Tomato & Marble Art

TOMATO ART
I am sure that would have gotten your attention. So what is tomato Art? Well, I dubbed it tomato Art because when we did this paint project & i was explaining to my little boy that we need some circular objects that will roll around in the pan he walked past the cherry tomato tree & picked a few off (this was just a random tomato plant that had popped up in the yard, it wasnt bought or planted so it was ok to snag some for artful purposes)- At the time i was amazed, he was actually taking in what i was saying, evaluating it & he used his imagination abstractly to pick the perfect tool for our project.

What you will need. & you dont need to use cherry tomato's you can use whatever you have suitable.
*A cooking tray that will fit A4 paper in it & higher sides.
*Paint
*circular objects (marbles, pebbles, cherry tomato, small balls)
*A4 paper or cardstock that will fit in your tray

You put a blob of paint onto each of your circular objects or in random places on your paper.  Put as much of as litle as you wish.
Then your little one can shake, swirl, tilt, and move the tray about so that the balls move around to colour the paper in unusual patterns.

We experimented with different sized balls and stones, & my little boy had a rubber lizerd in his pocket so he wanted to do 'lizzy prints' as well.

The final art itself looked awesome. I used acrylic paints that I have had for my own painting but i think it would work much better with water colours or some paints that are a bit thinner than acrylics.

Making Colourful Clouds from shaving cream

Shaving cream & hair mousse, Sensory Play!

This is a messy fun activity for older kids who don't have sensitive skin allergies & who WONT put it in their mouths.

*All you need is some space, preferably outdoors or on a vinyl/tile floor, or at a glass table with something protecting the ground. Be careful where you situate it because it is bound to get flung, flicked and thrown somewhere (not good for carpeted areas).

*Shaving cream, an inexpensive can or/and Hair Mousse. Which you can pick up at the bargain shop for a couple of dollars.

*Food colour or dye watered down into spray cans, You can also use medicines droplets or similar.

We did our play in the yard as it was a nice sunny day & we had a bucket of water near so that my little man could wash of his hands if he didn't like the feel of it. Some children are tactile sensitive & this type of play would need encouragement to evoke their senses.
It teaches them about material, the mousse worked well & I explained to my boy how it expands as air gets on it.

We called our game, colouring the clouds & experimented with yellow, blue & purple sprays.

We also threw one bar of soap in the microwave for a minute & watched it puff out, expanding with air through it. You must be careful as it stays warm on the inside for a while but I thought this would be interesting to put in amongst our clouds as it has a different feel, it cools hard & can be crumbled. It didn't take the colours on as well though and really REALLY stunk out my microwave...

We used the top of a glass table & put our clouds on the smooth surface. My little one was too intrigued by the spray & had his cute face of thought on as he tried to work the different spray bottles in the right direction. This was a task in itself.

You can see in the picture that the blue worked worked well, then the yellow. Red would have been awesome but i had ran out, I already had a purple mixed up for when i dyed & made dinosaur eggs for him (that's another post for another day) so I just used that.
He had a ball, the colour mixing lasted a short while & then he was more interested in plopping, smearing and feeling the ''clouds".

At one stage the mini foxie came for a look & got covered in blue spray. My boy thought that was hilarious but the dog went & hid, just another reason for it to scam out new hiding holes until the 2 year is out of site.

& then the cloud play turned physical. He had a mass amount on his hands & flicked them up & down so it splatted every where, that was all good, then he cracked up laughing at me because a majority of it had landed on my head :) So then that started a new game, lets turn mummy into a big cloud & change her to blue.
It was a mild shaving cream fight until he slipped in it, then it became a rolling in the clouds game & so it went on until we were both a real mess, had loads of fun & needed to be washed ourselves.  On the plus side, it was scented shaving cream & smelt really nice.

Discovery bottles

Discovery bottles encourage the development of
observation skills, predictability, scientific
concepts, attention span, cause & effect, colours, sizes, and thinking skills. 

This is one of the funkiest ideas I have came across yet so we adapted them into our own play room, but I will only bring them out on special occasions.

Discovery Bottles:
*Empty bottles, plastic jars or containers.
*time
*food colouring
*bits & pieces;  Mmarbles, glitter, glycerin, shampoo, gel, water, sand, paper clips, oil, straws, shells, pipe cleaners, paper, craft pieces & what ever you find laying around that can fit in a bottle.
*glue gun & glue

Normally I let my little one in on the making of, however i thought this would be a pleasant surprise & it could be another chaotic mess if I let him join in with the mixing & the making.  So I did this one solo but it was worth it, they intrigue him & they will last...
Some times the best toys are home made ones!

