A-Z Art: A is for Apple Prints

Part of how our summer schedule is that every Monday afternoons will be Masterpiece Mondays (more on our schedule tomorrow). Since art is going to be a frequent activity this summer I wanted to have a focus. About a year ago, I heard about a woman who decided to do an A-Z theme with picking different mediums and art ideas based on the letter of the alphabet, I was inspired! My oldest and I sat down and came up with an plan for 26 different art projects. The ideas are truly endless. It was hard to narrow down what to do for each letter because I kept thinking of more different ways we could do art- at least there is always next summer!

A-Apple Prints

B-Bubble Art 

C-Contact Collage

D-Drip Art

E-Eggshell Art

F-Fingerpaint

G-Glue & Watercolor Resist

H-Handprint Art

I-Inventions (robots)

J-Jars (glitter)

K-Kenya Masks

L-Leafprint Art

M-Melted Crayon Art

N-Newpaper Art

O-Origami Art

P-Pottery

Q-Quill Art

R-Rocks (Story)

S-Seed Mosaic

T-Tissue Paper Stainglass

U-USA Needlepoint

V-Valentine Heart Suncatchers

W-Wheel Print Art

X-Xray Sketches

Y-Yarn Weaving

Z-Zentangles

For our first Masterpiece Monday we painted with apples. I cut up four apples and put out four different colors of paint (apple colors of course). I decided to make some puffy paint too for different texture. To make puffy paint: mix white shaving foam, white Elmers glue and paint. I don't have exact ratios but just kept adding glue and paint for good measure. I let it be COMPLETELY kid-directed (which won't always be the case on all letters). I really thought they would stamp with the apples but my sons wanted to drag the apples like paint brushes. Both boys liked the sensory aspect of the puffy paint. If you have a kiddo with a sensory disorder or an oral toddler I would be careful putting paint (that isn't edible) on apples and freely handing it to them. Apples are meant to be eaten, right?!? I'm slowly learning about this sensory stuff!

Anyhoo, keep checking back for A-Z Art ideas, Masterpiece Mondays, and our new AWESOME summer schedule.

Treasures in Ice

We recently read the picture book, Immi's Gift by Karin Littlewood. It is a sweet story of a little girl in the Arctic who finds a treasure while ice-fishing. The flotsam she finds brings color to her stark, white world. Later she sends off a piece of her world. We followed this up with a text-to-text connection with David Wiesner's Flotsam.

I have been scouring online for some water activities for this week's summer challenge, and ran across Counting Coconuts' frozen block of treasures. When I saw the picture it immediately reminded me of Immi's igloo. I knew I had to make one of our own! In a 9x12 glass dish I filled it with water, shells, coloful rocks, foam sea animals, letters from our family, and a large sea-star. I tried to do colored ice-cubes like Counting Coconuts but I was unsuccessful. "A" couldn't wait to "excavaute" the treasures and dropped the pan, so I don't have a whole block to show you, only pieces.-SO SAD!

From Immi's Gift

Our block isn't pretty but you get the idea!

Now that we made the block we needed to "excavate" the treasures. "A" and I thought of some things that may melt or break ice. "A" thought more about breaking by using his dinosaur excavating tools and his toy hammer. I added a water bottle, salt, and sugar to help facilitate melting. I knew all these 
items wouldn't work (sugar) but wanted "A" to try them for exploration. He said he would first try with the thing he knew wouldn't work -the water bottle. Hmm was he surprised by the results! Although he liked trying to break it we found the salt and water bottle the best at melting the ice to release our "flotsam".

Our Excavation Tools

Getting smaller now

This activity kept "A" busy for hours.

Hooray For Parks with Water Features

The summer has been cruddy this year, with it being one of the most wet and humid ones that I can remember. Today was the first day finally above 85 degrees, and I had to take advantage by taking the boys to one of our favorite hot day activities: parks with water features. These parks are great because they have playgrounds for dry play and water for wet play. I also like it because it is just splashing about, so your little one doesn't need to know how to swim and can have safe water play. Did I mention they are free! Portland, OR has a ton of community parks and there are quite a few that have water features. I wanted to highlight my two favorites: Irving Park and Peninsula Park.

