Island Mama

We were having a frustrating morning. We were all getting grumpy with each other. We needed to go do something different.

I put a long piece of easel paper down on the ground and we splattered paint on it.

My idea was to run some of our outside cars and trucks around in it to see the wheel prints.

But that didn’t last long….. and then the shoes came off.

And my goodness did they have fun with their feet!!

And their hands. It quickly turned into a full body experience.

And after the first three sheets were filled, they wanted to do it again.

Inspired by the book The Creative Family, which I received last week, I decided to try wet felting with the boys. I already had loads of colored wool from my recent adventures in needle felting, so we got out some bowls of warm soapy water, lots of towels, and started dipping and rubbing balls of wool.

It was much harder to actually make balls than I expected, but we had fun anyway. Even Timothy enjoyed playing with the warm water and eventually, bored with the wool, he found some of his plastic spoons somewhere and before I knew it, it had turned into a dishwashing game…

Inspired, again, by something I read.

Required:

Place a paper plate inside the salad spinner, pour a few blobs of paint on, and spin!

Pretty plates. I think we ended up with 6 or 7.

And this is what it does to the inside of the salad spinner. We used washable, non-toxic tempera paint, though, and it was actually really easy to clean up. (Ben loves doing dishes too, so it was like part of the fun, even!)