Summer Fun Update: Arts and Crafts!

Last Friday, I shared some of the excursions the girls and I have enjoyed these past few months as a result of my "summer fun pre-planning" efforts.  In my journal, I also made a list of some arts and crafts activities that I wanted to be sure to try with the girls, inspired by the lists I found on Tammy's blog, Daisy Yellow.

This is obviously a subject close to my heart! 

Besides the usual stand-by activities of drawing, coloring, and Play-Doh, the girls also frequently asked to "play beads."

Bayla spent most of her time making up dialogues between her animal-shaped beads, and rarely strung more than two or three beads on a lace. 

Katy, on the other hand, took her job of making necklaces and bracelets very seriously, and ended up making gifts for all of the grandparents, her Daddy for his birthday, our church's Children's Director when she left for seminary, and our summer babysitter when she returned to college.

(Here is Katy displaying several of her gift necklaces around her neck!)

I found a paddle fan crafting idea on Maya Made, and thought it would be fun early in the summer as the temperatures were first turning warm. 

{Bayla made a fan, but was ultimately much more interested

in lining up all the colorful markers!}

Because I was still a little nervous about letting the girls loose with paints, we used markers to decorate our fans.  (Note to self:  Marker is probably MUCH more difficult to wash off of your children than paint!)

The girls lost interest in their fans by the next day, but they had fun while they made them!

A craft close to my heart is rubber stamping, but it's another one that covers the girls head-to-toe in colors that don't come off for a couple of days.

{See that face?  That's a happy, messy kid!}

Now, here's a tidy craft:  Crayola has these Color Wonder markers that only make color on special Color Wonder paper.  Obviously, it's a racket because you have to pay an arm-and-a-leg for the special paper, but it's priceless for those moments when you need the peace of mind that craft time won't end with you cleaning for an hour!

And, because craft time with toddlers usually ends up being all about messing with the supplies, this one has the added benefit of being able to play with all those marker lids:

I have been intrigued by tales of coffee filter suncatchers since the first time I read about them, so they were on my list of summertime "must dos."

The reality was less-than-spectacular.  I used food coloring in water, and virtually no color transferred to the coffee filters.  But the girls loved dunking the paper, and Katy especially enjoyed mixing the colored water afterward, and playing "chemist" with it in different cups and bottles.

One of the crafts I thought was a pretty great success was the tissue paper suncatchers.  (The Artful Parent blog where I read about this has apparently been deleted from the Internet!)  I just taped a piece of clear contact paper to the table, sticky side up, and gave the girls a big stack of cut-up tissue paper in different colors to put on the paper. 

When you turn the contact paper over, there is a very pretty kid-version of a stained glass window!  The girls made several of these that are hanging on the fridge.

I already wrote a blog post about experiences with painting for the first time.  If you want to relive the excitement (and my moderate anxiety over the mess), you can find it here in my Creative Neuroses post.

In looking at my photos of our activities this summer, I discovered enough pictures of cooking activities to warrant a whole post on that topic alone.  So you can look forward to a "Summer Fun Update:  Cooking!" coming soon!