Irving Park on 7th and Fremont in North Portland: This is my favorite with a fire hydrant, shower, numerous fountains, and a cool new playground. There are tons of area for picnicking as well.

Peninsula Park on Rosa Park Way and Albina: This park has so much to offer. It has a community center, outdoor pool ($2.50 for kids) and was the original rose garden for Portland, OR. I highly recommend coming in late June/early July. The garden has a Alice and Wonderland feel that is great for picnics. The playground is pretty cool too. Plus it has a cute froggy and flower water feature that is fun for those hot days!

A Day at the Beach

Last weekend we took the boys on a day trip to Fort Stevens on the Northern Oregon Coast. Daddy wanted to show off the historic batteries from WWII. The batteries were put at the mouth of the Columbia River to protect inland attacks. Now the batteries are abandoned tunnels to play in. I let them play at the batteries as I patiently waited for the time to play on the beach. "A" can be a handful and I have found my most pleasant days with him in the past have been beach trips. He seems so calm and can entertain himself for hours. I have such a peace around him while we are near the ocean. Plus, I was super excited because this was babies first time at the beach. We put him in the sand although both Daddy and I were terrified he would eat the sand. I know that is just being overly protective and all babies eat sand, but we had a choking scare that brought us to our knees recently. Surprisingly, "B" at first just loved the feel of running his hand through the sand. This kept him occupied for almost 15 minutes until he had to taste it. Daddy quickly scooped him up and held him the rest of the day. The weather started to get cloudy and cold (which happens frequently on the Oregon Coast) so we couldn't jump waves or play an the surf. Bummer! Also the beach we were at didn't have my two favorite beach activities: agate hunting or looking at tide pools. However, there was shipwreck and lots of sand for castle building. Overall, a wonderful family outing!!!

Exploring the historic, abandoned batteries:

Old Cannons

Waiting for the older boys to come out of the batteries

"B" decided to do some exploring of his own

Walking the battery walls

Lucky for me the had a living history exhibit going on. Entertainment while I waited!

Ft. Stevens Batteries

Guide for tools in abandoned battery room

"A" couldn't resist a checking out the old Army jeep

Now it's BEACH TIME!!!

"A" being an awesome boy at the beach-playing away!

"B" running his fingers through the sand

Happy Mommy Moment!!!

"B" wants to do what brother is doing

Digging tunnels to drive through

Post sand eating and starting to get cold. Doesn't he look like a Boohpah?

"A's" sand tunnel roads

Beach Baby

"A" playing on the shipwreck

Water Experiments

I was recently turned on to the Let's Try It Science books by Seymour Simon and Nicole Fauteux. I am hooked! These are great picture books for primary age children that ask science related questions and then have the child "try it out" to answer those questions. It is a great way to introduce the scientific method for little ones. They have three in the series so far, one for water, air and bridges. I decided to start with water since for once we have sunny enough day to put some water in the kiddie pool!

The first question is how much water it would take to fill the pool. The experiment is to pick a container ("A" chose 2 qt. juice container) and start filling the pool. First he had to guess how many containers it would take. "A" chose nine! Hmmm, it took about 3x that amount. Boy was he surprised!

Next, the book has children pick the tallest container and the widest. Which one holds more water? He thought a 2 liter soda bottle would hold more than a gallon milk jug. Wrong again buddy. I then picked two half gallon items of different shapes. This time he thought the wider one would hold more water. He found it interesting that they held the same amount. After that he had to make a line of containers in the order he thought would hold the most to least amount of water. He couldn't understand that two containers the same height would hold different amounts!

Yup they hold the same amount!

Wait but they are the same height!?! (not a flattering pic)

Finally it was the experiments "A" had been waiting for-floating! First, he found heavy and light things to see if they would float. What about if you take a sinker and put it on a make shift boat out of aluminum foil? I don't know if he understood that it spread the weight of the heavier object over more space and that is why it floated, but he sure had fun. What happens when the aluminum foil is made small? What happens if things that float fill with water? These are questions we answered and more...who knew science could be so fun!

Different sinkers and floater. Notice monster truck sunk.

Now the monster truck floats!

Had to make dino float like in the book

"B" had to get in on the action too!