Craft Project: Tie-Dye Spring Flowers

My husband has been traveling more this past month than he usually does. He's usually gone a few nights a month here and there. He has been HOME ONLY for a few days this month. So I've had to stay on my toes, especially on the weekends (when the kids are usually doing fun "Daddy" activities) and everyone is home together. Last weekend, we worked on two projects. For the first one, we were inspired again by Mom to 2 Posh Lil' Divas. What I like about her blog so much is that many of her activities are SIMPLE, yet fun! Really, we just revamped the Tie-Dye Easter Egg project for spring.
We created flowers from coffee filters using Do-a-Dot Markers.

My older daughter (the two left flowers) followed the same steps as the Mom to 2 Posh Lil' Divas project by folding the coffee filter in quarters and using the Do-a-Dot markers to create a tie-dye effect. My younger daughter decided to just create hers without folding them. I think each of them turned out great!

Here they are in our art room window:

I used Crayola window crayons to draw in the leaves and stems. It really helps to make our window bright and cheery!

I had cut out the flower shapes for the girls because I had an idea for what to do with the outer ring left from the cut flower shape. I have an uncle who is very ill at the moment. I decided it would be fun to send him some of the girls' artwork to cheer him up. So we used the outside filter rings to create large flowers on construction paper. First, the girls decorated the rings with the Do-a-Dot markers.

Then they glued them on the paper and decorated the inside of the flowers and around the outside to make pretty spring pictures.

Toddler Art Activity: Window Ziploc Painting

Where would I be without Pinterest!? Seriously! I have a board dedicated to ideas for things to do with my son. Even though, the early part of this blog has been devoted to more in-depth art activities I've done with my older daughters, I've decided it is now time to introduce my two year old to the world of color, painting and art! As I stated in the previous post, he has had no attention span up until now (which is understandable and goes along with his age). And he is very prone to getting aggressive quickly and throwing just about anything. So the idea of doing any kind of "messy" art with him has been very off-putting. But, I feel like I can't keep him from the fun of art just because he might be even messier than my girls were.

I decided to start slow and easy. One of the things I pinned was window ziploc painting! I thought I would try it the same day we introduced the light panel because it is something you could do ON the light panel. But I felt like it would be better if I taped it up first and got him used to the idea of what he was supposed to do with it before we used it with the light panel. So I taped two different bags up on our deck door and showed them to him after his nap today. He was completely UNinterested.
He was uninterested that is until his sisters came home from school. They rushed to the window to see what it was all about (you can see my younger daughter still has her coat on!). And as soon as they were interested, he toddled over to take part as well!
They asked me to add their favorite colors to the window: pink and turquoise. And they started to experiment. Instead of just using their fingers (I don't blame them. It's winter here and that window gets pretty cold) they decided to try out paint brushes. And the brushes worked just as well as their fingers.
My 8 year old tried taping two colors over the other and discovered she could see the blue through the pink when she painted.
AND, last but not least, they figured out they could play tic-tac-toe over and over again! I really think the sensory play of this appealed to my oldest daughter, just as the light panel did. And hopefully, my son will show some prolonged interest in this if it hangs around long enough. :-)