preschool Archives – The Pinterested Parent

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preschool

Mon
24 ^th

Watercolor Silhouette Landscapes

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We have just returned from a wonderful two-week family vacation in Montana. While we were there, we visited the national parks and enjoyed a few scenic hikes with the Rocky mountains as our backdrop. The landscapes that we saw were breathtaking to say the least. Our recent trip inspired us to create a mountain landscape. Then our mountains inspired us to make a couple more. These watercolor silhouettes are perfect for toddlers to teens. Use the printable silhouette templates or create a silhouette of your own.

Wed
21 ^st

Transforming Ladybug Butterfly Craft

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Insect crafts are always a hit for the spring and summer. This transforming insect craft is so cute and simple to make.

This is an easy craft that is fun to make and even funner to play with. Transform a ladybug or a bumble bee into a colorful butterfly with just a twist of the wrist. Here’s how…

Thu
25 ^th

Straw Blown Peacock Painting

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If your kids are peacock lovers like we are, you will love this pretty and fun painting project.

Our family took a trip to the zoo yesterday. We saw a lot of amazing animals during our visit, but my favorite of them all was the peacocks. I love peacocks. They are so majestic and beautiful. Seeing these amazing creatures inspired our latest project. We have made peacocks in the past. Last year. we made them by painting with bleeding tissue paper. This time around we tried using the straw blowing method. Here’s how.

Sat
05 ^th

Pasta and Play Dough Robots

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I am a big fan of using dry pasta for crafting. Painted pasta makes for great projects. Here are a few of our favorites.

Pasta Shell Autumn Tree

Pasta Dinosaurs

Wiggly Pasta Snakes

Sun
24 ^th

Nature Resist Tie Dye Shirts

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Use items in nature to create beautiful nature resist art and t-shirts. This is a wonderful project for people of all ages.

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We have been enjoying the beautiful weather these past few weekends & spending most of our time outdoors. We have been experimenting and playing with different nature arts and crafts. Last weekend, we brought some watercolor paper outside and laid some leaves and rocks on top and used spray bottles to spray the paper with a mixture of food coloring and water. This simple nature resist project gave us an idea.

It came out lovely. I loved the effect & wanted to try it on t-shirts. We tried to recreate the effect to tie dye t-shirts. They came out great, but after we washed the shirts, the food coloring washed out. The food coloring didn’t take, but we were not going to give up on our idea. We found a non-toxic tie dye spray kit on Amazon & hoped that this would do the trick.

The directions on the package did not require that we prep our shirts, but I soaked them in a half vinegar & water mixture to prep them nonetheless. I rang our shirts out & then brought them outside & laid them out flat on cardboard. I slid a piece of cardboard between one of the shirts to keep the color from bleeding through to the other side. My daughter wanted her color to go through,

We gathered rocks, leaves & branches to create our designs. My daughter & I went to work on placing our design elements.

Once we had all of our pieces in place, we began to use the spray. Spray over the shirt. Spraying from the side can cause the dye to run under, overspraying could cause this as well. My daughter wore an apron, but we forgot to put on gloves. It is recommended to wear them because it does get messy. Luckily, the spray washes off of skin very easily.

We did one side & let it sit out in the sun to dry. The packaging recommends to let the shirt sit for an hour, but we flipped after just a few minutes.

We made heart designs out of rocks on the opposite side of both t-shirts.

When we finished spraying the other side, we let it dry in the sun for about 1 1/2 hours. The dye sets in the dryer after about 20 minutes. I also ironed it before washing to help heat set it a little bit more. Once the dye was set, we washed them as normal & then air-dried the shirts. The color held up beautifully. My daughter was so proud of her shirt. She couldn’t wait to put it on & show it off.

Thank you as always for reading. Please visit us on our Facebook page as well.

Sun
20 ^th

Plastic Easter Egg Cars

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Easter will be here & then over before we know it. Many homes will be dealing with the aftermath of Easter grass, jelly beans & all of those left-over plastic Easter eggs. I for one love those left-over plastic eggs because there are so many fun things that you can do with them.

Check out a few other ideas:

Plastic Egg Floating Fish

Teletubbies Weeble Wobbles

Plastic Egg Daddy Long Legs

We decided to make little egg cars. Here is how.

