Chalking on Rocks

We've been away for Spring Break and did quite a bit of chalking thanks to my sister who had an ample supply of it at her house.  We exhausted "chalking" on the driveway and sidewalks, so we decided to create some art on the rocks in her garden.  C thought this was a great idea and I just wanted to share this fun activity that you may want to try. The great thing is that the chalk will wash away as compared to painting on rocks.

HAPPY CHALKING!

Glittery Magnolia Pods

When were on Thanksgiving Break in the South of the US we gathered some magnolia pods as we always do to add to our continuous nature collection. They are vey similar to Pine Cones, but have a large stem on them.  I've seen many others put glitter on pine cones,  so I thought why not put some glitz on Magnolia Pods and dress them up for the holidays? So that is what we did.

Here are the Magnolia Pods before glitter.

Paint some glue on the pods.

Then either sprinkle and shake the glitter on the pods...

Or place them in a small box and roll them around in the glitter for less mess.

You could fashion some ribbon onto your pods or pine cones.

Hang them as ornaments or garland.

Or just lay them out or place them in a decorative bowl for the holidays or anytime.

Happy Glittering!

Photography: ABC Scavenger Hunt

This such a fun activity that I've done with my daughter and my High School Art Students. The assignment is to search for letters in the environment and take pictures of them. This project forces you to be a better observer and to get close when taking pictures, which are great skills to teach a beginning photographer. To make it simple, start with finding letters of your name and maybe move on to the whole alphabet.  Here are some of our letters.

You can also do this project without a camera.  It makes a walk around the neighborhood more fun and interesting!  It also is educational for little ones in reinforcing their alphabet recognition!

Check out more fun that we've had with photography in these posts: 

Photography From A Preschooler

Scratch Through Photos

Making Art On The Scanner

More Photography Posts will be coming your way in future posts so stay tuned!

More Printed Tape Creations

Over the summer we purchased some amazing printed and colored tape from Target. You can read my post about it here: Printed Tape Creations . We had a lot of fun with it then and just recently C and her buddies had even MORE FUN with this tape.  Keep reading to find out all the creations that were made.

Here are C and her buddies hard at work with all the printed and colored tape.

One of the creations up close.

Wrapped tape creations with sticks.

Another creation with stick, colored tape, yarn, and a hosta leaf.

A magic wand made with tape and a stick.

They went a little crazy and started decorating my whole porch. (without me knowing!) I should of took more pictures, but I had them take it down because I didn't want the tape to remove the paint from our house. (yikes!)

A tape ball created with all the tape leftover from the porch decorations.

They had a great time and I can't wait to see all the future creations that they come up with!

Painting Shells With Watercolors

What a great little project this was. I just started painting our shells with watercolors from our beach vacation and C joined right in. Many times it has to be "her idea" to make something so I was thrilled she painted alongside me.  She even wanted to paint more later.

Painting in progress...

Some painted shells...even the paper underneath is a work of art!

What have you done with sea shells from beach vacations?

Land Art on the Beach

Last week we just got back from our Ocean Beach Vacation and we missed it so much that we decided to go to our Local Lake Beach for some fun before school starts next week.  It is a little more than an hour away but worth the drive.  It was a gorgeous day... beautiful blue skies, warm water, and a nice breeze. We may be back for another day or two.  While we were there we swam, collected rocks/sea glass (not many shells), flew a kite, and created some awesome Beach Land Art.  There was an abundance of rocks and seagull feathers so that became our medium of choice.  Check out some of our fabulous work and please be inspired!

Flying a Kite!

Beginnings of our Mandala Rock Sun.

C adding feathers.

My face with feather hair.

C's HUGE feather mandala.

Finished!

Good Bye Lake Beach for now we had fun...

Have you created Art on the beach?

Art comes so naturally on the beach...sand castles, land art....

Sorting Sea Shells

We just got back from our beach vacation and we collected bunches of shells.  They are such treasures and I loved collecting them as much as my daughter.  We've looked at our shells over and over. Then we decided to sort them and it was fun to invent all the different categories.  It was a great learning experience too.

Here are our categories:

Spiral Shells.

Black Long Shells. (Mussels)

Clam Shells 

Oyster type shells and a few scallops.

Scallop Shells.

Pieces of shells that were worn down.

Slipper shells.

Tiny Scallop and Clam shells (below the big one).

Lastly, 

An invented creature by C made of crab parts and pieces of shells.

I'm sure we'll doing more with sea shells. 

What fun things have you done with sea shells?

Creating Bubble Snakes

This is an activity that has occupied my daughter on and off for the past month.  It is so simple with minimal supplies and so FUN! We were inspired by the post from Come Together Kids: Bubble Snake Maker. (BTW a Fantastic blog for kid fun!)

To create bubble snakes you need:

a plastic water bottle cut off on the bottom

a rubber band

a sock

dish soap 

a little water

Place the sock over the opening of the bottom of the bottle and use a rubber band to fasten it on.

Dip the the sock end into soapy water.  Use more soap than water and start experimenting.  At first it wasn't working, but once the sock had the right amount of soap it seems to work very easily. SO don't give up.....it will work!  As you can see a long bubble snake was formed.

And more.....

And more....

Bubbles are always so much fun.  I think whenever an activity involves bubbles,  it is always a HIT!

More Bubble Fun: Bubble Printing Fun