I tried to vary the sizes, colours and textures. These were the first lot I did. The 2 most successful were the one at the front, oil-Jewels, straw glitter & water. The water & the oil stay separate which means the glitter most of the time sits mid way, the jewels sink but i think its an awesome concept. If i were to re-do this one i would colour the water purple or aqua so there is more contrast to the oil colour.

There is a bear in there.... with some army plants & some ripped paper. This one required a lot of twisting & turning to get the bear (or the hidden spider) to the top. it is quite tricky, i think i put a little too much paper in & the bear ends up smothered but with careful rotation, small shakes, moving & twisting in different directions he pops his head out.

My other favourite that amazes my boy, who doesn't understand magnetics yet The Multi coloured pipe cleaners & paper clips that have metal inside with the magnetic cleaner off the outside of the fish tank (that's the only magnet thing strong enough that i had handy)  It is really effective & they stick to then follow the magnet right to the top.  We practiced UP, DOWN, AROUND with the motions & of coures he liked to shake the crap out of it so it jingles & jangles then looks all messed up.
Notice to in this one I just used an old baby bottle so it is different shape, thinner than the other bottles.

Learning colours.  The red one is just marbles in shampoo with red food colour.  We have another green one with marbles in dish washing liquid & water to compare how the marbles sink & move around. the Marbles in the shampoo take longer to drop to the bottom when you turn it around then they green one does.
We have red, yellow, green, & a blue vibrant bottles to compare & learn colours with.

This one is another tricky fiddly one, a car in rice. My boy isn't too impressed, it was an older car with a missing window & a missing wheel but he tells me he needs it & wants me to get it out but then he spends so much time trying to turn it around & get all the rice out of the car.  He also told me it crashed off a bridge into the rice & broke its window :)  I love his imagination already!

The Pretty one, as my 2 yr old says....  This one was a 'what was laying about' creation. There are little beads, old cheap jewellery bits that were mismatched pairs, craft butterfly's and a cocktail umbrella. I also threw in some polymer water retaining beads (see my post on that sensory box).

Our favourites are the yellow one at the top of the page with yellow craft bunny heads & this glycerin/glitter one.  Seth particularly likes the car in rice & the rainbow magnetic peices.

Future directions.
I want to do an ocean themed one with some shells & a fish of sort sort hooked in at the lid so it hangs half way down.  I have seen some pretty cool ones for older kids with letters & words typed, cut then put inside. Another good idea is a sink & float theme. The one i did with dishwasher liquid i would next time do with not as much liquid so there is more room for the bubbles to grow as it gets shaken.
& I haven't found the right bottle yet but i want to do some smelly ones with holes in the top, scented fake flowers or something along those lines.

Happy discovering

Play dough tracks - Bike track & foot prints

TRACKS & PRINTS IN DOUGH!

This is one of our favourite things to do inside.  You can adapt it & allow your child the initiative to expand and invent new ways to play.  My little one never gets bored of it!

We have done this before with farm animal foot prints, construction trucks, bikes, hands, feet, put plants in ect. On this occasion we started off with it being MUD.
I attempted to make it brown, added a little green glitter in!


First we made our dough
*2 cups of flour
*1 cup of salt
*1 cup of water with your food colouring if desired.
*You can add glitter if you want.

My little munchikin went to work making tracks.  Exclaiming that the play dough was mud with a big muddy hill!
His older brothers, his Daddy, and his Uncle all have dirt bikes and have built their own real dirt track so this was very appealing to him.


MUD Jumping! he would exclaim, we made a jump a corner and I was in my glory watching his creative little mind wander. He was right into it, "KTM goes UP!" he would say as it jumped over the jump & then it did go up, right above his head where it flipped around, went side ways and then came down to land on the jump.
Mind you, all the sound effects were happening aswell.

By his own lead, my 2 yr old then wanted to do handprints..........  Then feet prints!
I wonder what it felt like inbetween his toes.

We have done this a few times and most often then not, my 2 year old brings out the animals.....
This time he done faces, At his Family daycare they once did 'clay fossils' so I think he got the face & the sharp teeth imprinting idea from his lovely daycare Mumma, then he did the dinosaurs spikes & tails as well, experimenting on what the imprints would look like.  Then he would ask me to turn it over (which meant turn it over, smooth it out & start fresh).

In the past we have used a bulldozer, fences, trees and kangeroos.....

We have also experimented with BIG animals vs. little animals, big prints & small prints.  Long toes & short toes, long tails and no tails. two legs vs four legs.
You can really do whatever your mind comes up with!

Happy Play doughing....