Winter Themed Painting

Little O loved painting snowmen so much the other day that she asked to paint immediately after breakfast this morning. I didn't want to do the exact same painting that we did before because I want to keep it fresh and new for her. Plus, if we do different things with paint, it will keep her occupied for longer.

This time we used blue construction paper and white and blue tempera paint. I didn't water it down at all because I wanted the paint to be opaque.

 While we painted, we talked about winter, snow, and snowmen. I reminded her of the snowmen we painted and the ones we made out of playdough.

 I painted a snowman next to her, and I told her that I made the body using circles. She said he needed eyes (one of her newest words is "eyes"), so I painted on eyes, a nose, and a mouth with blue paint. I added buttons and arms too.

 

Finally, I wanted her to try a different technique with her paintbrush. She spent most of her time brushing on the paint in smooth strokes. I told her I wanted my picture to look like it was snowing. So I started dotting paint on the background. She started doing the same ( her dots are large in the upper left corner). She decided to liked to brush the paint on better, so she went back to that. Hey, at least she tried it, right?

This was a quick, fun painting activity. Little O seemed to really enjoy it. I'm sure we will be busting out the paints again soon. I think this may be the first time we've painted together on colored paper.

Painting Over Crayons & Markers

Little O is still feeling a bit under the weather, so I've been scrambling to come up with ideas to keep her quietly engaged. We've already explored playdough, although I think I'll pull that out again later this week as she really enjoyed it. Yesterday I thought a simple coloring activity would be a good thing to try during the witching hour (you know... after nap but before dinner time).

We started with simple printable snowman that I found on Pinterest. I added the letter S and the word Snowman on the page. She wanted to use both crayons and markers. She had Daddy add the eyes to hers. Normally, we don't draw on her paper because we want her to feel empowered to create her own work. However, eyes is one of her newest words, so when she said it, of course we indulged her.

She finished with the crayons and markers rather quickly (I didn't even get any pictures of this portion), but she wasn't quite ready to be done with crafting. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to reintroduce paint to Little O. I couldn't wait to see what she thought of the reactions the crayons and markers had with the paint. We used blue and green tempera paint that I watered down quite a bit. I wanted the crayon and marker to still show.

The crayons created a crayon resist (I'm not sure she really noticed), but the markers started to bleed and smear because they are washable. She definitely noticed this.

After she finished painting her picture, she painted Mommy's and Daddy's as well. She enjoyed painting so much that she asked to do it again today right after breakfast. I'll share the Winter Themed Painting tomorrow.

Winter Playdough Fun

Yesterday, Little O woke up with the beginnings of a cold. Ugh. Pete and I decided we better play it safe and stay home so we didn't spread it to all our friends. We needed something to do that would keep Little O quiet and happy. Playdough, of course!!


I whipped up a batch of our favorite no-cook playdough. I decided to keep it white this time since we're playing with all things winter right now (winter sensory bin, snow man counting, snowflake sorting, etc.). So with our white playdough, we decided to make snowmen. I had a whole bunch of accessories to decorate our snowmen up in my craft room. Buttons, sequins, fabric strips, pipe cleaners, beads, jingle bells, googly eyes, and mini bows. I brought them down and introduced them to Little O.

I made a traditional snowman (with a bow because I wanted her to be a girl), Pete made a snowmonster.

Little O made her own version. She used googly eyes at first, but switched them out for buttons later. She also used some brown pipe cleaners and skewered her snowman. They sort of look like arms!

 After a while, we started talking about all the animals that live in the snow. Little O is obsessed with anything animal lately (well, always, really). So I made a polar bear. She said and signed bear. And Pete made a penguin.

We had so much fun as a family with this activity. I've kept all the accessories downstairs so we can create more snow animals with white playdough this week. I'm also thinking we should make pretend sugar cookies and decorate them with sequins and glitter. Check out some of our other winter-themed activities here.