Greening Sam and Avery

Day 76: art and a walk

Feeling much better today. 

Woke up terrified that I had missed my first day of posting because I fell a sleep at 8:00!!  But then saw that my amazing husband had actually done it for me.  Thank you sister and husband for filling in for me!!

I did do an activity with Sam yesterday.

Since the colors are really starting to change around here and we finally have a printer that works I got an idea for what I thought would be a clever activity.  We collected a good leaf of each color (red, yellow, orange and green).  Then I found good leaf coloring pages and printed some out.  We got out crayons, markers and paints in each of the four colors.  And I told Sam we were going to try and color/paint the paper leaves to match the real ones.

She started out very interested in this activity.  And was doing a great job of making leaves for each color. But then she remembered the activity from a few days before and things took a different turn.  She painted the leaves.  Okay, fine. 

But once she had painted all the print-outs (even with just one swipe of paint!) the activity was over.  It lasted all of about 10 minutes. 

So that was yesterday.

Today I needed to get out of the house with the girls.  We went to Governor Nelson State Park, which we have gone to before but we started out in a new spot.  Ready with the stroller, water, toys for Avery, snacks and pacifier I was set for a good long hike.  Sam was not.  I had to bribe her just to leave the observation platform.

Once we started walking she was okay for a few minutes. 

We looked at LOTS of flowers.

And found holes in the ground.

But just a few short steps longer and she melted down again. (you can still see the observation platform in the background!)

This ended our hike.  Awesome.  It took twice as long to drive there as it did to have our hike! 

Over tired won out and we went home.  

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The Nitty Gritty!

I learned that coloring activities that deal with coloring pages last only as long as the number of pages that you have!  Print more than you think you will need if you want the activity to last.

I learned that markers don't work very well after they have been dipped in paint.

I learned that when children have been given lots of random things to paint with before why wouldn't they think a crayon or marker is a reasonable tool to paint with.

I learned that an already over-tired child does not need a long hike just to take a good nap. 

I learned that a hike is not fun with a tantrum throwing over-tired child, no matter how badly the parents wants to hike!

Learning is always good.  Just wish I could sometimes anticipate the lessons before they happen!

What have you learned recently from your children?

Day 65: leaf walk

In order to finish my milk jug that I started, decorated with the leaves from two day 63 I needed more leaves.  So today Sam and I went hunting for good leaves.  We grabbed a bag, put Avery in a stroller, the camera and the dog and headed out. 

It turned out to be the LONGEST walk around the block EVER!  Not because we were finding so many amazing leaves, our leaves are just barely starting to turn colors so there really isn't much change to look at yet, but because Sam could not decide which she wanted to do more, pick up leaves or push Avery in the stroller. 
She wanted to push the stroller but she couldn't do that and carry the bag.  So every time she would find a leaf that she liked she would have to stop pushing, pick it up, show it to me and get excited (of course) and then put it in the bag that I was carrying.  This happened at least once per house. 

Plus we had to stop every time she saw an ant!

But we had a great time and did see a few spots of amazing color.

Sam is confused by the leaves falling to the ground and about the color changes but she thinks it is very neat when she spots a yellow or red leaf.  I can't wait till the colors really start changing! 

We got a bunch of leaves home and got them in the plant press.  In a few days I will be able to add more to my milk jug pot!  Very exciting!!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I am always looking for more children's books.  If anyone has any suggestions for good ones about Fall, leaves changing colors or the seasons I would love to get some new ideas. 

Heading to Michaels in the morning because I have an idea for something fun to do with fake leaves so I am hoping they will come through for me with some cheap but realistic looking fake leaves!!

Day 24: hands-on-feet-in

So if there is one thing that I have learned over that last 3 weeks plus of doing this with Sam and Avery it is to be flexible and today was no different. 

We started out thinking we were going to do a great color walk at Governor Nelson's State Park using our color wheel.  But when you arrive at the park to discover that the two year old DOES NOT HAVE SHOES plans have to be adjusted a little bit!  HA! 

