The Artful Parent

Painting with pine branches: process-oriented art in action

As process-oriented art goes, painting with pine boughs and other evergreen branches is up there with fingerpainting and squeezing playdough. It's all about the process, all about the sensory experience (prickly needles, fresh pine smell), and all about exploring what it's like to paint with this novel tool and how it can transfer paint to paper—whether printing, painting, or splattering.

This whole pine branch painting session started because of a package that arrived in the mail for Maia and Daphne last week.

Homemade fingerpaints with the toddler art group

Ah, fingerpaints! The kiddos in the toddler art group painted with homemade fingerpaints last week.

I used the recipe for warm cornstarch fingerpaint from MaryAnn Kohl's First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos. It was easy to make, but pretty thick and goopy (maybe I cooked it too long). I'll probably mix up one of her other recipes next time -- perhaps the liquid starch fingerpaint. Or just try commercial fingerpaints -- I just got some Colorations finger paints from Discount School Supply and am looking forward to trying them soon.

As with the playdough, these one year olds were not so sure about the fingerpaints. Most of them didn't even want to touch it, let alone paint with it. Here the parents are touching the fingerpaint and using their most encouraging voices. Pretty funny, actually. :)

Considering that my child will happily fingerpaint with applesauce, yogurt, and other foods, and doesn't seem to have any hesitation in getting messy normally, I'm not sure why she was so hesitant to touch the fingerpaints. The color? Texture? The studio setting as opposed to the kitchen table?

Whatever it is, she was not alone in being wary.

In an effort to make the first fingerpainting experience just about the fingerpaint (especially after all the comments regarding the playdough introduction), I made sure not to put anything else on the table, and even removed all the paintbrushes and other tools from the vicinity.

But, when parents added more fingerpaints to the table using spoons (tools!) the two boys latched on to them. Joe, who wouldn't touch the fingerpaints before, now happily interacted with the paint using his newfound tool.

And, since Julie Liddle talked about letting kids with sensory issues experience playdough by squishing it through a ziploc bag first, I thought I'd try that with the kids who wouldn't touch the fingerpaints. It didn't quite work as I thought it would though. While we demonstrated touching and squishing the paint through the bag, Daphne and Iver just carried the bags around.

I have to remember that most of these toddlers are still really young at 14 to 16 months (Joe is the oldest at 22 months) and that even a month or two (and continued exposure) will make a big difference in their confidence with these art materials.

And that personality plays a role as well. Juniper (16 months) and Flynn (20 months?) didn't seem to have any hesitation at all in painting with their hands. They really got into it!

As will the playdough, we will try this again (and again).

And just so you don't think we're struggling to engage the kids each week, I'm happy to say that we had a wonderful experience with the toddler art group this week painting with liquid watercolors and (gasp!) brushes. They all loved it! I'll try to get photos up soon...

Homemade Candy Cane Playdough

Maia and I made homemade candy cane playdough this past weekend. I'm always trying to think of gifts that Maia can participate in making and this one fits all my criteria perfectly: it's easy and fun to make, inexpensive, and once given, encourages creative play.

As usual we used MaryAnn Kohl's recipe for play clay from First Art. I always plan to try new recipes, but love this one so much, I never do.

Homemade Playdough Recipe

Ingredients:

• 5 cups water
• 5 cups flour
• 2 1/2 cups salt
• 3 Tablespoons cream of tartar
• 10 Tablespoons vegetable oil
• Food coloring

Instructions:

Mix water, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring regularly until mixture is hot. Add oil. Stir in flour a cup at a time, stirring in between each addition. Mix until playdough pulls away from pan and is no longer sticky (pinch it between your fingers to test). Dump dough on counter, let cool a bit, then knead.

Add Glitz and Glamour to Your Homemade Playdough

To make the candy cane playdough, we made two batches of the play clay, one red and one white. After the dough cooled down a bit, we kneaded in some glitter for holiday glitziness and some peppermint essential oil (about 10 drops each batch) for the yummy candy cane smell.

Help Your Playdough do the Candy Cane Twist

Next we gathered our playdough (cut up into individual portions - I think we divided each batch into 12 or so) and our packaging materials (pint canning jars, holiday fabric squares, yarn, color copies of Maia's Christmas "cards", and some labels I made in Word).

We rolled the playdough into snakes...

then twisted one red and one white one together like a candy cane.

Each playdough twist was put into a jar and we added the fabric, lids, and labels.

Et voila! Candy cane playdough. Gifts Maia helped make that she can give to her friends.

If you liked these candy cane lollipops, then you might like the other winter and holiday crafts and recipes in The Artful Winter ebook:

Clean mud is a fun (and messy) art project

Justin and Nathan were over on Friday and we made clean mud together in the studio. The idea is to tear toilet paper into little pieces, mix in water and grated soap, and mush it all around with your hands.

They all enjoyed this project and got very absorbed in adding the various ingredients but they went at it like little scientists. None of them wanted to actually touch the stuff (is it their ages? or personalities?) so I ended up giving them spoons to stir with. We followed Julie's recommendation of using liquid watercolors (which the kids are applying with droppers) rather than food coloring, although the food coloring would work fine as well.

On another note, I'm feeling behind on everything. I was super tired this weekend and felt like I was moving in slow motion. I didn't get on the computer once, didn't bake the bread I had planned, didn't clean, and definitely didn't do anything artful. I'm feeling better now but we may have a slow start to our week.

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An Autumn tree for the felt board

I cut out some felt pieces for Maia's new felt board yesterday. I thought I'd start with something seasonal so made a tree, some fall leaves, and a jack-o-lantern.

I have so many ideas (many borrowed) for other felt pieces: a farm scene, storyboards, the alphabet, numbers, games, build-your-own-flowers, dress-up dolls, animals and their homes, under the sea, and, of course, other seasonal and holiday scenes.