crafts – Page 2 – Mommy's Lessons

nfuf: Homemade Fingerpaint

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

So taking some inspiration from TeachMama we set out to try something new today. This week I received an email from Today’s Parent with a link to simple craft supplies you can make with things in your pantry. I make homemade playdough all the time and might try slime one day but today’s experiment was the fingerpaint.

We paint a lot in our house but usually it is with brushes, sponges, potatoes or other objects. Not often do we use our hands. We have fingerpainted in the past but usually we use the store bought varieties.

Here are the directions directly from the website:

Five Fingers (and a HAND) Paint

For quick fingerpaint, dissolve ¼ cup (60 mL) cornstarch in 2 cups (500 mL) cold water. Cook and stir over medium heat (use a wire whisk to keep it from getting lumpy) until it becomes clear and thick. Add a little food colouring or liquid tempera paint. Cool and apply to shiny paper, a high-chair tray or a tabletop.

This seemed simple enough and I even had all the ingredients in the pantry. The girls were playing in the living room and the baby had just been fed so it was time to experiment. I mixed the cornstarch and water and got it heating on the stove – then the baby started to cry. Lesson #1 – When making fingerpaint don’t leave it on the stove too long, it gets lumpy. I managed to save the creation with a bit of heavy duty whisking. Lesson #2 – You need a fair amount of food colouring to get any colour that is not transparent. Once it was made I let it cool on the counter before letting the girls use it.

It seemed pretty slimy and rather translucent when you used it. Parts clumped up while others were runny. Kaitlyn’s first comment was “Mom this stuff doesn’t work very well”. It doesn’t compare at all to the store bought fingerpaint when trying to make a masterpiece. I do however like the fact that it is totally non-toxic. Eileen is still at the stage where she likes to taste everything so I didn’t worry if she tried our fingerpaint.

The one use that worked O.K. was for practicing letters. Kaitlyn used her finger and our homemade fingerpaint to practice all of her upper case letters. They weren’t the easiest to read but it gave her the practice of writing them.

I would love to know if anyone has had any success creating homemade fingerpaint. There are many uses I would love to explore with the girls, especially Eileen as she works to improve her fine motor skills, and the non-toxic aspect is very important.

Craft Thursdays

Tin Can Herb Gardens

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

On Monday night Kaitlyn’s homework was to walk around her neighbourhood and look for signs of spring. Tuesday we took a walk around the house (outside) and we saw shoots for my iris’, daylilies, and tulips and we also saw buds on our flowering cherry and maple trees. Then we had a snow storm on Wednesday, and a snow day, and all our signs of spring were under a foot of snow. We decided that we needed to harness some signs of spring so this Thursday’s craft was Tin Can Herb Gardens. I found the idea when searching for kids gardening ideas, on Kaboose. Due to paint drying time this week’s craft took us both Thursday and Friday to complete.

First thing Thursday morning we took a drive to the local Walmart to look for a few supplies we didn’t have. The most difficult thing to find was the liquid Gesso but now that we have it, and have used it, I am hooked. Gesso allows kids to paint objects they normally would not be able to paint – and the paint stays on.

As we were using aluminum cans, paint normally won’t adhere to the can but after one coat of Gesso the girls were able to paint with normal acrylic craft paints and it only took two coats of paint to get a nice solid finish. The Gresso was painted on like you would with any paint.

We used simple acrylic paint to paint our cans. Be careful when using acrylic paints as they don’t wash out as easy as tempra paints. We have a drop cloth, purchased from a decorating store, that we always put down when we are painting, and we always wear paint shirts. I would rather the girls just have fun painting and not have to worry about any messes, as they are often part of the fun. After two coats of a solid colour I gave them a pallet with a variety of other colours to decorate. Kaitlyn took her time and created a pattern of hearts, circles, and lines on her can. Eileen loved mixing colours and seeing what she could create. The key is to let it be their designs. After the final drying I brought out some special flower sticker I had picked up for the finishing touches. After they were in bed I took the cans to the garage and sprayed them with an acrylic sealer and let them dry overnight. This is important to prevent any running of the paint when they water their plants.

This morning we were planting. We picked up a couple of Pesto Basil plants at our local nursery, Eisings. It isn’t the easiest time of year to find plants so we couldn’t be too picky. Ideally it would have been nice for them each to have a different plant but these were the only ones that would fit in our cans. We used 28 oz. tomato cans. It gave them a larger work space an there is more room for the roots of their plants to grow. After transfering the herbs to their beautiful cans the girls each made a small stake out of a popsicle stick to label their basil. Voila!

Literacy Tuesdays

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

For a few weeks now we have been doing craft Thursdays. This week we are starting Literacy Tuesdays. Now don’t worry we really do literacy activities every day in our house. There are always books around my house, the girls have a number of ABC puzzles that Eileen is always in to, the number of workbooks and activity book we have is a bit scary, and they won’t go to sleep without their two stories each (one from Mommy and one from Daddy). There is also Kaitlyn’s work from school, so we are always doing literacy activities. What we will be doing on Tuesdays are a variety of new and different activities just to reinforce literacy concepts – and most important they will always be fun.

Today we did Fruit Loop names. We never have sugary cereal in our house so I was happy when Fruit Loops were on sale for 1/2 price at Sobeys yesterday. I may just have to give in and let them have a few for snack but the majority will be for crafts. I wrote each of the girls names on a piece of construction paper and then they glued Fruit Loops over the writing. This time I wrote both of their names for them but I think we may try this again and have Kaitlyn create the letters of her name without following my writing.