We still worked with the color wheel a bit, 

but the focus of the walk became much more about what she could feel with her feet. 

 

And it is always fun when you can find a little friend!
 

And Avery got in on the action. 

The lack of shoes ended up being a great thing.  Sam had a lot of fun in all the puddles from our huge storm last night and got to put her feet in Lake Mendota for the first time. 

Love feet-in kind of days!  Have you had a feet-in day lately?

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The Nitty Gritty!

The color wheel is something that I have listed in the "Tools" page on the sidebar.  It is super simple to make.  Just grab some paint sample cards from your local hardware store, punch a hole in each one and then string them on a binder ring or ribbon.  These can be very handy and a great way to turn a casual walk into a purposeful walk. Much like the sticker/color hunt from a few days ago this activity is a way to turn a scavenger hunt into a simple task that even little ones can do. 

Day 23: natural paint

I hate when I cannot repeat something that I have seen done. I hate when I see a great idea, that someone else does and makes look SO easy and then I cannot recreate it.  

Back in June I worked the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Energy Fair.  I was the coordinator for the children's workshops at the Energy Fair.  Three days of musical presentations, energy related presentations, arts and crafts and games.  One of those presentations was done by Ramy Selim of Sunny Day Earth Solutions (an amazing resource for sustainable products and technologies, you should go check it out!).  He did a natural paint presentation for me where the kids got to make non-toxic paint and then do some painting.  It was a great workshop, the paint was super simple and the kids had a ton of fun with it. I just loved the idea of being able to make paint out of ingredients that I already had in my kitchen! I knew I needed to recreate this.  Ramy was giving out the recipe (which I have included in the Nitty Gritty) so I grabbed one. 

I thought this was a perfect week to try and make natural paint.  During the workshop Ramy used koolaid to make the different colors but I have done some dying using natural items before so I thought I could give that a try.  It was a huge FAILURE on so many levels. 

First of all, I couldn't remember the exact consistency that Ramy had and ours kept being so runny that it just looked like water or so think that it was like painting with watery playdough! 

Second, I didn't have enough of any of the materials that I was using to do the dying (slightly rotten basil to make green, dandelions to make yellow, blueberries to make blue, raspberries to make pink and tea to make brown) to make the colors be dark enough.  The raspberries did make a nice pink color but I had to use the whole berries which meant that there were seeds and bits of fruit in the paint! 

Third, the process of boiling things down to make the dye and mixing the paint was so messy that Sam couldn't really help me with any of the prep work.  She collected the dandelions and helped stir in the dye but that was the end of her involvement.  

We did end up taking some of the paint and mixing in blue food coloring which did a great job of dying the paint but the consistency was still slightly off.  This also meant that our fingers were blue after we tried to paint with it! 

Natural paint is a great idea and if it would have worked out it would have been so cheap!  I am not going to give up on this.  I may try to find other recipes (if anyone has a good one PLEASE share!) or attempt this one again with other dyes. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

Non-Toxic Paint

4 cups cold water, 1 cup boiling water, 3 cups unbleached flour, colored clay or natural colorant

Mix 2 cups flour and 2 cups water in a bowl. Add 1 cup boiling water to the bowl and mix. Add 1 cup cold water and mix.  Add 1 cup flour and 1 cup white clay and mix.  Add more water to desired consistency.  Add colored clay (or natural colorant) to desired color.  Add more water, if needed.  Consistency should be like a thick milkshake. 

I am determined to make this work and would love any advice on making natural paint that anyone has!  Leave me some comment love so I can try this again and not feel like such a failure.

Day 22: colorful snakes

I got the "Fun with Nature; Take-Along Guide" from the library on our last visit.  One activity really caught my attention when I saw it.  Making a snake out of dried beans!  We use beans for art work all the time; Sam loves gluing them on things so we have tons in the house.

