Circles circles circles/ Kandinsky paintings

Today was going to be a painty day. I had three different activities for three different kids and a happy 'tude that today was going to be great :)
Jumeirah has wanted for awhile to do a painting for Pa's 60th. We will be seeing them in a few weeks so the other day we bought a canvas ( $4 from Go Lo) and some new paint and had the idea to make a Kandinsky painting ( this is the original.. we did something similar a few weeks ago and she really enjoyed it).



I gridded it up for her and off she went. She worked away at her canvas for most of the morning.

Amahli, of course wanting to paint too, threw a wobbly until I sat her up with her own activity. She too, was doing circles, but hers were printing, which she was semi happy about. Once she started though, she loved it. I gave her three different colours and a range of different sized circles and away she went.

With kids this age, the best place for them to paint is at a table, strapped into a high chair. Not only can they not escape covered in paint, but you can move things that dont need to be in their reach without them climbing up the table to get to them, and it helps their concentration as they know they cant get out and therefore dont try! For us it just works better :)

Jared wasnt that interested in his circle activity.. he did a bit of printing and then was off to make things with the mobilo so I will do his tomorrow :)

This is the girls finished masterpieces.

Jumeirah was really proud of herself and enjoyed walking past it when I hung it on the lounge room wall. Her little grin everytime made me realise I really need to get started on my art display idea... yeah yeah I know. Its coming!!

I hope Pa likes it!

face painting/ make believe moments

Phew!
We have had two jam packed full of fun days :) Did I mention how much I love school holidays?? Yes?? Oh well... Im going to say it again :) Having my kids at home... its just "right". I know they will probably drive me nuts by next week but for right now, its so much easier than running around like a mad woman doing drop offs and pick ups and not alot in the middle that feels that productive...
Anyways, I missed yesterday so heres what we did!
Jumeirah had some of her friends over yesterday so I became mum of 5 for a little while. Twas fun! ( in small doses, three is PLENTY for me)

I had prepared some plaster moulds for them to paint the night before.

Theres always one who wants to test the boundaries...

Our finished products!

All 5 of them absolutely loved this craft, and wanted to keep painting them, meticulously trying to get every bit of plaster covered properly, and then covering it in glitter.
They turned out beautiful.
Now if I had been smart, I would have put a paper clip in the back whilst it was drying so they could have it on a wall, but really, they didnt care.

I cannot say this enough. If you have kids aged anywhere from 1yr to 10 ( and possibly beyond) YOU NEED TO GET YOURSELF SOME PLASTER. Its the cheapest, but most fun thing my kids every ask for. I did a kids club last school holidays and had kids from ages 3-12 come and do multiple casts and LOVE it.
I buy my plaster from ebay... and I got a 5kg tub. ( plaster is about 2kg for $5 and about $10 in postage which is pretty good) I also bought a few moulds from ebay too ( they range from $3 to about $8 is my most expensive. A good latex style mould will last for years. I made 8 moulds in less than 15 minutes, its really easy to do.

In the afternoon, Jumeirah took over and asked for facepainting. Now, I am never really keen for facepainting... its such a messy craft and somehow gets everywhere when I do it, but I relented and got out my facepaints ( another thing all parents need in the "must haves" collection). I painted her as a butterfly, followed by a smaller person also wanting a butterfly.

Checking each other out

These two are going to be such heart breakers....the youngest is no doubt going to be a ball breaker too but I'll deal with that when I have to ;)

And then, they turned on me.
"Come on, Mum. You know how great you'll look!" came the chant, and soon I gave up and let her paint away.
I mean really, she could only make improvements ;)
Later, I checked out what I had become... an Indian Chief.

One of those moments with my ever growing beautiful girl..

I kinda like it! And so, my challenge to you this week... give your kids the face paints and see how you turn out!!

card making to change the world

Nothing like a spot of dancing to kick start a Monday!!

First day of school holidays.. for the next two weeks, life is as it should always be. Just having fun with all my kids doing whatever takes our fancy. I have also made it a Tv free for three days so we shall see how that goes!!
I spent a fair bit of time working out some fun stuff to do this week but more often than not, they work out their own plans.

This morning though, I set up the table with the supplies to make our own cards. Jumeirah has been at me for ages to do this, she wants to have a small collection so she can write one whenever she needs to. She has become pretty intent on letting people know how she feels about them, thanking them for doing nice things for her.. she too wants to change the world, one random act of kindness at a time :)


It wasnt until this afternoon that this really became popular. And the best part was, each of them came to me to do it at different times so I got some really awesome time with them all separately today.
Jumeirah was first up, chatting to me about who she was making them for, how they would feel to get a card from her, how she felt as she made them.








