It was so hot over summer that we needed to cover the yard for the children to play and not get burnt. Four of the old bed sheets we use for painting on, some string and voila!
Lots of getting wet
and running around with unbrellas
If your tricycle breaks, just rope it to the back of another one for a two seater ;)
Paddling pool full of mud. Yeah, not a lot else to say about this one.
pirate-rockstar-traffic cop!
more playing in the filth
finding the secret train tracks that I'd drawn with a white crayon using food colouring.
Squishing paint under a layer of celophane
lots of outdoor easle painting
dollar store shower curtain liner on the wall as a giant canvas
painting an old file cabinet shipping box that Paul rescued from work
made into a patriotic secret club house for July 4th.
painting and colouring the pin the tail on the rabbit birthday party game for our friends.
Inspecting the quality of the workmanship for his birthday game
felt drawn on with sharpies and hot glued and stuffed to make...
an easter egg ball.
fairy lights suspended on a clear plastic costco apple container provided the cabin lighting for the giant cardboard rocket ship that we wrote about on the blog back in January.
St Patricks leaf stamping.
The only time that it's ok to lick a battery
light painting with all the ridiculous flashy toys that somehow accumulate.
cheap and easy white board made from white card that we pulled out from between the kitchen paper pallets at Costco and then covered with a roll of clear contact paper. Works really well as a floor mat for our little line tracking robot.
Line tracking robot vehicle following the path around on the fake whiteboard.
Graham cracker gingerbread houses.
European crepe moon with american pancake batter rocket ship.
Interesting honeycomb cardboard brought home by Paul that worked really well to talk about bees and hives and honey and all that with the kids. They tore off the layer of card sealing the honey comb shape and then played putting craft pompoms in with tweezers and smooshing yellow playdough in like honey.
Air duct tubing cut up and closed off safely with gaffer tape to make robot arms and legs.
Pet shop that lasted for about a week with all the soft toy animals.
My favourite part was the huge "amphibian and reptile tank" at the back of the store that somehow frogs, turtles and alligators managed to live in harmony in.
two layers of packing tape with feathers sandwiched inbetween to make Native American head dresses for thanksgiving.
painting rocks red to later decorate as lady bugs and hide around the garden.
covered the table in butchers block paper and drew on all the letters of the alphabet in lower and upper case and then drew many pictures of things beggining in those letters next to them.
head dresses made from pipecleaners and dollar store flowers
remember the paper making post? Well this is the left over pulp with flour added to make paper clay. It was weird stuff.
One thing that was really interesting that it did was that if you rolled out a small cookie sized piece nice and thin, then put it in the microwave then it puffed up and went really hard, making weird little balloons like these.
We decorated them with faces to make strange monsters and people.
drawing on stolen costco cardboard a lot!
Weird request by my girls to have Clifford and Blue drawn as an octopus and as a squid?!?! I think it started because they thought blue was saying "bluesquidoo" not "blue skidoo". Made them happy though.
Shadow puppets
leaf stamping on trees
drawing on tin foil with sharpies
mmm shiney!
building with paper clay and small wooden bricks we found in daiso.
Lots of "helping" by spashing around in the sink with various stuff.
Always room for another tin foil robot.
butterfly fascination
carft foam and take away trays to make robot collages
That we then printed using a roller and some lino ink
straws, a box and some beads to make a counting thingy
platic bugs set in orange jello to make "bugs trapped in amber" for our dinosaur playdate.
crumpled newspaper with a sheet of kitchen paper over it and a green pipecleaner to tie it shut. Painted orange these made cute pumpkins.
Christmas trees made from the moss circles that Pat and Victoria gave us after their wedding. We made several and one really big one with friends, but I didn't have the camera out.
kid's art collage in the livingroom
painting letters cut from styrofoam using my little foam cutter.
Nadolig Llawen means Happy Christmas in Welsh.
Home made blackboard from a thrift store mirror.
making our thanksgiving banner
Our halloween banner drying in the kitchen
all the random recycling in toy storage containers for easy access, so the kids can make whatever they want whenever they want.
more filth
random kid made thing
more random kid made thing
I blogged about the epic playdough adventures like the dino island, the train table, the bakery and the mermaid kingdom, but minor playdough creations occur regularly.
the kids found a branch that had fallen on our side from neighbours pruning, so they "planted a garden" in brown playdough.
Who knew that you could write on playdough with a sharpie?! Neat four year old discovery. Yes, that is playdough squished onto a chair.
"fixing" things with dad.
Also, my three year old is very into her dystopian fiction it seems!?!
