Christmas Tree ART

These tree's we made turned out awesome.

First we started with a cut out of a tree, I blue tacked it on to our canvas and smiley sponged different shades on Green in to it. Then i pulled the outline off & gave him a bowl full of decorations. There were cellophane pieces, star sequence, jewels and glitter, cut pieces of wrapping paper & some pom poms.

Some things stuck to the paint but other things required some glue.

He stuck them all on & then we glued a star on top as a final touch (or a pom pom).

The second one we tried as a foil cut out of a tree with blobs of glue as the baubles and then Smiley sprinkled glitter over it.

Projective Inkblots

Anyone who knows me will know that I am studying a Psychology Bachelors Degree, I am no where near my goal and it is seeming to take for ever but I am determined to get there & be labelled a Registered Psychologist. What I do from there is still unknown.

I recently went away for my on-campus residential for the subject Psychological testing & Assessment, one of things that popped up was the development of the Projection Test as one of the first Personality tests. Developed initially by Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalytic Theorist, Inkblots soon developed further and The Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) were coined, if you have any interest in Psychology who may have heard of these as they are the two most widely used Projection tests, and they were both important milestones in the clinical field.

The test assumes that the person being tested is projecting their personalities into the inkblots.  Further, the test assumes that since the person is focusing on the inkblot in order to identify what it resembles, they would be removing the attention of themselves and therefor remove their usual psychological defences. Since the same inkblot could seem like everything and nothing, any object or idea that the subject claims to see would be a product of the subject’s unconscious projected onto the inkblot.  That is the history.

Now, I am not a fan of Freud and anyone who has read about him may feel the same, he is often seen as a creep with sexually deviant desires and his theories surrounding early childhood are very radical and some what disturbing. None the less, he is a major player in Psychology and I do understand the basis of Projective tests.

Out of curiosity I made some inkblots with Smiley. I still have ink left over from our experimental Marbling in November.  So I got that out to use. It was a fun process and a learning activity for him as he got to see how the ink transferred onto both sides when folded in the paper and how the colours smeared together.

I cut A4 White printing paper in half and did about 10 inkblots.  I asked smiley to choose his colours, splash some dots on the paper and then we folded them in half. Using the same technique you would if you were making butterflies with paint. Open them up and put them up to dry.

Once they were dry I asked smiley what they looked like. What do you think that is,  and what is it doing?  I did this purely out of curiosity, and of course for the process of making them, i didn't intend to perform any type delving technique and I wasn't going to look into what he said for some underlying hidden meaning. 

He is nearly 3 and that would be totally inappropriate, so I did it purely to see where his imagination took him and how well he could attend, listen and talk about the pictures. Through open ended questioning I thought it would also help develop his language and conversational skills. But most of all, they were fun to make and they do look pretty unique and interesting.

He did really well and he is suprising me a lot lately with how grow up he is becoming. Time has gone so fast and he isn't my little baby anymore he is becoming a little boy.  All grow up he says "OK, Show me this one!" and took the inkblot, as the tests are ambiguous they can be seen in any direction or angle that the viewer wants them to be in and this is funnily exactly what he did.

He twisted and turned it around, hummed & hared tilting his head at all different angles then announced this one is a Big Camp Fire, like the one out the bush!  (we had a bomb-fire that day but if it were a real adult projection test the psychoanalyst might have said that represents a hot temper or signifies anger rising up - PFFtTt so the tests as you can imagine aren't really that popular these days)

It was very humorous to me, my little man so grow up telling me stories about what it is. "Lets see" he would say & squint, with a real serious look on his face. "This one has huge Antennas" he said, and then from there on it was an insect theme.

There was a Spider eating his food. There was a cranky biter cricket with huge antennas.  A squashed frog with a fat belly that a car had run over, A beautiful butterfly of course and an explosion in the water from what i gather. There were lots of sound effect, boom, splash, pachoooow and lots of cute facials!

The last one, which was totally out of the theme was Poppy with his glasses on which surprised me because he hasn't seen Poppy for a couple of weeks and the picture was, well very ambiguous but I can see where he got the glasses from (it was 2 big yellow blots that looked like round eyes, or glasses).

Here are some below; The fire, the spider eating his food & the cranky cricket 

Painting the Bath Tub

Painting the Bath Tub

Dimples loves getting paint all over his hands, arms & face.

So instead of giving him his tressle and tubs of paint, brushes and sponges, putting his art shirts on & trying to get him to keep the paint only on the brush or the paper (& failing in doing so) I let him go.... In the bath tub!

The rules were that he could paint the sides & bottom of the tub, keeping all the paint inside the tub.  He could paint any part of himself as long as he washed & cleaned it all off when he was finished.

That is what he did, he followed the instructions clearly and cleaned himself up.

I gave him a sponge, a brush and a roller then splatted paint through out the bath. He was in it and also had a paint tray full of paint. It got messy and watch out if you are trying this, it gets very slippery so we also said another rule of sitting / kneeling down to prevent a nasty fall.

He painted his feet, his legs and his hands as usual and then realised he had full range so he grabbed the roller and painted his belly aswell. He was covered in paint from the tip of his toes up to his chin. Then once he got that out of his system he painted a "beautiful waterfall" up the side of the tub and a shark.

It went well and the best thing was it was so easy to clean, as it was still wet it just washed down the drain & then he was in the tub already so he was clean and spottles within a matter of minutes. If you are a multi-tasker like I am, it is also too easy to clean the bathroom at the same time. While he was painting away I cleaned the shower and the vanity, Sorted through the washing and then cleaned him :)

Great fun.

Balloon Sprinkler

Here in Australia, Summer has arrived and the days are getting longer as the sun is getting hotter. But parents these days need to be much more conscious of our precious but lacking resource, water, when it comes to ways to play outdoors.

Every one who lives in a warm climate area has fond memories of running under the sprinkler as a kid. I know I do! My brother and I would play endlessly under, on & around the sprinkler; Jumping over, racing around, sitting on or trying to stop the water is all great fun as a kid.

Here is a water conscious home made sprinkler idea that can provide water play & sprinkler fun, (without hooking up to the tap & leaving it run the entire day).

You will need a sharp pin & several balloons, some string or ribbon and a place to hang your balloon sprinklers.

While the balloons are new & unstretched prick some holes in them with the pin. You must be careful not to do them all in the centre or it will burst with water, like wise if you do too many all over the water pressure will make it burst, so your best to lay your balloon flat & prick the holes closer to the bottom of the balloon where the rubber is thicker.

Fill the Balloon up at the tap, making sure you don't over fill them. Hold them as you do it so you can feel the weight.  They will be hung & bopped around so they need to hold their own weight with out bursting. Tie the tops & then tie on your string. Take them to you hanging spot & tie them up high enough that your little one can go under them, reach them & play with them but so they are not going to swing onto any rough or sharp near by surface & pop.  We did ours on the clothes line!

If you look closer at the balloons water is squirting out in all different directions. We had games of catching it in a bucket, trying to manoeuvre the balloon squirts around to squirt each other & dancing in the "rain".

There you have it. As the water comes out it squirts in all directions, they can drink out of it, have fun bopping them around, spin them around or stand under the drips. 
They're still getting wet, cooling down, having fun, but your not letting a continuous stream of water pour unto the ground for hours...