Exploring Different Surface for Painting

The start of the year is always a time for reflection and I've been holding on to the activities I have planned for them and thinking what is my directions for them and also letting them adjust to their new school. After putting in a lot of thought, our focus for 2012 for them is still providing lots of outdoor play, open ended art and lastly and most importantly, Chinese!! More on Chinese learning on later posts but let's see what we have here today.

My boys love painting. I found them a school that does a lot of painting but they don't seem to have enough in school. They still ask to paint when they come home. There are times when I'm totally lazy to clean up and was even guilty of dissuading them! But most of the time, I try to oblige and will try to add some twist to their regular painting sessions to keep the interest going.

I provided them different surface to paint and also different materials for them to paint with.  The most interesting material for them today was the craft beads and they enjoyed adding them to their masterpieces.

 

K's work with a splash of red and craft beads.

Y, getting his hands ready for a hand print.

They started painting on the white paper only and didn't touch the plastic and styrofoam at all. It took a bit of encouragement to get them to paint on other surface. Hmm.... I should provide them with more variety of painting surface. Once they get used to the idea that they can paint on other surface other than paper, they were happily exploring around and Y did a nice piece of work on his styrofoam board. I hung Y's styrofoam board and K's paper pieces on our "wall of fame" but Y insist that his brother's styrofoam art should be hung too. So, there they are.

$2 fun - Slime Sensory Play

What can you get with $2?

- a tub of slime

Which will in turn give you

- a peaceful dinner
- priceless laughter from your kids

Painting with Homemade Paint

After the last messy painting session, a friend gave me a splendid idea of making my own paint. I have never thought of making my own paint. It sounds like a crazy idea for a twin mom. My hands and legs (literally) are kept busy countering their fights and meltdowns, “Where got time?” (in Singlish) But since I’m not willing to part with more money paint for another painting session, I kept that in mind but I didn’t expect to do it so soon.

Y crept up to my computer sneakily on this day and saw the pictures of the messy painting after I finished blogging. K was rummaging the shopping bag and dug out the squeeze bottles that I bought. They were a steal at S$0.40 each at Japan Home and I swept the whole shelf. Then they started harassing me to let them paint.

Of course I’m not willing to take out my brand new bottles of Crayola paint so I told them we are going to make our own. It’s so easy that I managed to whip something out when I have no idea at all how to start. I simply put some corn flour and water in a pot and put to boil on the stove. While waiting for the starch to cool, I got out my box of water color tubes and let them choose their own colors to put into the squeeze bottles. After that, pour the starch in and shake. Tata!

Ok, I know this sounds like crap tutorial but since it was so impromptu, I didn’t know how much flour and water I used and with sticky hands, it was not possible to take pictures while doing it and making sure that my 2 toddlers won’t fight themselves to death or run round the house with the corn starch. I will do this again and next time, I’m gonna share with you a better tutorial.
Here’s Paint in Progress.

Y was making tracks with the paint.

K kept shouting "My car is stuck in the mud!!" while painting.

More Sand Play

What do you do on an afternoon when your twins are harassing you to bring them to the beach when it’s mission impossible for you?

Lay a disposable plastic sheet on the balcony floor, get 2 trays, pour a cup of sand into each tray, bring out their Bob the Builder construction toys and you can have some peace for the next 30 mins.

Sand and Water Play at Home

I loved the Sand and Water table by ELC but since we lived in a flat, that is out of the question. When I saw that they are selling the sand and water table accessories at 20% off, I couldn’t resist and got it home. Hmm… just playing with water don’t seem fun enough, so I thought I’ll make my own sand and water table alternative.

I hesitated to do this as I have no domestic maid to help me clean up now! But how can I deprive my kids of some sand and water fun? So, the very noble side of me went ahead and was scolding myself how silly I was when I spent an hour washing up and cleaning up the sand. But the boys had a really good time. I’m sure I swore I’ll never do this again while cleaning, I think I might take back my words now that I recalled how happy they were. Mummies have bad memory, that's why people have 2nd birth. But I need to think of better cleaning strategy before attempting again.

What You Need:
2 pails/container (1 for water and 1 for sand)
Masking tape to tape the toy to the pails/containers
Plastic sheet for the floor
Sand
Water

Top view. I didn't have too much sand and water but had to add more as they got frustrated as they got little.

Caged boys. I locked them in during the preparations and they were really excited to see what I was setting up. They dashed out when I opened the gate! 

K was so thrilled to see the water and sand flowing down, spinning the wheel.

Happily playing with my sand and water table alternative.

This is really fun but a word of caution. This is not for the faint heart! hah...

Theme of the Week: Egg

We are doing an Egg theme this week.

Here's our lesson plan for Day 1:

Books: Chickens by Loriji Metz (Non-Ficion)

Songs (Chinese): 荷包蛋儿歌 (Video Link here) & 我的公鸡不见了儿歌 (MP3 Download Link)

Activities:

• Coloring

Color Rooster, Egg and Chick (Download Coloring Page here)

• Mystery Box – Egg

Let the children explore the egg.

Break the egg into a bowl and introduce egg white and egg yolk.

Let them crush the egg shells

We did coloring. As you can see from this picture, kids are never quite cooperative.

