painting with a twist

Last week got a bit busy towards the end am I found myself slipping from sanity to stress.
I have found that the best way to deal with t his is to drop everything and just spend time with my kids. I am quickly recentered, my breathing calms down, crazy thoughts are stilled.

So when this began to happen I grabbed an art activity I had in my head for a few days and headed outside to join the nutbags :)

Whilst in Sydney, Jared found some water pistols and was desperate to buy them. We had rules about not pointing them at anyone and all the rest and hes had a ball with them, shooting only the wall and occasionally the poor dog.
Today though, instead of filling them with water, I filled them with food colouring, hoping to encourage him to want to use them to paint with!



I set it up, showed them what it was, and then stood well back and watched. We had lined the retaining wall with paper so they were all set. Jared was in straight away, careful not to get it on himself but enjoying shooting at the wall. Amahli was also quick to start, and with only a few reminders, managed to get it on the wall ( mostly).




They enjoyed doing this until the paint ran out so I refilled them but this time just with water and showed them they could still " paint" but the paint the wood of the fence with just water, which had a similar effect.


Its not an activity that had a lot of point, which is half the fun sometimes. Open ended, no instructions (except not to squirt anyone) no way in which its "supposed" to turn out, no time frame. Just the joy of colour and experimentation.


Cute fun and easy painty fun :) I just had to make sure I didnt turn my back for too long.... ;)

paper plane fun

At the library last week, my kids had lots of fun, more so than usual, because I told them they could borrow ABSOLUTELY anything they wanted to ( they had a limit of 4 things so it wasnt totally crazy!)

Amahli heads straight to the foreign section and pulls out " teach your kids French in the car!" ( I swear that she totally knows what this is and that this will drive me insane in the car even if she is only 2yrs old) and is blissfully happy with the ghastly looking cover on it.
Jared, in his usual style, takes FOREVER to find anything he is remotely interested in, he would rather be playing the library computers than find a book.
But finally his face lights up as side by side he finds a pirate book and a paper plane book.

Perfect :)

So we head home ( all the way singing " the snail goes slow, the ant goes fast, and into your belly.. or something like that I think. Really I could be reciting some terrible words and Id have no idea) to check out our finds.
This morning, I set up the table so as soon as we dropped Jumeirah off we could get stuck into the paper plane book. It looks great. The pictures are clear, instructions are in English and understandable and so we begin.



He, of course, picks the two hardest planes in the book. But not to be defeated, we began. Me, folding, unfolding, trying not to swear, Him, encouraging, laughing when I growl, and helping me fold parts. He is also following the steps so he can see what we are up to.

More than once, the plane ends up like this.

And then the steps start matching up to where they are supposed to be...


More than once, he says "Ok good work. I'll be just a sec and I check on you" and races out the door to play with Amahli.

But finally, we have two almost to the pattern, planes :)


He had such fun flying them. We raced them in the hallway. He flew around with great sound effects and diving bombing the dog.


And Amahli?? Her favourite bit was finding all the disaster efforts and throwing them around the place :)

Win Win :)

Check out your local library for great books like this! Im off to find some more ( maybe easier version next time)

sorting money

Money seems to be a big thing in our house at the moment... at any one time the sound of clinking coins can be heard from any number of pockets or falling through the holes in the car seats. And Im always having my wallet raided for coins, it seems that 5c pieces wont do either. It has to be " a big one Mum!" or " A gold one for pirates!" which I would love to oblige but I barely ever have two to clink together myself!!

So, to encourage this love of coins, I created Jared in particular (but all can use it) a page of coin matching.

It was pretty easy, find the coin pictures on the computer, print them off.


The hard part was finding enough coins :)

I did it so it became a counting game too, not all coins had the same amount.

He spent quite a lot of time on this, first getting it wrong as he was rushing but once he took the time to look at the coins and discover the symbols and numbers on them he was able to match it easy.

He did it again this afternoon and did it first go :)

These type of activities can be adjusted for so many ages. Younger kids can just match one coin of varying amounts, older children ( 5-10) can begin to add the lines of coins together to work out how much it adds up to.Its got so many ways to be extended.

