Colored Fans

Materials:

Plain white Paper (hard paper like cardstock will work best, but construction paper or even computer paper will work)
Markers, caryons, or colored pencils.

This is a fun QUICK art project to do with your little one. Give your child a piece of paper and let her/him decorate it in any way desired (you could even add glitter or stickers). Then fold the paper into a fan!

Variation: fold the fan first and have your child color each panel a different color.

Colorful Chameleons

To introduce this activity, read several books about colors with your child. Talk about colors and where you see them. It is also fun to read some non fiction books. We checked one out at our library about chameleons and my toddler was fascinated by it.

Then cut out several small squares from different colors of construction paper. Find a picture of a clip art image of a chameleon online, print it out, and allow the child to glue the colorful squares onto the image wherever they like.

Volcanoes

Supplies:

small container - I used a baby food jar

something to make the outside of the volcano. I used play dough, but you could make one out of paper mache, or make a dough from flour, water,and oil.

vinegar

baking soda

dish soap

food coloring

Instructions:

Make the volcano by building the dough around the container. Pour in some vinegar, a squirt of dish soap, and the food coloring. Take this outside or put it on a cookie sheet so it doesn't make a huge mess. Let your child pour the baking soda in and see the chemical reaction. Kids love this!

Egg Carton Butterfly

Materials Needed:

1 Dozen Egg Carton
Paints (tempura or finger paints will work best)
Large Paint Brush
Different Colored Construction Paper
Pipe Cleaners (optional)
Glue
Scissors


Directions:

Let your child choose what color he/she wants the body of the butterfly to be. Then pour out the paint into a shallow bowl. Add water to make it a bit runny. Turn the egg carton over and have your little one paint the egg carton with a large paint brush (we used a sponge brush - it was perfect). Let egg carton dry.

While egg carton dries fashion wings out of construction paper. Be creative - make them any way you like! Using Elmer's glue carefully attach the wings to the body - it will need quite a bit of time to dry.

Lastly - cut a pipe cleaner in half and attach the two halves to the front of the egg carton to create feelers. We didn't have any pipe cleaner on hand so we made feelers out of construction paper and glued them on with a dab of hot glue.


That's it! So fun.

Homemade Bath Paints

So I'm too cheap to go buy bath paints from the store that will last for about 3 times and then they're gone. So I decided to google it and I found this idea here.

Materials needed:

--1 Can of Shaving Cream(I got the cheapest kind at Walmart for around $1.50)

--Bowls & spoons

--Food coloring

Express some shaving cream into bowls. I used plastic containers so they weren't breakable.

Put in a few drops of food coloring and mix. The more food coloring the darker the colors. I had to use at least 6 drops for each color.

Put your child in the bath tub and let him/her go to town creating beautiful paintings!!

My son LOVED this!! And no matter how closely I was watching him he was able to sneak a "bite" of the shaving cream. SICK!! 

Blown Eggs

This is a great Easter activity (sorry for the late post about it), but it could be fun really anytime you are ready for a fun art project.

Materials:
Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polocco (optional)
eggs (as many as you want)
small knife or other sharp implement
decorating supplies (such as stickers, markers, paints, glitter glue, etc...)
string or pipe cleaner

Directions:

Read Rachenka's Eggs by Patricia Polocco to start out.

Take an egg and hold it firmly between your fingers. Use a sharp knife to puncture a tiny hole in the top of the egg. Turn the egg over and make a small hole in the bottom. Blow the contents of the egg into a bowl and you can cook these up like scrambled eggs or use them for a recipe. Repeat with as many eggs as you want.

When you've blow all the egg out of the shells take the eggs to the sink and rinse them out thoroughly. Leave them on a paper towel to dry/drain.

Have your little one carefully decorate the eggs any way he/she wants. My little girl liked painting her eggs the best. But she also had fun with stickers and makers and glitter glue. With the eggs that are decorated with markers and glitter you'll need to hang them up to dry. So poke a piece of pipe cleaner into the egg's hole and hang them up. You can also do this with string.

That's it! SOOOOO fun.

Variations: you can glue google eyes onto your egg and then decorate a face with markers. You can add strings or ribbons to make hair and call it an "egg baby."

Furry Friends

For some reason spring makes me think of baby animals, so I had to do a baby animal craft with my toddler.

To make one yourself all you need is a glue stick, some cotton balls and a clip art image of an animal of your choice. My 2 year old chose the image of the bunny we used all by herself :), but some other ideas could be a sheep or lamb, baby chick, etc.



Then you just glue cotton balls on the image wherever you want to make it fuzzy. You can even get out some crayons or markers after and color away. Super easy and fun!