We started by looking at all the pictures of snakes that they have in the book and talking about all the different stripes, spots, patterns and colors.  Then I started working on creating our snakes.  This part took FOREVER!  The author suggests using poster board, which we didn't have, and I thought regular paper would be too flimsy to really hold the beans so I had to use cardboard.  This meant I needed an exacto-knife to cut out our snakes.  Sam read books while I cut out three snakes.  I actually drew the snakes on the card board first which turned out to be totally pointless because I couldn't keep the knife on the line anyway!  (If you really like this idea just go buy some poster board!)

Once I got the snakes all cut out I got all the beans together and our glue. 
We used black beans, navy beans (which are the white one!), yellow and green split peas and kidney beans.  I poured glue into a plastic bowl and used paint brushes to apply the glue.  The author says to do the gluing with your fingers but I just knew that was more mess than I was up for!

I gave Sam one snake and she got started. 
About three minutes later...she was done! 
Not sure why she didn't last longer but apparently today was not a bean-gluing kind of day!  Unless however you are a 28 year old that is apparently in need of some art therapy.  Check out my snake!  

I really enjoyed this activity! 

While I sat working on my snake Sam played with the beans; moving them from one spot to another in the muffin tin, counting them and dropping them on the table.  She was content and happy just not really engaged by the activity. 

She also didn't get the idea that there were colors in the snakes.  When I asked her what color she was going to make her snake she said "Color mommy? Where?".  We may need to work a bit more on finding color in animals as this still seems to be a bit of a challenge for her. 

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The Nitty Gritty!

A bit more about the "Fun With Nature; Take-Along Guide" by a whole bunch of people!

I have seen these books before but never the complete "Take-Along Guide" so I wanted to see what it was all about.  As an identification book for kids this one is not so great.  I don't think the pictures are clear enough or simple enough for kids to really be able to use them in comparison with a live animal for identification purposes.  However, the information is simple, fun to read and well organized. The "Take-Along Guide" is big, heavy and hard-back so I am not sure that I would ever really be taking it along with me anywhere.  But there are some fun activities in there; several more that I am anxious to test out. 

Day 21: walk with a purpose

Going for walks is something that I do with my girls daily.  DAILY!  Most of the time we just walk around the neighborhood, head to a park or ride bikes.  But today I tried to add a different element to our walk. 

I made this last night. 

It is just a piece of white paper with clips holding it to a piece of card board.  I took a black marker and drew the lines to make squares then colored a small square of a different color in each box.  The green square use to be pink (which is why it looks weird) but then I found these stickers and there wasn't a pink sticker!  I got the colored stickers from the dollar section from Target!  LOVE THE DOLLAR SECTION! 

So the point is to go for a walk carrying the paper and stickers (you don't have to have stickers that match the color, they could be just plain star stickers or even just whatever stickers you have lying around).  As you walk look for things that match each color and place a sticker in the box for each thing that matches.  Sam loves anything to do with stickers so I knew she would be all over this. 
She liked looking for the colors but was a bit confused about where to put the stickers.  It took many practices for her to get what she was doing.  

The most amusing part was that Sam needed to sit down to put the stickers on and it didn't seem to matter where she was or who's yard she was in, she just sat down and put on her stickers! 

This was a really great activity but at two years old it took A LOT of guidance.  I had to be constantly asking her what color things were, where she should put the stickers, correcting color mistakes that she made, etc.  With the heat and Avery being very crabby we didn't last as long as I had hoped.

Great activity though. Definitely one you should try!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I got this activity from .  The author suggested making tally marks to count the number of times a color was found.  I knew that Sam wouldn't understand tally marks, she barely understands counting, so I came up with the sticker idea to simplify the concept. 

The neat thing about this idea is that you could adjust it to so many different things.  It is basically a scavenger hunt tailored to have a hands-on component that even a two year old can do.  You could do a similar thing with pictures of things for them to find (birds, trees, animals, flowers, insects, etc.) and then just use the stickers to mark how many of each item they find.  I have something kind of like this in my Scavenger Hunt page on the sidebar, complete with "clipart" type pictures that you can download and print off.   

