testing the rafts out in their rice tray. 

And later on we gave them a go in the bath - they worked great and are currently drying out for round two.

Water Bead Ice Eggs

Thank you for all of the positive feed back on our Ice Eggs activity, they've been never endingly popular at our house despite winter setting in!

We've been experimenting each week with new items inside our balloons and this week we tried out water beads. We've used them inside balloons before for our Texture Balloons activity but have never tried them inside Ice Eggs, and the results were very pretty.

The girls had a lot of fun melting their eggs with water and having a game of Ice Bowling, and of course, smashing them into itty bitty pieces ;D

WE USED:

* top cut from a plastic water bottle

(you could also use a wide mouth funnel if you have one)

* balloons

* water beads (hydrated)

* freezer

* recycled bottles and tins

(if you want to play Ice Bowling)

We hydrated some water beads overnight and cut the top from a water bottle to use as a balloon funnel.

The balloons stretch and fit easily over the water bottle spout making it easy for the girls to hold and put the water beads in themselves.

Bubble filling her balloon with beads.

Balloons filled with water beads.

Next we added water to make our Ice Eggs. I attached the balloons to the tap faucet and the girls filled them as big as they liked. Once they were ready I tied them off.

Then just as last time we put our balloons into the freezer.

One thing we always do when making Ice Eggs is put the water balloons inside a container or bag, just in case there is a breakage!

The Water Bead Ice Eggs after freezing overnight.

Bubble setting up some things from the recycling bin for Ice Bowling (we didn't have enough empty milk bottles!).

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Coloured Sand Ice Cream Shop - Pretend Play

We often incorporate food colouring in the sandpit or at the beach (see our coloured sandcastle post here) but today we used coloured sand for some pretend play.
This activity was so easy to create and the girls enjoyed hours of fun with it!

WE USED:

* sand pit
* food colouring
* bowls and spoons
* water

The coloured sand was made by putting scoops of sandpit sand in a bowl, adding food colouring and then mixing in water until we had the consistency we were after.

The girls chose their own ice cream 'flavours' for their shop.

We made a sign to go on the front of the sandpit. I adore the names the girls came up with for their ice creams (Love Hearty Mint needs to be trademarked I think ;D).

Yum, one blueberry sand cone.

Not only was this fun but the girls ended up getting very creative with their concoctions and imaginary play scenes, using conker nuts and leaves as money and using other moulds from the sandpit to make cakes and 'desserts'.
There was a lot of great fine motor practice in there for Squeak as well with all that scooping!

Inside Out Party Hats

We have a lot of cardboard party hats at our house. The girls have a pile of them in their dress up cupboard which get hauled out every second day for an 'un-birthday party' or some kind of picnic.
Some of them were looking a bit worse for wear so we spent yesterday afternoon personalising them and giving them a new look. 

WE USED:

* party hats

(we buy them from discount shops for around $1 for 10)
* textas, stickers, glitter etc... for decorating

* sticky tape

First we unfolded our party hats by folding and slipping the tabs out

I then rolled them a bit to get them flat so the girls could decorate them.

The girls got busy with stickers, stamps and textas.

Once they were finished we reassembled the hats inside out so their designs were now on the outside and secured them with the tabs and a bit of tape.

Ready to party :)

Mothers Day Badges

We're a bit late with our Mothers Day cards this year, poor little Bubble and Squeak have both had consecutive bouts of a stomach virus, so haven't been in much of a crafting mood.
We managed to make these cute and easy little Mothers Day badges to send interstate to their Grandmas this year, inside the Pom Pom Flower Cards we made earlier in the week.

WE USED:
* scrap cardboard (thin)
* markers/textas

* A4 laminator and pouches

* safety pin

* good quality sticky tape

* cookie cutters

* scissors

We started by tracing some shapes onto our card using a pen and cookie cutters.

The girls then drew whatever picture they liked inside the shapes. 

Bubble knew they were for her Grandmothers so drew pictures of them with herself ad Squeak. Squeak is a bit little to grasp the idea of Mothers Day but really liked drawing with every colour texta she could find :D 

Once their little masterpieces were finished we cut them out and then laminated them using a standard laminator and pouch and cut them out again.

We attached a safety pin to the back of each one by first threading a length of good quality tape through the pin and sticking it down. Then we put two more lengths of tape horizontally at each end of the first piece of tape (to form a capital 'I' shape).
This is really effective for holding the pin to the back of the badge, we made some of these for the girls birthdays recently and even when I accidentally put them through the wash they didn't come unstuck.

Adorable little Mothers Day badges for a proud Mum (or Grandma, Aunty, cousin...) to wear.

We attached our badges to the inside of our Mothers Day cards (see how we made them HERE) using looped tape (double sided tape would also work.
Sorry about the bit at the bottom, that's just where I've blurred Bubble's real name ;)

Here is a free 6x4 print for the inside of a Mothers Day Badge card.
I've reworded it slightly from our version since everyone has a different name for the special women they celebrate on Mothers Day.