But I'm still happy that Y cooperated.

And K too eventually.

K asked for a blank paper after he finished his coloring and started scribbling. He kept shouting "I" and I wondered why. Upon one look, I was surprised to see that he was actually trying to write the letter "I"!! And they do look like "I"! Y was impressed, he said "Didi draw I so nice!" What a sweet brother.:)

They explored the egg shells by destroying them.

And the egg, playing with it like Goop!

Transfering Water

We have not been doing many new activities since they started school. We used to do activities in the morning and outdoor activities in the afternoon. I'm still trying find suitable times to do our learning activities. The real reason behind the lack of new activities is really because I'm totally drained at night with K waking up screaming. So, I have been doing old favorites like Easel Painting, Scooping Beans, Paint Table, etc.  Managed to pulled together a new activity to share with you.

What You Need:
"Dropper"
Container
Food Coloring (optional)

Y squeezing the colored water and transfering to the other container

Left: K, Right: Y

I call the thing "dropper" because I'm not sure what it's called or meant to be used. I saw it at Daiso and thought it's a fun tool to include in our learning activities. I added color to the water so they could see how the water move clearly. 

Sensory Play: Shapes Rice Bin

I was slacking a little with their activities. I have been feeling lethargic and they did mostly worksheets and coloring. But yesterday, Y came running to me and asked for "activity time"! I was pleasantly surprised and of course it gives me great motivation. So, I took out the Green and Red rice we colored the previous week. I had wanted to do a Christmas sensory bin but haven't got to gathering the materials. With this request, I had to whip up something fast, so I poured the rice in the bin and threw in some shapes. I like the colors! They were supposed to scoop the shapes I asked for in their respective bowls. It was a lot of fun and they moved on to explore the bin on their own for a long time.

Y, concentrating on his scooping.

He calls this "Rain"

K, mixing the rice.

It look me a while to gather the bin and the boys waited patiently for me, following me in and out of the room, looking curiously at what I'm doing, shouting "activity time" from time to time. I can never associate the word Patience with a toddler so I can see that they really wanted their "activity time". They even let me take a picture of the bin before they dashed for it. There are many times when I feel like stopping the learning activities I'm doing with them and just switch on the box. But they never fail to stop me.

Coloring Rice

Rice is a regular for our Sensory Play. Hoping to make it more interesting, we colored the rice today. There are lots of tips and recipes on coloring rice online. Here are a few by:

DLTK
E-How
Suite 101

Most of them combine rubbing alcohol or vinegar with food coloring. Again, I'm lazy, I just poured food coloring into a Ziploc bag of rice and get the boys to shake. It's not too bad. But as you can see from the pictures below, the rice is not evenly colored. I used about 1 or 2 tablespoon of food coloring to dye this small bag of rice and I think that's a lot. So, maybe you shouldn't be lazy like me if you are intending to color rice.

Green Colored Rice

Red Colored Rice

Can anyone guess the theme of upcoming Sensory Bin with this Green/Red color combination?

Sensory Play - Goop

I have been looking for Goop recipes that does not requires Borax (I have no idea where to get Borax in Singapore, please let me know if you do) and I was happy to find it over at Be A Fun Mum.

What You Need:
300 gms of cornflour
1 cup water
Food coloring (option)
Tray or containers

All you need is to mix the water and the flour. The preparation only takes a few minutes. I'm not sure if it's due to our humidity here. I think we need less water but I've got to try it out again.

Goop is an amazing substance that even I was intridged by it. It feels like solid when you touch it and when you try to lift it up in your hands, it just melts into liquid. Y&K enjoyed exploring with it very much. And they spent 45 mins at it and was very unwilling to leave. K even burst into tears asking for more Goop when I brought him to the bathroom. I think they can play for hours.

I like how sensory activities catches their attention and keep them occupied for long periods of time. 45 mins is a long time for a toddler to be concentrating playing with something. I like to talk to them during the experience. "What are you doing?", "What is that?", "How does that feel?" and I like it even more now because they can talk to me. K nodded, in smiles when I asked him if this is fun and he repeated "fun". Y told me the goop is like rain when it trickle from his fingers.

Sensory Play - Paint Table

The boys are not into messy play. They don't like to get their hands dirty! But I WANT them to! They refused to do hand painting. So, here's my trick. I lured them to the paint table with cars. Ha!


What You Need:
Small Table
Plastic Sheet (to wrap the table top)
Paint
Car (optional... you only need them as a bait)

They were shaking their heads when asked to go to the paint table but they dashed to the table once the cars were out.

K rolling the car.

Hah! Y finally used his fingers! And he told me he was drawing a train.

And then his hands! K followed suit when he saw Y having fun.

Y: "oh oh... dirty hands"

Misson success! This is a great activity. Cars are a nice addition. It was nice to see the wheels texture on plastic. it's nicer than on paper. And they explored the smooth texture of plastic with paint. They were at the table for 40 mins. K was reluctant to leave the table and I had a hard time coaxing him into giving the fire engine a car wash.

I think a great way to preserve the "painting" is to press a big piece of paper over the plastic. I didn't do that this time but will definitely try it the next time round.