A "Scoop" Above the Rest: Scoopers!

My son received a set of Learning Resources' Scoopers for his birthday. I actually put them on his wishlist and I'm sooo glad I did! I wasn't sure if we would really use them a lot. But oh my gosh! We use them all the time. These are so versatile!

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I originally bought them to go with this sorting pie toy because I thought they would be easier for him to use than the tongs that came with the pie set. He loved playing with the pie and refused to use his fingers at all. He HAD to use the scoopers.

Then, I refilled our sensory bin for Valentine's day with epsom salt. I thought it might be fun to use the scoopers with the salt.

I was looking at Pinterest the other morning and my son came over and sat on my lap. He was very interested in what I was looking at and he pointed to this sorting activity in my Pinterest feed from Buggy and Buddy. But instead of measuring cups to scoop pom poms with, we used our scoopers!

BUT. The MOST FUN way we have used the scoopers was in the SNOW! We live in Minnesota, otherwise known as Polar Vortex Central.

Our backyard and neighbor's yard one morning. This has been our reality all winter long. Ridiculous, even for Minnesota!

And we have had exactly one day in the last two or three weeks that it was warm enough to play outside for any extended time period. Nevermind that it was snowing like crazy. Blizzard-like snowing. The kids wanted, no, needed to be outside for a bit. They thought it would be fun to try the scoopers while they were out there. And I must say, they were entertained for 45-60 minutes out on the deck!

Look at his face as he tries to keep it from breaking! So cute!

Perfect mini-snowball!

 Working together!

A mini snowball pyramid!

 Kellan decided to use the scooper as a tool for eating the snow! He's such a cutie!

And that's not the end of what you could do with these! They have little holes in them. I think they would be amazing fun in a water table or splash pool in the summer. They might also work great with really fine grain sand. Or even playdoh!

Have your kids ever used Scoopers? What unique way do you use them??

Product Review: Master Kitz Paint Kits

I came across these kits quite some time ago at the Creative Kidstuff toy store. They looked so neat!

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I received one for Christmas a couple years ago and one of my daughters received one for her birthday. This summer we decided it was time to break these out and give them a try. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of in-progress photos of both kits. But here it goes:

The first kit we did was the Starry Starry Night Kit. The kits come with the instructions, paint, applicators, paper, and stickers provided. All you add is the newspaper and creativity. The instructions are easy to follow and very visual so an older kid could definitely do this on their own without much supervision. The thing I think is really neat about this is that it introduces kids to layering paint. Admittedly, I've never actually taken a painting course (just other generic art courses) so my knowledge is limited to what I've observed. But I do know that artists paint their images in layers and this is a great way to teach kids about layering color together!

The way the Starry Night kit works is that you place removable circle stickers down, then apply different shades of blue paint with the stamped roller applicator included. You remove the stickers and tape down a stencil. You roller black paint over the stencil to create the town. Then using your own creativity you layer on pastel color to create the details of the stars and town. Here is my 10 year old's version of Starry Starry Night:

I absolutely LOVED how she didn't just copy what she saw on the box. She created her own masterpiece with her own color choices. She asked to use our pastel colors so she would have a wider variety of color to pick from than what was included in the kit.

I give this kit FIVE stars and HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! Here are a couple more details:

Another thing I truly love about this kit is that there is great TEXTURE in the paint application. Just like Van Gogh's work!

I visited New York City this past spring and had to see MOMA. I can't tell you how excited I was to see Starry Starry Night in person and to be able to get up close and really "see" it!

But to be honest, I kind of like my daughter's version better. Ha! ;-)

Now onto kit #2: Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life. I have more in-progress photos for this one:

This kit was admittedly, quite a bit less involved. You placed the stencil over your paper to start. And then apply the included gold paint with the roller brush.

After that, you use a darker brown and stamp over the gold paint:

This created patterns and shapes on the gold paint.

You remove the stencil and add the included stickers wherever you like. And then you have a finished Tree of Life!

And here they are on our art wall:

All right, I'm going to be 100% honest here and say, the Tree of Life kit was kind of a disappointment TO ME. Now, my 8 year old daughter enjoyed it. But when the PROCESS of this kit is compared to the process of the Starry Starry Night kit, the Tree of Life kit was a letdown. There were more steps in the Van Gogh kit and there was more room for the child to be more creative.

I think the Tree of Life kit is perfect for ages 6 and younger. I think the Van Gogh kit is better overall for any age (with help). But especially for ages 6 and up. I'm glad I wasn't having my 10 year old do the Tree of Life kit or I think she would have been easily bored with it. The only complaint I had about the quality of the kit is that our black paint in the Van Gogh kit was unusable. It was very clumpy and you could tell just sort of old. Luckily I had some black acrylic paint here so it wasn't a problem for us. But for someone using this kit that doesn't have access to a fully stocked art room like we do, it would have really changed my perspective on the kit.

Overall, not a bad gift idea for a creative gift. But I definitely recommend the Van Gogh Kit over the Klimt kit. I would be curious to try the Water Lilies kit and the Matisse kit just to see what the process was like for those kits. Anyone out there try those?? What did you think?

100 Days of Tombow!

So I have a feeling that I'm probably past the 100 days mark of this marketing campaign. But hopefully the good people at Tombow will forgive me for that! I was contacted in May to ask if I'd like Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner to be a part of their campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Tombow. I said yes and received the most wonderful box in the mail with these products in it:

I was excited to receive:
--Stamp Runner adhesive
--Dual Brush Pen Set, Groovy colors
--a set of the Irojiten Color Pencils, Woodlands colors

To be honest, I had no idea what I was going to do with these. The company just said create a project. They do have a blog and posts dedicated to the projects people came up with. There are some really beautiful things on there! But, it seemed like many of the people posting were scrapbookers. Or artists who really knew how to use and manipulate these products. I decided they must have looked through my blog before deciding to contact me. They should know that I mostly post my kids' projects. So I decided to stay with that idea, rather than go out of my element to create a project.

I thought about coming up with a nice project for my girls to do, but to be honest, I felt like it would be more fun and kind of an experiment to see what the girls came up with! They didn't have school today so I sat them down, gave them the supplies and told them the only rule was that they had to create something where they used ALL three types of products. I also asked them to really think about what they were going to make beforehand and to not rush through the project.

I was very pleasantly surprised with what they came up with! They both spent about an hour working on their project.

My 8 year old created a flower with a butterfly on it:

And my 10 year old created a tree silhouette with a sunset behind it:

My proud artists and their creations:

After they were done, I sort of interviewed them to see what they thought of the Tombow products when compared to our usual art supplies (Crayola and Mindware fine tip markers, and tape runners from Archivers or Michael's).

They LOVE LOVE LOVED the dual brush markers! They said they were so smooth and didn't tear up the paper at all while they were using them. They liked the unique colors for both the markers and colored pencils. Colors they don't usually get to use in their other sets. And the tape runner was a hit as well! They said it went on smoothly and you didn't have to press as hard as some of the other ones they've used. The dispenser itself seemed better quality as well. The adhesive didn't get gummed up on the side or go on wonky as some of the other tape runners we've used.

Though I haven't created any specific projects with these supplies....yet, I have used them to color in some of our wonderful Mindware coloring books and there is a marked difference in how they color compared to even Mindware's fine tip markers. I LOVED coloring with them! I believe we will be adding some of the other marker sets to our Christmas list this year.

Thanks Tombow for giving us these great supplies to play with! Happy 100th Anniversary!