homemade printing

Today was wet and lovely and cool and my gang were keen to craft YAY!

Its rare that all three of them want to do something so I took full advantage of it and gave them a crafty painty activity that spanned the ages of 2-6 pretty well with only a few adjustments...

To start with ( and whilst Jared and Amahli were carrying on like loonies) I gave Jumeirah a few pieces of make up foam I had lying around my craft room to cut up into a few different shapes, nothing fancy, just triangles, squares and rectangles, and explained that we were going to make some patterns with those shapes.

She did this and we stuck some pins into the ends so it would be easy to pick up. I added paint to some old paper plates and she began to make some patterns on a page. I love the mathematical way she did this... creating repeatitive patterns with the shapes ( which was kinda the idea but I didnt want to push it too much).

Once Jared and Amahli saw her printing they too wanted in and so I gave them some great stampers I have had for years and some paint and they were able to print too. Not so patterny or mathematical but they really enjoyed this. Homemade stamps can be made out of anything.. old toilet rolls, cardboard, even carved into a rubber... might have a go at this one later in the week :)

Another exciting afternoon followed with us hunting 5 caches ( see yesterdays post about Geocaching) and finding 4 of them!! Its such a great way to get out as a family and see more of our lovely town. I am totally hooked on this :) And then to make it even more exciting, we found this!!! Its an official Michigan geocaching coin. I am so super stoked to have actually found something important! We are going to take it with us to the Hunter Valley in a few weeks and re cache it for someone else to find :)

I have no idea why blogger is loving this photo sideways.. stupid thing cos I cant fix it but you get the idea and cool it is ;)

And so today, before our hunt, I went and found some treasures to swap for our hunt. And it got me thinking... Maybe, if there are a few of you in the world that are going to do some of your own geocaching, we could do a treasure swap? So I would send a couple of things from Australia that you could use as your treasure and you could do the same!

Anyone keen????