Going to set Amahli up with it tomorrow and see how she goes :)

the prince and the princess

Last week I went to Education Week at school with Jumeirah. Its was fun to see her in action at school and the things shes been doing. I do hear alot about different things but its totally different to see her in a classroom setting.

Their theme this term is "Fairy Tales" and so lots of things have been coming home to do with all things fairytaleish. Hanging on the wall in their room is one such thing they did which was to colour in a prince or princess picture and then stick their face on the top. So so cute and as soon as Amahli saw it she started begging me to do it with her too.

So I drew ( read: copied) an outline of a prince and a princess, found a photo of both her and Jared and printed it out, and they both had a lovely time colouring their royal selves in. Whilst colouring in has had a bad rap for being ' creative squashing" and "useless" I find it has its good points too. Jared needs to do more practise with holding a pencil and being able to control and colouring helps that. I loved to colour in as a child as I wasnt the best drawer. Its also great for strengthening muscles in their fingers which they need to be able to hold a pencil or pen in later life too.

Once they were finished, we stuck their heads on. Both absolutely loved looking at the royal versions of themselves :)

So now I spend my day getting ignore unless I refer to them as Prince Jared and Princess Amahli.

Jared even said to me: " I told you who I am. If you dont call it to me, Im not listening anymore".

Turns out he's not just royal, hes a royal pain in the butt ;)

photo friday

Ive started walking again :) My mornings begin early, on a beach, ALL BY MYSELF. And my brain, which is noisier than my three children put together, but at least it doesnt stop me from taking photos :)

I saw this little flower and totally could see how I wanted it to turn out once Id edited it.

Its almost perfect ;) Its tweaked with a little vintage denim which brought out the blues in it. The background is untouched.

Happy weekend!

straw blow painting

Recently, Jared has had an obsession with playing with straws. All day. Everyday. Which is fine, for the first 10 minutes, then they get full of condensation and boy slober that it drips out then end. Which is when I start gagging.
He bought a pack of curly straws whilst we were in Sydney which has only flamed the love for straws. So today, I decided to let him play with straws provided he did my straw painting. ( No, its compromising, not bribing ;) )

So I set up straw blowing painting today. When we used to do this at preschool, I seriously could not watch. The amount of dribble that ended up on the page just was about the only preschool thing I could not handle. ( That and clay. But thats a whole nother issue) So I was a bit worried at how it would have changed seeing as its my kids and their dribble which I am covered with most days anyway....

He was keen as soon as he saw the straws. And he didnt even baulk when he saw that paint was involved! He got straight in and asked me how to do it.



I showed him once and away he went.

He loved making "Fireworks" and spent a good 10 minutes ( a record for him Im sure!) blowing happily through his straw, moving it around to make the paint spray out into fireworks and "fingers".

Amahli had a go but couldnt quite get the coordination to move the paint around. With a bit of help, she was able to do it too :)

And Im happy to say, not one painting had spit bubbles on it!

Anyone else got some cool things to do with straws??

pattern following

Yet another resolution to do more things with Jazzy whilst Amahli is asleep.. its such a tricky time of day for both of us... he likes to chill and so do I but I feel time is slipping away from me. Being the middle kid, he wont get time on his own with me whilst the others are at school ( Jumeirah got 2 years before the others came and Amahli will get a year to herself when he goes to preschool and then school..) and I really want to spend more time with him helping him develop those skills he needs without him really knowing hes learning ;) He really is such a cruisy kid though and really he'd reather be snuggled up but I compromised with him today to do a little bit of fun stuff before we flaked out on the lounge.

I set up a simple pattern copying activity. ( Yes the skewers are stuck in a toilet roll. It proved to be the perfect way to keep them still!) ( Im very creative that way ;) )

I made a pattern and asked if he could copy it. With only a little bit of encouragement, he was quite able to do this. Its tricky to do, work out the pattern from the bottom up, then use really little fingers to carefully thread the bead on. I made one a bit harder which is started but didnt want to finish. I was impressed I had him for that long :)

Its something thats easy to pull out and set up and can be used for not only threading and patterns but counting and sorting as well!

Im going to set it up for Amahli tomorrow for some threading fun :)