Painting with Crayons & Water Colors

Posted in activities for kids by Rosemary Lynn

This was one of those super-simple craft projects that’s nearly free. You may already have all of the supplies on hand, but this changes things up from a normal painting or coloring project because it mixes the mediums.

It’s also a lot of fun.

What we did was create a drawing with crayons, and then color it in with watercolor paints. We did some regular pictures (butterflies and flowers) and some that were patterns of lines and shapes.

And don’t mind the ancient crayon box full of mixed crayon types…. this is a “rediscovered” conglomerate of art supplies from my own youth. We use what we can here… it’s part of what makes this craft free, or nearly-free (the water colors are new). We keep a craft drawer of leftover supplies from other projects, too, and sometimes we have a free-for-all craft with whatever we can find.

The kids love it.

We discovered that the crayon looks much better if you draw thicker lines to help it stand out against the paint. It also creates a neat, smooth texture.

And we experimented with the paint as well.

My older daughter tried painting with her fingers, instead of the brush, and she also would tilt the paper in different directions to see what happened when the excess paint dripped across her picture.

My youngest daughter tried different things, like using multiple paintbrushes at one time. This project gave them both the freedom to be creative in their own ways.

This project was cheap (free if you already have the crayons, paint, and paper) and easy to set up. It gave them a creative outlet, and it kept them busy for a long time. It had a lot of benefits on top of the fun-factor.

Plus, I had some beautiful fridge-worthy artwork at the end of it.

Here are a few of the finished products, including one of mine:

Happy Crafting!

11Mar2016

Candy Corn Counting Math Worksheets {Free Printables}

Posted in activities for kids, free worksheets & printables, holidays by Rosemary Lynn

Sooo… Easter’s kind of around the corner and I’m over here like, gee… I haven’t posted any of my Halloween stuff yet…

Well, better late than never, right?

Hopefully you agree. :)

For last Halloween, I made these to help my kids practice counting. My girls are in preschool and kindergarten, and these worksheets have a variety of activities for them, including counting the shapes, matching the candy to the shapes, figuring out which is biggest and smallest group, and tracing the numbers both as figures and as words.

For the Candy Corn Counting worksheet we used regular candy corn. For the Pumpkin Patch Counting worksheet, we used the pumpkins out of a bag of mixed mallowcremes, but you could also get a bag of just the pumpkins, or even something like these jelly pumpkins.

If you’re trying to avoid giving your kids any extra candy, you could pick up some Halloween erasers instead, which you can usually find at a dollar store if it’s actually, you know, around Halloween. Or you could pick up some on Amazon instead. The erasers are also good because you can keep using them for other math activities afterwards.

Or, you could avoid both the candy and the toys altogether and just color in the shapes. No toys to lose and nothing to eat.

Even though the eating was, you know, my kids’ favorite part.

Here are the free printable worksheets – just click the names to download the PDF:

Candy Corn Counting

Pumpkin Patch Counting

Enjoy!

15Feb2014

The Incredible Book Eating Boy {Book Review}

Posted in books & book reviews by Rosemary Lynn

We loved this book.

I loved the illustrations and the words and the story, and my daughters seemed to love all of it.

As soon as our first reading of it ended, my 3-year-old said, “Can we read it again?”

That’s always a good sign.

So, The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers instantly made our list of favorites.

It’s a fun and slightly absurd story of a young boy named Henry who accidentally discovers that he likes to eat books. All kinds of books. And the more he eats, the smarter he gets. Until he eats too many, and things begin to get a bit jumbled and confused. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea to eat books anymore.

This makes Henry sad, until he realizes that – rather than eating them – he could read them instead! And he finds that he enjoys reading them even more than he enjoyed eating them. Although, when you read it yourself you’ll see that sometimes, quite by accident, Henry still takes a bite or two … as evidenced by the big chomp taken out of the back cover.

The gorgeous illustrations are so much fun. I find them to be delightful, as do my children, who scour the pages as I read. It’s definitely a book to be read by adults or older children, though, as it may be a bit too busy for emerging readers. But that’s the trade-off for the charm.

It’s recommended for kids 4 and up, but my 3-year-old loves it and my 20-month-old enjoys it as well. They are both engaged during the story. It spurs conversations and questions with my preschooler and my toddler likes to point out different objects, like the red books that Henry favors.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers