Color Wheel Project: Red

We are working on putting a color wheel together with Mommies Little Artist, and this week was red. I had great intentions of doing at least three projects using red. We only got to one, it was E's birthday this week and between celebrating with family and planning and preparing for the birthday party yesterday, time just got away from me.

Anyhow, the red project we did was a lot of fun. We painted with different shades of red on our new easel that E got for Christmas.

I put red paint into three cups and added white to one, black to another, and left the third alone.

E helped me mix the colors up. I labeled the colors for her dark red, red, and light red. (Pink, Mama!)
I put a separate paint brush in each cup, and turned her loose. She told me she was painting fishies. Ok, cool!
When we have completed all the colors, I will be cutting out part of this masterpiece to make a pie for the color wheel.
For more open ended art, be sure to visit Mommies Little Artist

Open-Ended Art: Corn

This week, we did a semi-open-ended art project. The theme was corn, and I didn't really have much on hand to work with. I also didn't feel like running out to the store for supplies, so we worked with what we had.

I have been waiting to pull out my bubble wrap and try using that for painting. I saw on Pink and Green Mama's blog that they did bubble wrap Indian corn, and I thought that would be perfect for this week!

First, we did a dry run of what I wanted E to do, without the paint.
Then we used red, yellow, and mixed up some orange paint for our bubble wrap. She painted the bubbly side, and then we pressed it down on the paper.
E still wasn't done painting, so she painted another picture while we waited for the bubble wrap print to dry.
Once it was dry, I cut it out in corn shapes, and E helped me glue some "husks" onto the corn.

This was a fun project, and I'll definitely be using bubble wrap again. In fact, I washed it off and saved it for next time!

Tot School: Nov. 9-13

E is 22 months

I am a little late in getting this post up and running, oh, well. Last week was much better for Tot School than the previous week. E was willing to try and work on some things, and mommy seemed to have more patience. (Thank you, Lord!) So, here is what we did last week!

Learning Toys/Trays:

I found a set of lacing beads in the dollar section at Target, and had to pick them up. We haven't done this since our farm theme. I'm so glad I got them out. These were a little bit harder since they didn't have a good "needle." I will be remedying that as soon as I find my duct tape!

Sorting pom-poms by color. E went through this so fast with two colors, that I pulled out another bowl and added a third. Her favorite part was pouring them back into the big bowl, and squishing them before she put them in the sorting bowls.

Puzzles, of course. A different one this week, though. I need new puzzles!
We also worked with our toolbox shape sorter. She did really well with this. I find it interesting that she does so well with the shape sorters, but gets so frustrated with puzzles. They are pretty much the same thing!
And E requested the rainbow rice this week, so I pulled it out on Friday for some fun with pouring. Mostly in the box.

Alphabet/Reading Basket:

We learned about the letter T this week! We made a letter T for triangles to hang on our fridge. My post about it is here.
We also had some friends over for our letter playdate. We read the story Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and made hand and footprint turkeys. So cute! You can see that post here.
Our reading basket stayed the same with our counting books from last week.

Arts and Crafts:

We did our open-ended art project for the week, the theme was feathers. I just posted about that here.
We also did a lot of coloring this week. A LOT. I pulled out our big book coloring pages and left one out on her table for us to color on throughout the week.

Mommy's Favorite:

My little accessory queen

Open-Ended Art: Feathers

Last week's open ended art theme was feathers. We had so much fun with this one! E chose blue and yellow paint, which I also mixed to give her green as well. We chose some feathers and used them as paintbrushes!

First one feather brush:


Then two:

We decided to leave our "paintbrushes" with the painting for extra prettiness.
To see more open ended art, visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.

Open-Ended Art: Matisse

This week's open-ended art theme was an artist! Henri Matisse lived in France in the early 20th century and is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. After reading a couple of books about his life and paintings, E and I made some cut paper collages inspired by two of his pieces: The Snail and La Gerbe

I prepped this activity by cutting out lots of shapes out of construction paper. As we were making our collages, I reviewed E's colors with her, using the shapes as a guide.
First, I helped E put some glue on her paper. This excited her a lot - I haven't let her loose with the glue before.
Then we chose shapes and placed them on the glue. When E wanted to put a shape on top of another shape, I just put a dab of glue down for her.
And here are our finished products! E's is on top, and mine is on the bottom.
To see more open-ended art, visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms

Open-Ended Art: Pumpkins

The theme this week for open-ended art was pumpkins. Open-ended art means just what it says: Give the kiddos the supplies and let them go at it. It is purposefully unstructured.

We did two different pumpkin art projects this morning. (Yes we did both of them this morning, E just loves to paint!)

First, we painted a small pumpkin. We mixed our colors so we had a whole palate to choose from, and then I turned E loose with the paintbrush. Our pumpkin ended up seeming rather large to a 1 1/2 year old, so we compromised. Mommy painted one side of the pumpkin and E painted the other. I was trying to show her different ways to paint with her brush: spreading on the color, stripes, but once I got to the poka dots, it was all over. She LOVES to paint polka dots.

The second pumpkin art project we did was pumpkin prints. I guess they had leftover pumpkins from the Halloween festival at work, so I picked up a few. I cut one in half and showed E how to dip it in paint and make prints on the paper. We didn't get around to apple printing this fall, so it was something new for her.

And here are our finished projects! To see more open-ended art visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.