Mary Ann Kohl

Have you heard of her? I Love Her! Love Her, Love Her!!!! She is an author of several art books for kids. I heard of her for the first time when I read an article in Mothering magazine about a Toddler Art Party. My fearless, artsy friends in my mommy & toddler group (you know who you are and how much I love you!) decided to throw a toddler art party of our own. We had soooo much fun (and made such a mess!). Of course we always did on those mornings we spent together. So that was well over a year ago. I bought Kohl's book, First Art - Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos back then and it has given us hours an hours of creativity, exploration and just plain fun. Her whole philosophy is that art is all about the process, not the product. This philosophy has really helped me lighten up when doing artsy stuff with Taylor. I tend to need structure and rules and creating and exploring with Taylor helps me let go of that and enjoy a little freedom.

Now that Taylor is ready for some more advanced art experiences, I looked up some more of Kohl's books. WOW, she has written a whole lot of books!!! I was incredibly delighted to discover Math Arts - Exploring Math Through Art. Seriously? Math through art? I have serious math issues. Really. There are some fundamental math concepts that I never mastered which have caused math to be a major challenge of mine. It impacts my crafting, too. Sewing is a challenge with all the measurements and calculations. If my husband and I ever get divorced (we won't) I will have to stop sewing because I'm not able to do the math or logical thinking necessary to complete many projects. Seriously. It's a challenge. But, we all have our challenges. Anyway, I tell you all this so you will understand why I was so delighted to discover the Math Arts book. I do NOT want my children (yes we only have one right now, but at some point we hope to have more, God help us all!) to struggle with math the way I always have.

As I continued to browse her books, I came across 2 more that we just had to add to our craft library: Preschool Art and Science Arts. Thank you to my wonderful mother who is supportive of all my creative endeavors and all of my attempts to enrich Taylor's learning. She was so generous is giving us all 3 of these books!!! Thank you!!! Thank you!!! Thank you!!!

The books arrived on Tuesday and I cannot even tell you the rush I felt when I opened the box! They were shiny and new, colorful covers, just waiting to be opened. I've been pouring over the pages in all my spare time since I got them. We are going to have sooo much fun doing these projects for years to come. There are a few projects in the Science Arts that are age appropriate for Taylor but many of them are aimed at children 3 - 9&up so this is definitely a book that we'll revisit as she grows.

I urge you, if you have young children in your life, buy these books. They are wonderful!!!

To learn more about Mary Ann Kohl, her other books and her work with young children, read this great interview or check out her website.

Spring Nature Collage

I thought it would be fun for Taylor to create a spring collage. She loves playing with glue so I decided to gather together a few spring like materials and let her play. I gave her, leaves, dried moss, artificial flowers, sand, and very small pebbles.

She had so much fun and stayed busy with this for quite awhile. I love watching her play and explore.

In the end, she started playing with the wipes and wiped away everything she had glued onto the collage. She just made a big sticky mess that ended up in the trash. Ah well, like I said, she had fun. So much for the collage. Preschool art is all about the process, not the product.

Sidewalk Paint

Taylor and I had fun making sidewalk paint this weekend. The recipe is simple:

1/2 cup of cornstarch

1/2 cup of water

Food coloring

Stir together cornstarch and water and add a few drops of food coloring to get desired color.

I divided the recipe into thirds and made 3 different colors.

The paint is really cool! It's liquid, so it goes on like paint but dries like chalk. Very cool.

Note: This paint will wash off easily from the concrete but it will stain clothing because of the food coloring, so be sure to wear a smock or play clothes that are OK to get messy!

Birthday Party Planning Step 2 & 3 - Choosing a theme & Invitations

A ladybug party is an adorable, simple theme for a 3 y/o birthday party or any young child. Of course ladybugs are cute and the simple color scheme of red, black and white with accents of green is simple. Choosing a theme helps keep the party planning focused and fun. Obviously a theme can be chosen from anything from a story book, a movie or TV show, animals, colors, abc's or 123's...really, the ideas are endless.

The first thing that will give your guests an idea of the theme of the party is the invitation. You can send an invitation on-line using E-Vite, or you could buy pre-made inviations or have them professionally made. You can also make them yourself. Of, course, that's what I did!

I used a template I found on-line, along with instructions and created the invitations shown above. I used black & red cardstock from Stampin' Up! I looove Stampin' Up cardstock. Trust me, once you use their cardstock, you'll never use another brand of cardstock. The wings are attached with an eyelet and open to reveal the words " Our little bug is turning 3, come be spotted at Taylor's birthday party. The date, and time and Give us a Buzzzzz at our phone number". Didn't they turn out cute?!!!!!!

OK, so now for some fabulous on-line resources to help in birthday party planning!

Family Fun Magazine
Birthday Party Ideas
Oriental Trading Company

Happy Party Planning! Stayed tuned for Step 4 - The food! (My favorite part!)

More Spring Decor

Inspired by a similar project on a blog I can't remember, (sorry! I really need to keep track of these great ideas so I can give credit to the amazing peeps who come up with the great ideas!) I created this. It's all artificial so it requires no watering (I've got enough things to try to remember without trying to remember to water a darn plant!). I got a bag of moss from the Dollar Tree (same stuff I used on my birdhouses) and used a few polished stones (also available at the Dollar Tree). Then I added the ivy garland, the flower and butterfly for a splash of color. It took me less than 5 minutes to do the arrangement.

Letter Recognition

I'm working on letter recognition with Taylor. She goes to preschool and gets a lot of great learning experiences there, but of course, the learning doesn't stop once she gets home! Magnetic Alphabet Farm is a very simple book that I picked up about a year ago (LOVE the Bargain Books section at Borders!). It's a magentic book. It comes with the letter magnets and each page has places for the magnets as you read the story. The back of the book has this 2 page spread of the alphabet in order. Taylor loves this book.

I just discovered another super cool blog! It's called Teach Mama and she has lots of super cool activities for preschoolers to teach letter recognition (and just about anything else you could want to teach them!). Check it out!

Spring Fever

(Note, The title of this post could also be: What I did on Sunday While Taylor was Napping and I Should Have Been Folding Laundry!)

Have you noticed the current birdhouse trend? They're everywhere. At first I didn't really care for them. I have this thing about birds. On more than one occasion, I've had birds fly straight into my head. Seriously. I think they're out to get me. Fortunately I've never been pooped on by a bird (knocking on wood, now!). Anyway, the more birdhouses I saw, the more they grew on me. I decided to snatch up a few. The big one is from JoAnn's ($5) and the two little ones are from the dollar store. I picked up a few sheets of spring paper and used a little paint, mod podge and ribbon that I had on hand to decorate. Some moss from the dollar store and some twigs from my yard finished them off!

I made this felt bird with just a little hand stitching and stuffing. I painted on the eye.

When I started making this one, I didn't care for it at all. The roof was too dark. But I just painted over it with a light layer of cream paint and wiped it off with a baby wipe. Now I think it turned out cute!

I didn't use any paper on this one. Decided I just wanted it a solid color, so I used some of the blue paint and then did a really light layer of cream paint over it. Turned out like a cloudy effect.

If you're inspired to decorate a birdhouse of your own, leave me a link! Happy Spring!