painting Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Planet Crafts- Paper Plate Solar System Spiral

May 10, 2017 By Deirdre

This week long I have been sharing solar system activities. On Monday I shared a set of 10 constellation mats. Tuesday’s activity was a hydroponic space garden. Today’s activity is a paper plate solar system spiral. It is made of two crafts that are created to go together. The first is a space painted paper plate. The second is planet painting on paper.

Planet Crafts

Painting the Paper Plate

You will need to start by painting the paper plate with a wad of paper towel or a sponge brush. Various shades or blue, black and gray can be dabbed onto the paper plate in layers. You may want to let the layers dry at little and then add a little more paint to the plate.

When the paint is dry you can cut the plate into a spiral that starts on the outside of the plate and makes its way inside the plate.

Planet Painting

The links below are affiliate links.

They can try to paint the planets based on memory or you can set out some pictures for them to view. A solar system poster or book on the solar system like Smart Kids Space: For Kids Who Really Love Space! for your children to refer to.

We just dabbed wads of paper towels into a variety of colors that looked similar to the planets on a poster. Then we made small circles on a piece of card stock for each of the planets and the sun. You could have your children create each of the planets on an index card. When the circles are dry you can cut out the planets.

Combining the Two Planet Crafts

The final step is to combine the two crafts. Children will need to glue the planets and the sun onto the solar system spiral in order. We glued a small washer under the sun to pull the spiral down a little. You may need to put a planet book or solar system poster so they can check the order of the planets.

When the planets are in place, you can hang up your solar system. We used fishing line attached to the outside edges of the plate to hang our solar system up.

If you like this paper plate craft, here are some more paper plate crafts.

Little Jack Horner Craft

Bird’s Nest with Eggs Paper Plate Craft

Pete the Cat Paper Plate Mask

Ocean Animals- Paper Plate Craft

Paper Plate Jellyfish

If You Take A Mouse To School Paper Plate Mask for Kids

July 25, 2016 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links.

Kids love the If You Take a Mouse books! With school starting here in just a few weeks I decided we would make an If You Take a Mouse to School paper plate mask. Kids could wear them before or after reading the book. Actually, they could make to go with If You Take a Mouse books!
This If Your Take A Mouse mask doesn’t look just like the mouse in the book. I tried to create a mask that would be simple enough for young children to make. Older children could add more details to the mask if they like.

How to Create the If You Take a Mouse to School Mask

Supplies

Paper Plates
Brown or Tan Paint
Paintbrush
Small Cap or Lid
Small Plate
Pencil
Scissors
Construction Paper (Black and Pink)

Creating the Mask

Preparing the Plates

You will start by cutting out the paper plates. One plate will be cut just below the halfway point. Then you will cut along the straight edge to create the mouse’s cheeks. The plate will then need to be folded in half. The eye holes will need to be trace onto the folder plate and then cut out. Next, you will use a small plate onto trace small circles onto two plate plates for the mouse’s ears. Finally, the ears of the mouse will need to be cut out. (We tried to include some of the ruffled edges in the circle.)

Painting

You can use brown or tan paint to paint the mouse’s head and ears. If you don’t have a tan, you can mix white and brown paint together. (That is what we did.)

Adding Construction Paper Details

You will need to cut out three long whiskers out of the black construction paper. Next, you will cut the inner ear circles and the mouse’s nose out of pink paper. Then you will glue the whiskers to the mouse’s nose. Finally, you will glue the nose to the mouse’s head.

Use This Mask with Other Mouse Themed Books

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – This book started it all out. It follows the sequence of events that happen after you give a mouse a cookie.

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies – Just because you take a mouse to the movies doesn’t mean he will focus on the movie. His thoughts might just wander to Christmas and Christmas decorations.
Time for School, Mouse! – The mouse has lost his homework. He has a really hard time finding it. Thank goodness he finds it before he needs to head to school.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse! – Mouse creates wonderful Valentine’s for his friends. He really takes the time to tell each of them why they are special.

More Book Related Crafts

Owl Moon Paper Bag Puppet

The Kissing Hand Raccoon Mask

Easy Painting Ideas- Gold Medal Printmaking

June 30, 2016 By Deirdre

Links below are affiliate links.

I have shared over 17 Olympic themed activities with you over the past few years including a shot put catapult and a printable Olympic passport. (You find all of my Olympic activities and wonderful ideas from others on my Olympics Related Ideas board on Pinterest.) We just love the Olympics at my house. Today I want to share with you some easy painting ideas that can be used for gold medal printmaking. They can be used to create a single gold medal or a painted collage of gold medals. We read the book G is for Gold Medal: An Olympics Alphabet before we started gold medal printmaking.

