Food creations

Food creations...I wanted so badly to paint with spaghetti that I decided on Food as a theme. At the time, I had a bit of a mental block past different fruit and veggie stamps and spaghetti noodles. I am so happy that I thought of the potato heads, they were great!!! Parents, if you are looking for something to pass the time potato heads are fun and great. I will be adding those to the list of awesome crafts to do with kids! I have since thought of some other fun things to do with food so next time I guess. We did try a combination of yahtzee and marble painting with dried beans, paint, yogurt containers, and paper. I thought that if we put the paint in the container with some beans and put the lid on SHAKE IT, and then dump the beans onto the paper below it would be exciting. It was interesting but found out less if more with the paint in this situation. Marble painting seems to work out much easier as far as mixing colors and such. Our food stamps we great, I am a huge fan of potato stamping - easy and you can cut whatever shapes you want or need. Red peppers were great and apples are another favorite!
I would like to say a big hello to the new brother in Lily and Nadia's house. Hooray girls, and welcome baby boy.

Spring 2009 - Easter

So sorry that it took me so long to get this post up! Easter is already been and gone, 2 weeks late I am! We have been in the middle of moving and I am really enjoying this weather! Love being outside right now! So the Spring program has started, we are 2 weeks in. Our first week being Easter theme, we wore bunny noses and hopped from table to table creating all different kinds of art. The kids made shakers out of those plastic eggs. They put dried lentils and beans into their plastic containers, mom taped it shut...viola music! I put out glitter glue and sticky foam shapes for decorating the eggs, they looked great! And alot of fun. Kids made easter baskets out of yogurt containers, tissue paper and paint. I saw a few of them out at the local egg hunt with their baskets, it was great! I made up some festive stamps which I quite liked. I think that its time that Becky puts the stamps away for abit I think... Oh and lets not forget play dough bunnys with pipecleaner!!! Actually we even had some playdough Easter sluggs! Easter is always fun, exciting and full of sugar, I tried to get the first 2, leaving out the third for Sunday, I think it worked. I love seeing kids in their easter outfits, noses, ears and smiles. Iyla...chocolate mustache

Last week of the Winter program

With all the snow and frost finally starting to melt, we celebrated Spring in our last class of the Winter program! We decorated flower pots and planted some sunflower seeds, Iyla's is already stating to pop out of the soil!!! We created colorful pom pom caterpillar creatures on leaves, everyone loved the feeling of running their hands through the box of pom poms. We created mosaic butterflies with different kinds of dried veggies and noodles. And we decorated flowers with tissue paper. A complete celebration to spring!
Thanks to all the parents and children, we managed to donate $100 to the No. 6 Mine park this time around.

Easter Theme

This week...Easter!!!! Don't worry parents I won't have candy, I am sure that they will get enough this weekend without me contributing! Hope to see all your little bunnies this Thursday for the first week of the Spring Program!
Don't forget all of you afternoon people time change from 2-3 to 1-2.

Egypt inspired Art

With my usual camera in for cleaning, I tried to catch all the action going on with my point and shoot. I brought back some papyrus paper for the kids to feel and create Egyptian art in the traditional way. There was the full heiroglyphic alphabet in stamps with a key so that everyone could spell their names. Most were having trouble fitting their whole names on one sheet of paper! We also made 3D pyramids which proved to be a bit of a challenage getting them to fit together. But once together the kids went to work gluing different colored sand on each side of the pyramid. (Hint: for different colors of sand put salt in a container with food coloring and shake) We also made colored sand layers in small containers. Some kids made them into beautiful necklaces. I added this acitivity last mintue and the kids loved it, great one for an at home project. I had also printed out some Egyptain coloring pages from the internet - great place to find lots of interesting pages for kids to color. I cut them out and everyone was able to choose the image that they liked, glue it on their papyrus paper, and color. The finished projects were remenisent of the paintings you could purchase everywhere in Egypt.

This week is our last week of the Winter program and we are going to celebrate Spring by planting a seed and decorating the pot. Focus will be on mosaics. Hope to see you there! The Spring program will follow directly after the Winter program starting on April 9th. Note afternoon class time change to 1-2pm.

Egypt Inspired art

This week we are going to explore Egypt through colored 'sand', pyramids, papyrus paper, and hieroglyphics. We will learn Arabic numbers 0-9 and the hieroglyphic alphabet through stamps and stencils. The kids will decorate 3D pryamid cut outs with colored sand and explore papyrus paper with paint.
We look forward to seeing everyone again soon.
Becky & Iyla

Stamps & Stencils

The wonderful and endless world of stamps!!! Today each table had a kind of grouping of different kinds of stamps. We had the traditional rubber and foam stamps with ink pads. The kids got very creative and started coloring their stamps with felts and stamping them down! It worked great! Something I would never have thought of, I love kids! We had the magic marker table that was a huge hit with the older girls. But I have to credit that to crayola. I just thought that tracing stencils would be way more fun if you used magic markers! We had your regular kitchen utensils, the gravy beaters were very popular. I loved the pattern the masher left behind. Actually the egg cartons were very cool as well, they looked like bolts. We had a sponge table where I took regular sponges and cut out shapes. I also loved the texture of these. Reminded me of a dried bubble pattern? Oh and a great one for home is sticky back foam shapes stuck to matte board or card board rolls. The kids can stick the foam onto the board and then use that as a home made stamp. The card board roll was awesome because it made an endless line of stamping fun! All you need for ink pads are facecloths folded into 4s and then watered down tempura paint soaked into the cloth.
I am off to Egypt next week so I will see all of you on the 26th!!