Tag Archives: Paint

Halloween 2012

Posted on 31 October, 2012 | 2 Comments

I’ve never really bothered with Halloween as a holiday but with children of the right sort of age, there’s so much fun to be had. Today we had a whole bunch of crafts lined up plus a party for the girls to go to and then filled with imagination MG and DG played a vampire game until bedtime

Firstly the girls decorated wooden cut out pumpkins that my mum got from a recent local craft fair, made by Artcuts.

MG eyes through pumpkin

DG painting her wooden pumpkin, with mummy painting a pumpkin picture in the background

Next we did two of the projects in this months’ Tiny Tigs craft pack (I keep meaning to review these as they are great fun. I keep most of the projects as our ‘emergency back up’ for rainy days but of course we had to do the Halloween ones today!)

MG gluing her Tiny Tigs spider pieces together – black foam body and orange pipe-cleaner legs

Mummy and DG putting the Tiny Tigs pumpkin together

DG adding the finishing touches to her pumpkin

The girls then had a Halloween party to go to, for two friends whose birthdays we missed in the summer so we took birthday presents too. DG wanted to be a ballet witch but MG decided she didn’t want to dress up.

Mighty Girl & Destructo Girl

While we were at the party (MG was in a clingy mood, so I had to stay with her – DG was quite happy joining in from the start!), Mr Chaos carved the pumpkins from the girls’ designs. We would have done it all together but the day ran away with us so we left Daddy to it!

Chaos Pumpkins 2012

MG absolutely loved the vampire teeth she got at the party (DG found a straw to use as she missed out getting the fake teeth and wanted them too!) and the time before bedtime consisted of her bossing “baby vampire” into her coffin (“coffins are where vampires sleep”) and biting her parents until we got vampire blood and turned from Breathers to Vampires (fortunately for us, kisses were used instead of bites!) Young Dracula is one of my secret TV loves (shhh, don’t tell anyone!) so their vampire mythology mainly comes from that program

Vampire Girl!

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Posted in Crafty Activities, Parenting, Play

Tagged Artcuts, Halloween, Halloween 2012, Imaginative Play, Paint, Pumpkin Carving, Pumpkins, Tiny Tigs, Vampires, Young Dracula

Making Paint

Posted on 5 January, 2012 | 9 Comments

Both MG and DG love painting. I’m not a huge fan of clearing up the mess, and it’s never really possible for them to fully clean the mess on their own, especially as it usually descends into an emergency bath moment…

Today while MG was at school I realised that I had a perfect activity for DG (now 2 years 7 months). I’d been letting the readymix paint get used up in order to replace the bottles with mixed powder paint that I’d bought “to save money” and we now had 5 empty bottles to fill. This is an excellent activity, and if properly planned (which of course I didn’t!) covers spooning, measuring, counting, pouring, funnelling, shaking – lots of motor skills for small children plus maths and science activities for older children. In Chez Chaos, what you usually end up with is mess!

In theory the process involves:

Unscrewing lid of powder paint jar (depending on age of child – I did this with DG because of the mess aspect)
Spooning powder into measuring cup (pouring from the powder jar was far too messy)
Pouring powder from measuring cup into funnel
Shaking or stirring to get powder from funnel into paint bottle
Counting number of measuring cups of powder required (our instructions said 2 parts powder to 1 part water but 3 parts powder to 1 part water made a better thickness for our use – with older children experimenting with consistancies would be great fun)
Measuring water and pouring into funnel
Screwing top onto paint bottle and shaking to mix the paint
Admire your work

Did I mention the mess? Whilst I was taking a picture of DG spooning, she accidentally knocked the bottle and funnel over (we should have got the powder in the bottle before measuring the next cupful) and the powder went everywhere…

An emergency bath was in order, but DG loves baths so was quite happy with that.

I’m linking this up with Montessori Monday – Yes, it’s Thursday but we’re chaotic

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Posted in Crafty Activities, Montessori, Play

Tagged Developing motor skills, Measuring, Mess, Montessori Monday, Paint, Pouring, Spooning

Timothy Pope, Timothy Pope…

Posted on 10 August, 2011 | 1 Comment

Yesterday evening MG found a cardboard tube and pretended it was a telescope, which led to reading Shark in the Dark by Nick Sharratt for the final bedtime story. “I want to paint my telescope” announces MG. Of course, I say, we’ll do that tomorrow…

So, as soon as she’s awake in the morning: “Can I paint my telescope? I need blue and yellow paint.” Ad nauseum, until I give in (about three minutes later, before we’ve even had breakfast…)

We have a messy art cupboard in the kitchen full of paints, paper and related paraphernalia. That “messy” belongs with “art”, not “cupboard”; it’s probably the tidiest part of the house at the moment. Generally there are things stacked in front of the cupboard door, so that DG can’t help herself to the paints

MG had her cardboard tube, so of course we had to find one for DG. Blue and Yellow were requested, so that’s 4 paint pots: blue and yellow for MG; blue and yellow for DG…

DG prefered painting on paper, and soon smeared her hands everywhere (she’s left-handed, hence the brush is in her dominant hand: I know she’s a toddler and it’s too early to tell etc but she’s been strongly left-handed from around 10 months old much like MG has been strongly right-handed from around 10 months old…)

MG painted her “telescope” to be like the one in the book, and then painted an empty milk carton before moving onto mixing paints and creating these lovely caterpillars…

…that ended up being smeared onto MG’s hands shortly after I took the picture. The girls were in a tactile painting mood today. Mess turned into running to the sink to wash hands (and bodies); then paint pots and brushes. And when all had finished, it was time for a bath

I’ve recently discovered Amber Dusick’s Parenting with Crappy Pictures blog. This post on art is so true for this household; we invariably end up in scenario two…

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Posted in Crafty Activities, Picture Books, Play

Tagged Art, Cardboard Tube, Child-Led, Mess, Nick Sharratt, Paint

Splodgy Cup Painting!

Posted on 1 August, 2011 | 2 Comments

Todays ~~mess~~ art experience was the trusty paper-cup-full-of-paint-with-a-hole-in-the-bottom. It probably has a proper shorter name, but I’ve gone for “splodgy cup painting”. This time MG and DG were involved in the setup so I have no setup pictures as we were too busy doing things to take pictures.

Materials needed: paint, water, paper cups (plastic will do), string (or similar), plasticine (or similar) and pencil.

For the uninitiated: take a paper cup (or three) and punch holes in either side at the top (pencil and plasticine method), tie string (or whatever you have – in our case curling ribbon) to create a hanging cup. Repeat for however many cups you want to use – three was plenty for my two small ones.

If you’re not already outside, relocate out at this point. Or somewhere you don’t mind covering the floor in paint. Or use a VERY large plastic sheet to cover your floor…

Put cups on plasticine balls and make a hole in the bottom with a pencil. Keep the plasticine over the hole in the bottom of the cup. Partially fill cup with paint of your choice – I used premix paint but any paint that can be made into a liquid will do. Add water until the paint consistancy is enough to flow through the hole at the bottom but not too watery. Repeat for all cups, trying to keep the paint contained in the cups until everyone is ready. Spread some large sheets of paper around, let small children pick up hanging cups, whisk plasticine off bottom of cups and stand well back…

Having never done this with the girls before, they wondered what I was up to when we were preparing but soon got into the swing of it (pun not intended )

This is how i envisaged the finished product looking (I did manage to sneak away one sheet to dry at this stage):

DG decided that extra water would be good in her paint cup, and MG chose to mix the red and yellow to make orange:

The extra water made things wetter and more slippery and after some foot painting I decided that we needed a tub of water to wash feet in. My jumped in with all her clothes, therefore clothes were discarded by the children at that point. DG decided that the foot washing tub was more fun than painting:

MG decided that brushes, and hands, and feet were more fun than refilling the cups:

MG squeezed lots of paint and danced through it but it was very slippery so she fell (not hurt, phew…) and ended up covered in orange from toes to upper thigh – which she happily washed off in the tub when DG came out for some paint dancing. Once they were happy with their work, they washed the bulk of the paint off in the tub, dried and I whisked them into a quick bath (there’s a theme to our art exploration here…)

I’m not sure how other bloggers make art look so neat and tidy. We’re just messy! The aftermath wasn’t too bad really:

I think a teensy bit of preparation, rather than just deciding to do this on a whim and making it up as we went along might have made this a bit less messy… Great fun, quick and easy to set up, best done outside in warm weather!

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Posted in Crafty Activities, Play

Tagged Art, Mess, Outdoors, Paint, Paper Cups, Water

Outdoor Painting

Posted on 31 July, 2011 | Leave a comment

Reading this post on Putti Prapancha reminded me that I set up something similar with MG and DG a few weeks back – and it’s about time I posted about the children on this blog!

For a change, I managed to set up whilst MG and DG were amusing themselves elsewhere (usually they help). Firstly I laid out three long strips of easel roll paper, weighted them down with bricks due to the wind and took the tops off a set of six watercolour tubes (from Poundland). I managed to choose a fairly dull and windy day (British summer!) which meant I had to use a few bricks to keep the paper from flying off.

Once the girls had started, it became apparent that two strips of paper were more than enough, so I removed one. I tried not to influence their painting but they worked out to use their feet and hands fairly quickly!

Later water became involved, to spread the thick paint around more (and mix all the colours). Most of the colours other than black had been used up at this point.

Later still sand became involved, being scattered over the wet patches of the paper – and the water and paint were added to sand on the patio too! Once the paint ran out, I whisked the girls into the bath and hung up the painted strips to dry – the wetness of the paper caused it to tear in places but the wind dried it quickly.

The end result isn’t pretty, but the girls had a great time painting (and then playing in the bath). Next time I think I’ll limit the colours available for them and probably offer acrylic paints instead of watercolour tubes to get a better spread of colours.