Gold Medal Printmaking

Supplies

Pool Noodle Section (3 inches tall)
X-ACTO Knife
Ribbon (3 inches wide)
Gold or Yellow Paint
White Paper

Creating the Medal Painting Tool

Use the X-ACTO knife to cut two slits parallel to each other on one side of the pool noodle. The slits should be about 1/2 inch to 3/4 off an inch apart. They will need to cut all the way from the outside of the pool noodle into its center. Think about those slit being in the six o’clock section of the pool noodle. Then cut one slit in the nine o’clock section and another in the three o’clock section in the middle of those areas of the pool noodle. These slits need to go all the way through too. These slits will be areas for the ribbon to be slipped through.

Weave one end of the ribbon through the top slit in the six o’clock section and one end through the bottom. Make sure you have an even amount of ribbon on both ends to thread through the side slits.

Easy Painting Ideas

We painted the back of the pool noodle and the ribbon with paintbrush. The pool noodle was painted yellow and the ribbon was painted blue. Then we flipped them both over onto a piece of white paper. You totally don’t have to do that.

Here are some other easy painting ideas:

You can paint the pool noodle gold, silver or bronze to represent each of the medals awarded at the Olympics.

You can create a fun design with paint on the ribbon. Each Olympic host selects a different type of ribbon or chain for their medals.

You can use a variety of brushes or sponges to paint on the ribbon or brush. Sponge brush or sections flat sponges create fun paint effects.

You can create your painted medal on paper. Then add details to the ribbons and medals with markers or crayons.

If you like this craft idea, here are some more Olympic activities you will like:

Olympic Torch Painting Projects

Fruit Filled Olympic Ring Snack

Elympics – Storybook and Lunch Creation Idea

Olympic Printable Passport

Olympic Shot Put Catapult Design

This is part of an Olympic series being hosted by KC Edventures. Please stop by and check out a list of all the activities.

Care to Recycle Flower Craft for Kids

April 14, 2016 By Deirdre

Painting with the tops, bottoms and sides of objects creates a totally different print on paper. We were asked to participate in the Care to Recycle® program sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. It gave us an opportunity to trying painting with some of their cool shaped bottles and make a recycled flower craft for kids.

I was hoping create fun and funky flowers using the tops, bottoms, sides and lids. I was also hoping they would look like the flowers found in the book The Tiny Seedby Eric Carle. It would give us a chance to think our recycling habits when it comes to bathroom related objects like bottles and boxes. It would also give us a fun spring craft to do.

We had three small bottles to work with. The products were the JOHNSON’S® baby HEAD-TO-TOE® wash, JOHNSON’S® baby lotion, and JOHNSON’S® baby powder. Two of the bottles were similar in shape, but had different textures. The powder bottle was very different from the other two and was our favorite to paint with.

Creating Recycled Flowers Craft for Kids

The bottom of the lotion and wash bottles was perfect for creating petals around the yellow center we had made with the top of the powder bottle.

One of the bottle tops was rolled in paint and than rolled on the inside of the petals. It gave texture and a fun contrast to the bottle bottle print. It was also really messy!

After rolling on yellow paint with the second lid onto some of the petals, the side of one of the bottles are used to create the flower stem.

Thoughts on Recycling

After painting gorgeous and yes funky flowers, we were able to clean off the bottles and recycle them. JDaniel has been big into recycling since he was little. Like many of your children recycling isn’t just a chore we try to do on trash day. If you haven’t started recycling with your kids, this could be a teachable moment that could be long lasting.

There are probably a number of items in our bathrooms we can recycle. I am thinking about putting an extra trash bin in our bathrooms just for recycling. It would help our whole family remember to recycle. Care to Recycle® even has a website I can visit to find out what bathroom products can and cannot be recycled. You can too. The more we know about what can be recycled the more I think we will do it.

You will find more craft for kids ideas on my Pinterest boards. Recently I wrote a post for Pre-K Pages on painting with fun objects from A to Z. Many of the objects had been recycled. We had the best time coming up with an object for each letter and then painting with it.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Painting Ideas for Kids Using Rubber Bands

August 14, 2015 By Deirdre

My son and I recently found a cool way to paint with rubber bands. It is one of those painting ideas for kids that they will want to do again and again.We found it while looking through a cool book by Mary Ann F. Kohl called Action ART: HANDS-ON ACTIVE ART ADVENTURES (Bright Ideas for Learning (TM)) that I was sent to review and explore.

