Autumn Leaf Stained Glass

We're in arty-crafty no man's land!!  Halloween and Bonfire Night are well and truly over, and I'm not about to start on Christmassy projects with the kids yet (though I'm already working on a few myself!), so today we returned to the Autumn theme we were using before Halloween and did an autumn leaf tissue paper stained glass window.  It was simple enough - I cut some leaf shapes out of autumnal coloured tissue paper and Riley stuck them to some sticky-backed plastic that I had masking taped to our patio doors.  We only did a small one as I wasn't sure how Riley's concentration was going last.

Freya was more than happy to just run around scrunching up tiny bits of tisssue paper, bless her!  I'm quite pleased with the final result though - he's really got the hang of overlapping the bits and not leaving too many gaps.  Its just a shame its such a miserable day here - there's no sun to shine through it.

Painting

Today I decided to do some bog-standard painting with Riley.  No plan of a finished result, not even a selection of seasonal colours, I just gave him a sheet of paper and let him pick two colours of paint.

It was all going well......... and then he got a tiny bit of paint on his finger.  I dabbed it off on his paper fingerpainting style, and suddenly he was fascinated.  And suddenly I realised we haven't done any fingerpainting for ages - not since before Freya was born!  How terrible is that?!  So with not really very much encouragement he was off, painting his hand with gusto and splatting it down.

It was far more interesting than 'normal' painting.  The finished results: (the oringinal looks kind of glittery - its not - its just the lights.  We're taking a mini glitter break as I'm still finding it in the kitchen!)

Inspiration

My Mum brought over some books today - one that I'd asked her to dig out that I remember leafing through as a teenager, and one I've never seen before.

They're both from the 70's and the soft toy one is so battered all the pages have fallen out (I had to organize them before flicking through).  They're part of my current mission - to do some of my crafts while the kids are around.  Until recently I've always done my all my craft work after they've gone to bed, but after reading some Waldorf material about handwork a couple of months ago, I realised I was encouraging them to be arty-crafty when as far as they were concerned I never did anything like that.  So my aim now is to always have a project or two on the go that I can work on during the day.  I think a bit of sewing and toy making is in my future!

Trains

I'm trying to take a Waldorf style approach to play - natural materials, very open ended, lots of scope for imagination.  I'm by no means an expert, in fact I'm still learning, but I'm really hoping it'll help to develop the creativity and imagination I'm aiming for with both of them.

Happy Bonfire Night!!!

Today was fireworks art round 2!  After discounting the splatter paint idea the other day, I had a stroke of genius, and today's project was born.  The idea was that I would put small blobs of paint on to some black paper and then Riley could use the edge of a glue spreader to make them look like fireworks exploding.  He, of course (as usual!), had other ideas! 

He smooshed it around until it was a beautiful, colourful mess!  The next part of the plan was glitter glue - all the fun without the twinkly kitchen afterwards (though to be honest, its still twinkly from the other day!), but at that point Freya woke up from her nap so I charged upstairs to get her, telling him to wait nicely and then we would do the glitter glue.  When I got back to the kitchen he was sitting there with the biggest grin on his face and a massive blob of red glitter glue on his picture - and he simply announced "I did it!"  He was so pleased with himself, I couldn't be cross (and it could have been much worse!)  We've not done glitter glue before, but he loved it.

He loved it so much I couldn't get him to stop.  So the finished picture (which is still drying now, 8 hours later, as it has that much glitter glue on it!).....

He was in such high spirits after all the squelching that he decided to stick masking tape on his nose!  I have no idea why, but the picture was so cute I just had to show it!

Awwwwww!

Gluing and sticking

After I mentionned Sparklebox yesterday, I thought I'd give you a look at a couple of other projects we've done recently with their printouts.  They're nothing earth-shattering - more of the same really, but at the moment Riley loves gluing and sticking so much, I'm trying to let him do it as often as possible.

The first one we did was a football project.  I printed out, then cut out some footballs with letters on them, then Riley (with a bit of help) used them to spell his name, glued them down, and decorated with some footballs cut out from some wrapping paper.

Finished result:

The second one was an Autumn project.  I'd really hoped to get him doing leaf rubbings, but after trying and failing numerous times over several days I gave it up as a bad job and cut out the ones I'd done whilst demonstrating, which Riley stuck down along with some coloured leaf printouts, a few fallen leaves and a few conkers for good measure.

He seemed to really enjoy doing the Autumn one in particular, and its so cute its been hanging in our hall ever since!

Fireworks Collage

So, as is usual in our house, Halloween was quickly replaced with Bonfire night.  The fact that the two are so close together means that Bonfire night seems to get slightly neglected, which I always think is sad.  So the race was on to think of a firework related project for a 3 year old.  The obvious one that sprang to mind was some sort of splatter/paint throwing extravaganza, however I'm not ready to cope with that level of mess yet (and with Riley it would be epic, trust me!!!), so I decided to go with gluing.

I printed off some fireworks related pictures from Sparklebox (I love this website - in theory its designed for teachers, but it has such great stuff), cut them out, then let Riley loose.

After the printed pictures, I gave him some lick-and-stick stars, and then PVA glue and glitter.

I must be mad!!!  I haven't dared go under the kitchen table yet to clear up the excess because I know its going to be THAT BAD!  There was glitter everywhere - including on Freya and in Riley's mouth (how, I have no idea).  The finished piece isn't the prettiest he's ever produced, but its all about the process and he had so much fun.