Jared came to see what they were doing, did a little bit of sticking but was more interested in having a turn of my punches. I taught him how to use it and he had a great time punching out some flowers. He then stuck them on, and insisted on attaching tiny jewels for each centre of the flower. I was a bit amazed at his need to make them " right".




Amahli came in the late afternoon and perched herself in my lap and asked to stick on some heart stickers. She was so proud of herself and carried this little card around all afternoon. Sweet sweet little one.




This is such an easy activity to do with kids of any age from about 18 months. It can be used as a tactile activity, a hand eye coordination game, or something to change someones world and give them a card that is heartfelt and hand made :)
You dont need fancy equipment, we spent $4 in Go Lo on paper and the rest was mine already but you can use whatever you have.

I really encourage you to get your kids to think of someone else and make them a card. A small thing can make a big difference :)

Funny friday

Yesterday, during our sand craft, I took this video of Amahli and her very careful "prinkle, prinkle, prinkle" of her sand :)

Happy Weekend!! HAPPY SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!

sand paintings

I knew as soon as I woke up this morning that I could no longer ignore the washing... it creeps up walls, in almost every room of the house. How? I dont know, I seem to wash every do da day. I also knew that a hardcore vacuum was needed so I planned for a "cleanery day".Trouble is, cleanery days are not fun for my kids and often leave me feeling like I have neglected them. Its so hard getting the balance, isnt it??

So today, I decided that we spend the day "together". Working together, cleaning together, just together.
We started with an outdoor breakfast, together. Now normally I read the paper whilst having the thirty second breakfast, but sitting outside in the sunshine with my two littlest loves was really peaceful. I told them the things were going to do together.

I then had Amahli help me load up the washing machine and carry out the first load to the line. Now, the thing with having children help you clean is that it takes a good deal longer to achieve anything. Actually, it takes FOREVER. But today had no time line, and so we went inside and found some wool and I constructed her a little line of her own to hang some things on.

She absolutely loved doing this :) She was so funny to watch too. She would pick up a tea towel, shake it, talk to it, then place it on the line, just so. I then taught her how to manipulate a peg to get it to stay on the tea towel. This ended up being such a great self help activity for her as well as being the start of learning some really great life skills.

And so proud when she had done it!

Jared then came and helped me make the beds... I do use the term "help" lightly here as he was far more keen on testing whether they were still as jumpy as they used to be.
I then attempted to vacuum whilst the two of them attempted to ride the poor machine whilst I flung it around the room.. no photos here unfortunately ,as it was a sight to see :)
Time to create, just before lunch, I grabbed out the coloured sand I had stashed away in the cupboard that caught my eye yesterday. We made this ages ago but keeps forever, so we got out glue and paper and made some great pictures with it. Amahli was keen on dripping her glue today, watching it run all over the page. Jared was more sedate with a simple painting before sprinkling sand all over it.

This craft is definitely one to be done in tubs and probably outside. Having it in the tub allows them more freedom as you wont spend the whole time holding their hand so it doesnt go everywhere... I even put the sand container in the tub so they dont have far to travel with a loaded fist of coloured disaster :)

It was such a cruisy morning.. full of cuddles and ( need I say it again?) togetherness... blew that crappy bluesy feeling far away from me.

Just what I needed :)

Number numbers one two three

Another number craft today.. we are definitely feeling the wind down to school holidays so I am really glad I had this one all ready to go!

I cut out 5 flowers for each of them, labelled one to five. I asked Jared to help me get them in the right order to start with ( he needed a bit of help but not as much as I thought) and then we glued them down.


I then gave him a pile of Hama beads and asked him to glue on some " little bugs" onto his flowers. ( at this point, I dont really know why we did flowers... he never seems to find things "for a girl" so I didnt really worry about that bit :) )



He had trouble to start with, trying to rush through it and not count out the beads, but once I sat with him and we did it together, he enjoyed it much more and was able to do it really well.

Amahli had a go too, she kept telling me to "be quiet, Mummy, I do it a self" so I let her do as she pleased :) She counted all through this activity... not neccessarily in order, but she loves numbers so for her it was another chance to get her massive quota of words closer to her daily total :)

Its sometimes the simplest of activities that my kids enjoy, simple counting and gluing and creating a flower garden with a few bits and pieces, but I think lately its been more about do these things WITH me instead of me leaving them to do it and watching how they go. Its been good to sit and actually complete something with them, watching how proud they are, watching how they work out how to complete these activitiies.

Anybody else got something simple thats really worked this week??