The book mentioned that boys would look at the rubber bands and be more than ready to snap them. (In the book this activity is actually calls this painting technique snap painting.) I set out the cookie sheet with rubber bands, paintbrushes and paint for my son to discover.

At first my son wasn’t excited about doing a paint project. It just wasn’t a painting kind of day. Then all of a sudden I heard the rubber bands start to be plucked and strummed. Mary Ann was right the rubber bands were a hit.

After we put paint on the rubber bands, the paint started to spatter and fly onto the paper. This painting activity was declared to be very cool. Time and time again paint was reapplied to the rubber bands and spattered on the paper.

It is hard to say whether it was the ability to make paint fly or the noise the rubber bands made that made this one of those painting activities that we will be doing again.

As my son explored ways to move the rubber bands, he found several techniques that really worked well and created a lot of noise.

Here is a list of them:

Strumming the rubber bands from first band to the last.
Lifting a rubber band up with the inside of one of your fingers and letting it bounce back down.
Lifting two rubber bands up with the inside of two fingers and letting it fall back into place.
Tapping the rubber bands with a number of fingers at the same time.
Bouncing a whole hand on the rubber bands.
Bouncing both hands on the rubber bands.

Applying Paint Hints:

Applying the paint with a narrow brush seemed to work best. When the paint was applied with a wider brush, paint always seemed to spatter on the paper.
We used a different paintbrush for each paint color. It kept the paint from getting mixed up when it was reapplied.

There are over 100 painting ideas for kids in the book Action ART: Hands-On Active Art Adventures . After seeing the fun my son had painting with rubber bands I can’t wait to try more of the ideas.

What is your children’s favorite way to paint? Leave me a comment sharing their favorite way of painting below or on my Facebook page.

Moon With Craters Kids Crafts

February 16, 2015 By Deirdre

After my son showed me how to make do the Moon Pie moon cycle activity he had done at school, I brainstormed kids crafts that had a moon theme. After all it is fun to craft and snack on moon features. I really wanted the craft to have 3 dimensional element to it. While cleaning out our craft and learning activity closet, I came across a bin of beans we had used for a St. Patrick’s Day sensory activity. The kidney beans seemed to be just the right size for creating craters.

How This Kids Crafts Idea Came Together

We started by cutting a circle of the cardboard from a cereal box we had in our recycling bin. Despite tracing a circle onto the box by tracing the outline of a plate, our circle didn’t end up being perfect. We seem to have cut it out a little to the inside and outside of the circle. The moon is probably not a perfect circle anyway.

Then the kidney beans were glued down to form five circles. Once again they weren’t perfect circles, I bet the moon’s craters aren’t perfect either. If you try this craft with your kids, you could draw circles for them to glue the beans onto. You could do what we did! We made circle like glue circles on the cardboard and try to arrange the beans on them.

When the beans had had a chance to dry on the circle, we painted the cardboard and the beans gray. (We didn’t have gray paint so, I mixed white and black paint together to create gray paint.) We tried to cover the beans with paint completely. A smaller brush probably would have helped us get into the nooks and crannies of the bean circles. You can see small areas peeking out of paint in a few areas. Kids crafts work out that way sometimes. It gives them a very organic look.

The great thing about creating kids crafts with texture is that when they are dry you can explore them with your fingers. We have fun feeling the inside and the outside of the craters in this kids craft.

Books with a Moon Theme

The links below are affiliate links.

My son read the book Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventureat school. He loved this tale of boy who seeks to gather Moon Pies on the moon when his mom says he can’t have one before dinner. It is funny and filled with adventure. My son loves that kind of story.

The Phases of the Moon (Cycles in Nature) is a wonderful non-fiction moon book. It looks at the patterns the moon repeats as it goes through its phases. It is written for early readers and features real pictures.

Other Kids Crafts with a Moon Theme

Fantastic Fun and Learning has a wonderful moon crater craft with Styrofoam.

Decorated moon and a number of other moon activities can be found in this post from What Do We Do All Day?

No Time for Flashcards has created a puffy paint moon craft. It looks really cool.

If you do try any of these moon activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about them or share a picture of them on my Facebook page.

Paddington Bear Paper Plate Craft

January 5, 2015 By Deirdre

When my son was born, my mom bought him a Paddington Bear stuffed toy she found at second hand store. “When JDaniel gets older, he is love reading books about him,” Mom said. Paddington has sat in JDaniel’s room for years. It wasn’t until recently that we started to read the books that star Paddington Bear. At six JDaniel is just the right age to help me read the books as well as do a craft featuring Paddington.

Crafting Paddington Bear

You really don’t need a lot of materials for this craft. We used the following:

Small white paper plates
White tempera paint
Brown tempera paint
Plastic fork
Red construction paper
Black construction paper
Glue stick

Putting the craft together:

We did’t have tan paint at our house so, the first step for us was to mix a little white paint into the brown paint. Just a little white paint created the color we needed for the fur of Paddington Bear. If you have tan paint, you can totally skip the mixing of the white and brown paint.

Then we dipped the back of a plastic fork into the paint to coat it. The fork was then dragged across the surface of the back of the plate to create a furry effect. We started at the middle of the plate and dragged a fork to the outside edge. The fork was dipped and dragged over and over again to layer the paint.

On some of Paddington’s book covers he is wearing a black hat and others he is wearing a red hat. We decided to cut out a hat for our Paddington out of red paper. The hat was later given a black outline to make the details of the hat stand out.

Finally we cut eyes, a nose, and mouth out of black construction paper. You could draw on the facial features for Paddington bear with a black marker or crayon if you like that look better.

How you could use this Paddington Bear craft:

You could simply display your Paddingtons on a bulletin board or the refrigerator.
Paddington could be used for retelling a chapter or event in one of the books.
A large tongue depressor could be added to the back of the paper plate to make a Paddington Bear puppet.

Here are some wonderful book featuring Paddington Bear:

The links below are affiliate links.

A Bear Called Paddington

The Paddington Treasury: Six Classic Bedtime Stories

Paddington Helps Out

Here are a few other Read A Book and Explore It ideas:

Apples A to Z (math related activities)

Space Boy (reading and science related activities)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (math and reading activities)

Fire Truck Craft With Flame Painting for Kids

October 7, 2014 By Deirdre

When you see the flames from a fire, you see several colors are smashed and swirled into each other. For this fire truck with flame painting craft, colors are smashed and swirled together too. The colors seem to be billowing and smearing together just as an actual flame would.

How to create the fire truck flame painting:

You start by gathering together the following materials:

Yellow paint
Red paint
Orange paint or an orange bingo marker
Paintbrush
Plastic wrap
White or black paper to paint on
Black, red, white and yellow construction paper for the truck

Painting the flames

Dab or drip paint onto the background construction paper. It is okay to layer the paint drips or puddles. Try to place them all over your paper.

Place a piece of plastic wrap over the paper that is the same size as the paper. Squish and slide the plastic wrap over the paint. You can straighten out the plastic wrap and squish and slide a second or a third time if you like. Kids are going to love the feeling of the plastic wrap sliding over the paint. It is the movement of the plastic wrap over the paper and paint that creates the flames illusion of movement.

Creating a Fire Truck

You could actually be finished with the craft at this point is you like. We decided to create a fire truck out of construction paper to place over a section of the painting to clarify what the themed of the painting was. Just in case people didn’t visualize flames when they looked at the painting.

A basic truck shape was cut of red construction paper. When I say basic truck shape, I mean that it has a cab and a trailer. Our cab has a rounded front section. If your children feel the front section needs to have a square front, that would be great too.

Two circles and triangle were cut out of black paper to make the front window and the tires for the truck. We went with two wheels. I can totally see fire trucks needing to have three or even four tires on one side. We only included one window, but more could be added on if kids want to have more.

A ladder was cut out of yellow construction paper and was placed diagonally on the back of the truck. When we have made other fire truck crafts, the ladder has been glued to the side of the truck. There really isn’t a right or wrong place to put the ladder.

Finally, a bottom trim piece was cut out of white construction paper to add a little bit of flair to the truck.

Then all the pieces were glued together to create a completed fire truck.

Adding the Fire Truck

Children can place the fire truck anywhere on the flame painting they would like to. Our truck ended up near the bottom of the page.

If you decide to try flame painting with your children, please stop back and let me know how to goes. Oh! You can find more fun crafts and activities on my Early Learning Pinterest board.

Ocean Animals Paper Plate Craft

July 9, 2014 By Deirdre

On a sunny day earlier this week JDaniel and I headed outside with his art set to create ocean painting. His art set includes all kinds of art supplies, but we focused on markers and watercolors. I didn’t tell me we were going to create ocean animals with the paintings. That I saved as a surprise.

