Monday - Shapes

MONDAY - SHAPES

Today is SHAPE day.

We enjoyed some cooler weather this morning (from our normal 100+ days here in Texas) so we were outside gardening. My 3yr old loves to be outside looking at all the plants and flowers, and chasing after the butterflies and lizards, so I thought this would be a good theme for our SHAPES project.

So today we are constructing a garden picture.

We are using:

• leaves from the tree as stencils
• paint (washable finger paint)
• foam paintbrushes (one round and one rectangle/angled)
  
• some large floor pad sized paper (Crayola Floor Pad which I bought from WalMart)
• and some pretty craft paper for some butterflies (I found these on Martha Stewart's website - just search for paper butterflies or copy and paste the following - http://www.marthastewart.com/good-things/party-idea-wing-it?autonomy_kw=paper%20butterflies&rsc=header_6)

Outside we pick off a few leaves from our beautiful tree.



We get our page from the floor pad and set up on our table, ready for us to construct and paint our garden picture.


We have our leaves and a couple of butterflies to stick onto our page. We are also using the leaves as stencils - to paint an outline of the leaves on the paper. This is fun to do with some washable finger paint and foam brushes. We are using a small round brush and a rectangular/angled brush.


Arranging our leaves.



Dab the paint around the outside of the leaf. My 3 yr old was more interested in just painting the leaf, which works too! So we did a bit of both. We taped the painted leaves onto the paper at the stems and at the tip of the leaf, so it still had a 3-D effect.




We used two colors - green and orange - nice summer colors!



I recycle my yogurt tubs to use as paint containers - just the right size for little fingers and enough paint. (Actually I keep a lot of "trash" to use - especially formula tins, oatmeal containers, cereal boxes for the cardboard, etc - before you throw something out think if you can use it in a craft project!)

Here's a butterfly. I love these butterflies from Martha Stewart's website. I also cut out heaps of them to decorate for my 3yr old's birthday - they were on the balloons, the flower vase, the window, and even one on her chair. She loved them. They are so easy to make, and so cute!


And here it is - the masterpiece. Our wonderful garden picture with fantastic shapes in it. Whilst we were making our picture we talked about the shapes we were painting - like the leaves, and the circles, and the butterflies. You can move beyond the basic shapes (circle, triangle, etc) and teach your kids there are many different shapes out there to discover!


Love it - now all she wants to do is show her beautiful picture to her Daddy! Have fun!