Autumn Leaf Painting

     The air is crisp, the leaves are turning beautiful shades, and cozy sweaters are a playground must. Fall is here and I say embrace it! This year I have vowed to enjoy more time outdoors with the kiddies and with a few warm scarves and some extra travel mugs for pumpkin spice lattes it has been a lovely fall so far. This activity started with a simple walk around the block to collect some leaves (which Mr. Jeej insisted would be for a "special activity") and to look for signs of Fall.

     We got back from our walk a little late, and I knew I had to come up with an activity fast before lunch, or I would have two disappointed little people.  Luckily I had a few sponges and paint handy, thus the autumn leaf painting activity was born. This art activity requires almost no set up, you will need sponges (I cut a standard size rectangular sponge into smaller pieces for Baby E and Mr. Jeej's small hands), a few colours of paint ( we use the Crayola washable kind in the neon colour scheme for this activity, but fall-ish colours would also produce beautiful results), a collection of interesting leaves, and some paper. 
     We started out by placing the leaves onto the paper and using the sponge to dab paint along the edges of the leaves. For Baby E, I find it easier for her and WAY less messy, if  I squirt a few colours of paint onto a paper plate for her to use. It turns out that keeping the leaves in place was a little tricky for Baby E (19 months) and Mr Jeej ( 3 and 1/2). I ended up using a tiny bit of masking tape on the back of the leaves to help keep them secure, to help get a more recognizable shape of each leaf. It worked beautifully and both of the littles were thrilled with the results! 
     This activity is an easy set up process oriented activity that could have tons of follow up activities. It's also a great conversation starter about negative space in artwork or about leaves in general. We happened to have Leaf Man and Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert on loan from our local library. Both provide great examples of leaf related artwork! I think next time we will make leaf men of our own!

Spray Painting

Summer is here! That means we try and take advantage of every nice day and spend as much time as we can outdoors. It also means that we can start to bring some of our more messy projects outside and let the rain take care of paint splatters on our deck! Last summer I was able to get a Little Tikes easel (special thanks to my mom who valiantly rescued it from the curb on garbage day) that we leave outside.

To set up this activity all you need are a few spray bottles, I got mine from Dollarama and was lucky that I randomly grabbed 4 different colours, paper and some paint. I squirted a small amount of paint into each bottle and filled them with water, the more paint you add the brighter the colour, that being said it’s important that your paint and water mixture is thin enough to easily spray. When your spray bottle as all mixed up, set out some paper and let your little one go to town. A word of caution though, it’s a good idea to make sure that anything you have hanging on a nearby clothesline should be removed ahead of time, those spray bottle sure are fun for preschoolers and let me say that the entire backyard ( and  a cute little sister) had a healthy colourful splatter to it.

Notice the FRESHLY cleaned laundry in the
background (man.. what was I thinking?!)

This activity is absolutely perfect for preschoolers and older toddlers, my 3 year old Mr. Jeej loved it! It kept him busy for the latter part of an afternoon. Not only does it allow for ample creativity, it also leaves room for discussion about colour mixing. To enrich your art experience I highly recommend Herve Tullet's Mix It Up! . It's one of my all time favourite books for preschoolers. This activity also has a bonus fine motor component. The little ones will need to practice using their hand muscles to actually spray the paint onto paper, which is so integral for beginning to write. I did let my 15 month old Baby E try out the spray painting, she wasn’t yet able to handle to sprayer and the nozzle kept ending up in her mouth! Luckily Crayola has a lovely line of non-toxic paint!
 The end results are absolutely beautiful and it can be set up less than 5 minutes.

Painting with Cars

Although, this is by no means a new activity, it's a favourite in our house. Getting cars all "painty" is always an easy sell with preschoolers. It's a very simple process oriented art activity that doesn't require much set up. All you need is paint, a handful of toy vehicles, and your choice of paper.

I blobbed paint into a reusable tray so that Mr. Jeej would be able to dip his cars into the paint by himself. He (and just about every other preschooler) loves any opportunity to engage in something independently. For Baby E, I dipped the car, well actually monster truck (these were the easiest for her to grasp) in the paint and let her roll the truck around. She was super impressed with the result! Although my 11 month old really enjoyed this activity, I would say that if you'd like to try this with an infant, be prepared for a mess! Baby E loved to roll her truck onto the floor and watch the wheels create tracks on the floor as well.

Mr. Jeej loved the idea that using different vehicles produced a different track mark on his page. This activity provides endless opportunities for exploration with colour as well. He experimented with dipping each wheel I different paint colours. The result were gorgeous! Also, I will say that this is one of the few activities that Mr. Jeej actually is excited to help clean up. I gave him a bowl of soapy water, a towel, and the job of getting the paint off of the vehicle wheels. The whole painting and clean up kept the two littles engaged for over an hour, which is a huge success in my books!