Ocean Painting

We both used the blue and green watercolors to create blue stripes on white construction paper. The stripes were randomly arranged. We didn’t do each of the blues in his art kit in an abcd pattern.

As the paint was drying, we drew on the watercolor paintings with the magic maker. The end effect I had hoped for was a smudged blue stripe. Working with wet paint aided in the creation of that effect.

When the paintings were marked up, JDaniel used paintbrushes dipped in water to further smear the marker marks. It looked really cool when all the markers had been smudged.

It was now time to let the paintings dry. We left the painting in the sun and played tag while they dried. My son is getting way too fast for me. I have to work hard to catch him.

Creating the Ocean Animals Home

Later we used a hole punch to create holes down the sides of a paper plate. I think we ended up with six holes on each side. Half-inch blue ribbon was woven in a hole and out a hole on the opposite side of the plate. It ended up being a great fine motor skill.

The ribbon was supposed to look like the waves or currents in the ocean. It was also supposed to create a 3-D canvas for the fish we would make next to swim in.

Creating Ocean Animals

The watercolor and marker paintings were folded in half so, we would just have to cut out half a fish if we cut on the fold to get a whole fish. We cut out some big fish and some little fish.

The fish could have been cut out freehand or traced onto the paper to be then cut out. Cutting is another one of those fine motor activities I wanted to tie into this craft.

Placing the Ocean Animals

The ocean animals ended up being randomly placed. I don’t think there was a lot of thinking about where to put them. I did ask that some of them be placed on different layers of ribbon.

I think this craft turned out well. I guess I should say these crafts. There really were three crafts we created in the process. There were paintings, a ribbon woven creation, and ocean animals placed on the woven creation.

Supplies for this Ocean Animals Craft:

White construction paper
Watercolors ( blues and green)*
Magic markers (blue and green)*
Paintbrushes
Water
Blue ribbon
Paper plate
Hole punch
Scissors

*If you are interested in an art kit like JDaniel’s, here is an affiliate link to a KIDDYCOLOR Deluxe Art Set for Kids 159 Piece. Painting Drawing Art Set with Oil Pastels, Crayons, Stickers, Watercolor Cakes, Perfect Gifts for Girls & Boys just like his.

We love the ocean and the ocean animals at my house. If you love the ocean and ocean animals this maybe is just the right craft for you.

Summer Recipes for Family Fun

July 5, 2014 By Deirdre

These wonderful summer recipes for family fun will be terrific to pull out when your children need something new to do. They would be great boredom busters or to explore during family time too. Each was shared on last week’s Sunday Showcase by some of you. Now all you have to decide is which summer recipes for fun your family would love to do.

Summer Recipes for Family Fun

Mini Monets and Mommies shared a really cool homemade glow in the dark paint. We are going to try it at my house.

Water shooter tie-dye outdoor fun was shared Fantastic Fun and Learning. The tie-dyed sheets they created would be great for picnics or outdoor story times.

Epic Fun for Kids has created a chocolate slime dough that they used to create a habitat from Star Wars. It look incredible!

Growing in God’s Grace had me craving homemade fudgecicles after reading their post. Be warned if you visit this post you will crave them too.

The Kid’s Activity Blog shared a recipe from their wonderful new book 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!: The Entertainment Solution for Parents, Relatives & Babysitters!fizzy sidewalk paint that looks really wonderful. We have recently made sidewalk paint, but it didn’t fizz.

More Summer Recipes for Family Fun

JDaniel keeps asking them to make more confetti eggs with him. He really loves make them and throw them at his friends.

Sidewalk chalk has been another favorite at my house this summer. This post shares easy recipes for sidewalk chalk.

Brown cow floats are a hit with everyone. Actually if you don’t like brown cow floats you can make black cow, spotted cow, or orange cow floats instead.

The Sunday Showcase is hosted on the following blogs:

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Here Come the Girls
Inspiration Laboratories
JDaniel4′s Mom

We each feature different posts that have linked up, so be sure to check everyone out! We’ll also be pinning our favorites to our Pinterest board.

If you are here for the first time, please read this informational post for the full details. Here’s the short version – anything kid friendly and/or child centered is welcome! You are welcome to share more than one post, but we don’t accept links for giveaways, shops, or downloads for purchase, etc.

If you’re linking up, I encourage you to visit some of the other link-ups! Everyone appreciates comments, encouragement, feedback, etc.

*Please note that by linking up you are giving us permission to use a photo (with proper link to you!) in our featured section!

An InLinkz Link-up