Leaf Rubbings

The other day my kindergartener wanted to collect leaves and send them to relatives. Since I am pretty sure everyone in our family has plenty of their own leaves falling in copious amounts on their lawns at the moment, I suggested we do something more artistic with the leaves we found. We settled on the easy to do and totally satisfying leaf rubbing. It takes no time at all and not much in the way of materials and they're ones I'm sure you have.

What You Need:
broken, unwrapped lengths of crayon (we love a craft that uses these- I hate to toss them, but who needs broken crayons!?)
white paper
flat fall leaves (We made ourselves a little adventure just collecting these.)
masking tape, optional.

What You do:

1. On one piece of white paper lay out your leaves in whatever pattern you chose.
2. Lay the paper you're going to color on flat on top of your leaves Secure it in the corners with tape. This helps to keep it from moving when your octopus is rubbing.
3. Take a broken bit of crayon and rub it along the paper, over the leaves, on its side (not the ends!)
4. Watch your leaves come out!

My kid really loved doing this a lot more than I expected. It was kind of like digging for treasure (or fossils!). He never knew which leaf was going to pop up and the more colors he used the better it came out.

A neat thing to do with an older kid would be to collect one of several varieties and label the rubbings with the tree species.

Painted Pots

We used Decoart Patio Paints (I bought a sample pack on clearance in the flower section at our craft store.) on dollar ceramic pots to make pretty pots that can stay outside all summer and sit on our windowsills when winter comes. Supposedly with Patio Paints you don't need to seal the art once the pot is painted. If you can't find patio paints you can use acrylic craft paints, but you might want to put a coat of exterior varnish (such as Ceramcoat) on them. I was surprised at how long this project kept my 4 year old son entertained, and the 2 year old did a bang-up job (thankfully not literally!) too. They also really enjoyed picking out their own plants to put in and potting them.  I think I'm going to have the kids paint some of the rocks in my rock borders next to add more color to our yard.

Easy Pea-sy Garden Markers

It's planting season here in New England. Sometimes it's hard to remember where you planted what. We made these cute little garden markers to remind us using just a little patio paint (I bought a sampler pack on clearance in the flower pot section at our craft store) on some leftover shims (you can get a bunch at your local hardware store for a couple dollars.). Now, I do actually know what and where my strawberry plants are especially since they are actually growing actual berries (and poison ivy, too, color me upset!) but they were so much fun to make and came out so cute, I made a marker for them anyway. And my tomatoes too! If you know what grows in your grandparents' gardens, they'd make a great  Mother's Day or Father's Day gift too. Cheap, cute and easy peasy.

Bubbles!

I don't like finding corn syrup as the number 2 or 3 item in product ingredient lists, but I've got to say corn syrup has some pretty great craft usage. Like fake blood (yes, I'll do that around Halloween- remind me.) and bubbles!

I was pretty excited to learn I don't have to buy glycerin just so I can make bubbles. Who wants glycerin hanging around? Besides, I'd have to go out and get it and I'm an immediate gratification girl. I like finding out I can use things I have hidden in my very cabinets already. Especially when it's corn syrup I've had kicking around since my first son was a vampire for Halloween 2.5 hears ago.

And if I'm bad about waiting, my kids are worse. Making bubbles was awesome. No oven, no drying. Three ingredients, mix and voila, blow!

Recipe:
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup dish detergent *
2 cups water

Combine and stir.

That's it. You can't beat that for instant.

We stored half in a jar for later and the rest we brought outside immediately to blow bubbles. We used all sorts of things with holes that we had lying around to make bubbles, but the best bubble-makers were the plastic cookie cutters. We have a circle and a heart one that came with the Little Tikes Mud Pie set my Mom got for the boys last year, and it made bubbles as big as their heads! Just watch out you don't pop the bubbles ON your heads or you might get soap in the eye, an incident that occurred at our house which briefly put a damper of tears on our fun. But if it happens to you, a bathroom cup with cold water held up to the eye makes a nice emergency eye rinse. (I had flash backs to high school chemistry.)


*On dish soap. We used Palmolive the first time around because that's what I had (instant, remember.) and it made great bubbles that day and even better bubbles the next, but in a few days it was not so hot. I picked up Joy a couple weeks later because I've read that's the best. I feel like it wasn't as good as Palmolive the first two days but definitely held up better. We just finished it up today, over a week later. So... use what you've got I say. If you find a soap that works awesomely, let me know.

Mud Art

Mud makes good pies. It is also fun to bake into "bricks" by leaving it in the sun. You can also make a sort of drawing canvas, which is what we did yesterday.

What You Need:

a bucket
a shovel
dirt
water


What You Do:

Mix the dirt and water, way more dirt than water. I'm not sure of the measurements because we always sort of add a little dirt, add a little water, but I'd guess 4 or 5 parts dirt to 1 part water, add more water if necessary. It should be sort of like ice cream with a sheen. Shape it onto your driveway or sidewalk into a patty, it will pat smooth nicely and be very easily mold-able, the water will shine on the surface. Then you can draw on the surface with a stick. And the really cool part is that when you are done, you just pat the surface with the back of your shovel- pat, pat, pat- and then it's blank and smooth again.

The Right Consistency, or in Spiff's words "Gucky."

Spiff's art:

Spiff's art erased:

And art again:

Then when you're done you can let it dry and shovel the whole patty into a bucket and start allover again adding water. Or you can play bakery and pretend to eat while your Octopus serves you. It will be delicious.

Snow: A Great Blank Canvas.

It was a whopping 45 degrees here today and sunny- practically spring! Except our yard is covered in feet of snow. So we did the only thing that made sense- we gave our snow a little spring color- and spray-dyed a rainbow. It's a fun and unusual (dare I say funusual?) snow activity and, more important, easy! It's also a great way for kids to learn about mixing colors in a nontraditional way.

Here's what you do:

Get 3 clean and empty spray bottles- old cleaning bottles or plant spray bottles.
Add some water and several drops of food coloring. Red in one, yellow in another, blue in the last.
Go to town on that white canvas- SNOW!!!