Day 20: Field trip - Olbrich Botanical Garden

I love Botanical Gardens!  Growing up in St. Louis, MO my mom and dad would frequently take us to the inner city botanical garden.  When I was older they became members there and we would go to special exhibits, concerts and dinners.  I love everything about these places.  The manicured gardens.  The perfect flowers.  The little signs that tell you what every plant is (even the scientific name!).  The wonderful gift shops! 

Sam and I have been to the Madison -  Olbrich Botanical Garden (OBG) before, but never during the full blooming season.  Today the colors were amazing. 
But better even than the flowers was the butterfly exhibit!  Right now at the OBG is a live butterfly exhibit in the indoor observatory.  You get to walk around amongst luscious plants, gorgeous flowers and LIVE butterflies.  The OBG staff did a great job of giving very clear instructions before we went in to see the butterflies (don't run around, don't touch the butterflies, don't try to catch them, don't play with their food dishes, etc.) so Sam was very well behaved. 
They handed out laminated cards to everybody so you could identify the butterflies that you saw.  Sam carried that card around and every time she saw a butterfly would try and match it or ask me to help her match it.  I LOVED seeing her "working" like that without even being told to. 
It made a huge difference to our outing too to have a task that we were working on.  Since this week is a color themed week I focused today on asking her lots of questions about colors.  We walked around outside first and each flower we saw we talked about the color.  Eventually she started "testing" me on the colors which I thought was adorable. 
Sam - What color is this one mommy?

Me - Those are pink.

Sam - Good job mommy! 

HA!  She was too cute. So, I definitely got some good pictures to print for her color book that I will make at the end of the week.    

And we had a great time with this field trip.  One that we will for sure do again!

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The Nitty Gritty!

A lot of big cities will have botanical gardens so if you haven't checked yours out yet I would strongly encourage you to do so.  If it is HUGE like the St. Louis one is and it seems like a daunting task with little ones, just treat it the same way you would the zoo. Most gardens will have a map of the grounds and you can break it up into sections.  Do just small sections each time you go focusing more on the details and not trying to accomplish the whole facility each time you go.  Bigger gardens may also have education departments that run classes, camps, displays and exhibits.  These can be great programs for kids of all ages and even adults! 

When we do this field trip again one thing I will do differently is be sure to bring binoculars, magnifying glasses and bug jars.  Because of all the plants, flowers and water there is an abundance of great beetles, ants, worms, butterflies and bees to look at.  It really is an amazing place to see critters.  I hadn't thought of that before we went today.  While we were outside at the garden Sam was noticing all the insects and next time (when we aren't in the middle of color week!) I may focus more on this. 

Day 19: walk and rub

Well we went to a near by conservancy to see what colors we could find.  There weren't as many flowers blooming as a I had hoped but we did find some.  I had the camera along but apparently need to read the owners manual or something because this is the only picture of the flowers that turned out!  And all the flowers are looking the wrong way!

I am probably completely embarrassing my sister the VERY skilled photographer!  Sam was a bit whinny, not really focusing on what I was saying about the flowers but did the walk with Avery and I anyway.  But I would definitely call it a successful outing.  Why, you ask? Because when we left and we headed to a water park she looked out the car window and said "mommy look at all those white flowers!" pointing to a roadside field of Queen Anne's Lace.  She has never pointed out flowers from the car before and never stated the color of the flower.  A big proud mama smile came over my face in the car.

Side note - Not related to the theme for the week but on our way out of the conservancy we spotted this on the sidewalk.
  Sam sat on the sidewalk for quite a while watching the ants attack the little caterpillar.  Such a great teachable moment!  We talked about how the ants were working together like a team to eat something that was so much bigger than them.  She found this fascinating.

This evening while I made baby food I gave Sam a project to work on.  I took the leaves out of her plant press (the one that I blogged about here actually worked really well!!) and laid them all out on the table.  I gave her a stack of white paper, each piece folded in half, and a few crayons.  I told her we were going to do leaf rubbings and showed her how to put the leaf inside the folder paper. 
It seemed like she was going to get it but after just a few seconds she stopped coloring and said "look mommy a butterfly!"  Not sure where she saw the butterfly but she wasn't seeing the leaves.  She liked picking out which leaves to put in the paper and picking out the colors but wasn't pressing down hard enough on the paper or getting that she needed to color with the side of the crayon.  Two years old is just  a little too young I guess for leaf rubbings.  I love doing these and will certainly keep trying because I don't think she is too far off from being able to do them, but not yet. 

