I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!

Have you ever read this book?

 

It is so cute. You should probably go check it out at the library right now. It is a favorite at our house. It's about a little boy who, after promising never to paint again, goes on to paint himself from head to toe. To make it even more fun you can sing the words in the book to the tune of 'It ain't gonna rain no more'. 

It was the feature book at a special story-time we have in our library where each child gets to take home a copy of the book. My kids often request to hear this book and today when they pulled it out of the bookshelf, I had an idea.

I took a picture of each of them standing in front of a white wall. I printed the picture out in black and white.

 

I taped the picture to the kids' easel, and let them paint themselves from head to toe. 

 

Sweet Apples

It was Apple Week at our hour this last week. We did a lot of fun different apple activities. Here are a few of them.

My favorite thing we did all week was an apple tree collage. I cut out the apples and the leaves and my daughter cut up the bark. It was great cutting practice and very relaxing for both of us.

I took a piece of poster board with an outline of a tree and taped it to the window. My plan was to cover in with contact paper, but I was fresh out, so I just used a whole bunch of strips of packing tape layered up against each other. It made the perfect sticky surface and was only slightly more work than contact paper.  

My son was very excited about the apples (I used all sorts of paper, glitter paper, holographic paper, and other craft paper), but that's about where his interest ended. My daughter continued on sticking on leaves and bark, but lost interest when she got to this point:

I thought it looked pretty the way it was, but I decided to leave out the materials for several more days. I'm glad I did because after a week, this is what it looked like. I did end up helping with the trunk because my daughter asked me to, but the rest was mostly her doing, with a little help from her brother. She made me laugh because she was bothered by the apples and bark my son put on the side of the tree. She ripped them off and put them in a more 'appropriate' place.

 

For an outing we took a trip to the grocery store to pick out several different kinds of apples. My daughter washed them.

My son sorted them.

We all tasted them (and appreciated the stars in the middle). Unfortunately the one we liked the best had already lost its sticker, so I'm not sure what kind it was, but it was delicious!

Painting an apple tree was much more appealing to my son than the collage. That boy sure loves to paint!

 

I also found a bunch of apple printables on Pinterest. There are all sorts of wonderful packets if you search long enough. 

Paint Date

I feel pretty lucky that I have a garage. For the last 5 1/2 years of my life I have resided in a two bedroom apartment/house/townhouse/apartment/townhouse, in that order. For some reason we just can't shake the two bedroom thing. I really can't complain too much because 1. I only have two kids. My sister has three kids in a two bedroom, so I do realize we could be much more cramped than we currently are. 2. We have a two car garage and only one garage door opener, which means my husband parks in the driveway and I use the other half of the garage for arts and crafts and toys. The other day we had a paint and playdough play date in our garage. It was so much fun. The kids painted and painted and painted. I opted for a group mural as opposed to individual painting, and I was really pleased with the outcome.

If you notice, I wrote "Please keep paint over here!" on the top of the paper, and then later remembered that everyone involved in the painted was under 5. Oh well. At least the moms knew where to keep the paint.

Q-Tip Painting

Almost as much fun as painting with a paint brush. I say this because half way though her picture, my little girl asked me if she could trade for a paint brush.

Toilet Paper Stamps

If you take a toilet paper roll, you can squish it just perfectly into the shape of a heart. Once you've done that, it makes the perfect stamp. Happy Valentine's Day!

How Cool is This?

I want one of these at my house!!!!There is local Children's mini-museum/art studio near our house and I think this is the absolute best feature. It's a giant piece of plastic mounted on the wall with a rain-gutter underneath to hold pots of paint. Kids can paint to their hearts delight. When they're done, you simply wipe it off and start all over again. Genius, right?