What you will need:

Extra large plastic eggs

Toothpicks

Buttons

Sharpie

Glue gun (As always use caution with a glue gun.)

Optional: small beads or Ditalini pasta pieces

Directions:

Draw a simple car design on the egg with a Sharpie.

You can do this next step in a few different ways.

Use a hot glue gun to glue 2 small beads to each end of a toothpick or (in our case we used painted Ditalini pasta because we use them as beads often). Make sure to leave room to slide the button on. OR
You can just use a dab of glue, instead of a bead, on either end. This will keep the button from sliding around.

Slide in a button on each side & put a dab of hot glue on the end to keep the button from sliding off. Do not glue the button though, let it spin loose. Repeat with another toothpick.

Glue both sets of button wheels to the bottom of the plastic egg. Let the glue dry.

My daughter could not wait to get her hands on these.

She quickly started cutting up paper to make roads & I jumped in to help. We used chalk to draw the street lines.

We glued paper down for the grass around the roads too.

My daughter wanted to have races with our cars.

For some reason, she always won & she waved her victory flag every time.

Our little egg mobiles turned into a fun project day as she wanted to add in houses & schools and make a whole city to go with our cars.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Wed
03 ^rd

Finger Painting With Rubber Thimbles

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My daughter has an art app that she loves on her IPad. She used it a lot over our travels last week. I watched her draw & paint and stamp shapes with her fingers. Watching her stamp hearts & flowers onto her electronic canvas gave me an idea. My idea was to put foam shapes on the end of rubber thimbles & use them as finger stamps. I cut out 4 simple shapes & used hot glue to glue them to the tip of the thimbles.

My daughter & I experimented with the different shapes. We put them on our fingers & stamped away. The heart shape worked the best. If you applied heavy paint it came out looking like a wax seal stamp, whereas just a light dab of paint provided better shape.

Mai lost interest in the actual shape of the stamps & began to just paint with the thimble. We had a box of a dozen rubber thimbles, so we tried something new. We loaded thimbles on each of her fingers & dipped them all in different color paint. She ran all of her thimble covered fingers around a piece of paper to create a painting that reminded me of a Jackson Pollock.

The thimbles were a little bit large on a couple of her fingers, so they would flip off from time to time, but she would just stick them back on & go.

When she was finished, it left us with a bright & colorful piece of abstract art.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Mon
01 ^st

Spin, Roll & Count Gross Motor Skill Game

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This simple gross motor skills game is easy to make and fun for the whole family.

Sun
31 ^st

Footprint Puffin

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We just returned from a family vacation in Iceland. We had a fantastic time. We love to travel & it has been wonderful watching our daughter inherit our love. While we were in Iceland, we took in the breathtaking landscapes, swam in the Blue Lagoon & took a trek to the top of the Langjökull glacier and then got to walk inside of its ice cave. We created beautiful memories & have so much fun.

While shopping in Reykjavik, we came across a lot of puffin merchandise. I was fortunate enough to have seen the puffin on our last trip to Iceland, while Mai was still in my belly.

Puffins were out of season on this visit, so Mai did not get to see one, but she still did get a little souvenir.

Puffy the puffin is our daughter’s new favorite stuffed animal. She has carried him around everywhere since our return.

Her new friend was also the inspiration for our newest footprint craft.

I painted her foot in black & white as shown & then pressed it onto a piece of blue paper.

I painted a white oval shape over the heel for the face & added in the beak & feet with orange.

I added a touch of yellow & black to the beak & painted in the eye to finish it off.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Fri
29 ^th

Clay Fingerprint Keepsake Ornaments

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These clay fingerprint ornaments are perfect for any occasion. They make a great keepsake gift for grandparents and mom and dad.

*This post contains affiliate links* Some photos have been updated since original post.

My daughter has inherited a lot of hand-me-down books. We have so many that we don’t even know what we own. For a very long time, my daughter has only read a few of these books. Many just sat there collecting dust, but recently she has been diving into them all. We came across a few art books the other day. We found a few great “how to draw” tutorials and also came across a cute book filled with fingerprint crafts.

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