I did embrace her seeing of butterflies and made her one.  She looked at it and said "Oh mommy that is beautiful!" 

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The Nitty Gritty!

We don't use crayons a lot for plain coloring so maybe a two year old that is more used to coloring with crayons might be able to do this better.  Folding the paper over and putting the leaves in the middle is a great way to do leaf rubbings with younger kids because it helps to hold the leaf in place. You don't have to use pressed leaves for rubbings, green/fresh or brown/dried leaves work just fine too.      

Day 18: a tree in all seasons

Maybe a bit of a stretch for my first color activity of the week but we needed an inside activity and painting sounded like a great idea.

SO, this activity seemed like a good idea.

I took black construction paper (couldn't believe I didn't have a SINGLE piece of brown!) and cut it out in the shape of a tree with no leaves. Then I glued it to a piece of blue construction paper.  
I told Sam she was going to paint the leaves and flowers on the trees but we were going to paint one picture for every season of the year.  We started with spring (the picture above is painting winter, but you get the idea) and she painted yellow and pink on the trees to be the flowers that were blooming in the spring (did you know that EVERY tree has some kind of flower? most are just very small so that we don't normally notice).  I put each color in its own bowl and gave her cotton balls to use for the painting. 
After she painted spring I asked her what color the leaves were right now on the trees.  She told me they were green so I gave her two different shades of green to paint on a different tree to be the summer tree.  Then we did red, yellow and orange for Fall and white for winter to be the snow on the trees.

Once she had done all four seasons she asked to do some more so I grabbed the black paper that I had cut the trees out of, took the "scrap" and glued that to another piece of blue.  The space from where the tree had been cut out made another great tree for her to paint.  She did the four seasons again. 

Each time she painted I made sure she could identify the colors we were painting with and talked about why we were using those colors.  I know she is too young to truly understand seasons, but I still think it is good to explain things. 
She was very proud of all of her trees.  And it did help to practice her colors. 

My husband asked me today if she has figured out green yet (she frequently gets it confused with other colors!).  Can you believe that the color my daughter struggles the most with is GREEN? HA!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I got this activity from "Arty Facts; Plants and Art Activities" by Crabtree Publishing.  However their version is NOTHING like what I did!  Because of Sam's age I had to really simplify the idea.  The authors described making the tree trunk out of cut strips of textured paper glued onto a drawn tree outline (okay, this I simplified because I didn't think that I could do that!), and then using different color tissue paper torn into pieces to be the leaves on the trees.  I think the textures and 3D effect of their idea would be neat but I didn't think Sam would be able to really tear the tissue paper, apply the glue and then stick the tissue paper without making a tissue paper and glue mess.  So I opted for paint instead. 

The cotton balls for painting made a neat effect and were a different tool for Sam to use, however they became pretty flimsy quite quickly and we went through a LOT of cotton balls.  We switched to a sponge type paint brush at the end and this worked well too.  A regular kitchen sponge cut into small pieces would work too and could be rinsed and reused. 

Theme Week - Colors!

So I have decided to try my first Theme Week!  This could be a challenge for me to focus on one topic all week but I am going to try. 

Each day I will do some kind of activity, craft, game or other project that may not be entirely about color but will have some way that you can focus on colors.  I am also going to try and do a lot of field trips this week.  The focus of the field trips will be finding colors in nature.  Sam and I will find things that are different colors and then take pictures of them.  By the end of the week I am hoping to have a pretty big collection of nature-color photos that I will then print and turn into a color book for her! 

Okay, I will be back later with our first day of color!!  If you have a suggestion for another theme let me know.  If this goes well I might try and do one theme week a month.