Painting with Marshmallows

I had seen this on a pin from Pinterest and thought it would be interesting to try out.  My mom always buys the girls various marshmallows that we don't manage to actually eat much of for holidays, so it was a good way to use them up!  Alex had a great time both painting (and eating) with them!

Things you'll need:
 - marshmallows (various sizes / shapes)
 - washable paint
 - paper

 As you'll see in the picture, I picked up these neat little paint trays for $1 at ACMoore which have worked out great.  I put a bunch of different washable paints in the tray spots and then gave my daughter a hand full of marshmallows.  We had Easter flower shaped ones and the mini-ones on hand, so that's what we used.

After popping a few in her mouth, she started to use the marshmallows as stampers.  This quickly turned into more of a 'smearing' technique which you see behind her arm and eventually lead to her entire hands being covered in paint and making hand prints (we've done too many hand print crafts that she absolutely has to do hand prints whenever there is paint around).  We used tons of paper and pretty much everything turned brown since she also enjoyed dipping each marshmallow in every color before using it to paint!  I love that she just goes and runs with these activities to think of new ideas and make her own art out of them.

Here are a few pictures of some of her end result creations; the first one is what the one above ended up turning into.  What I find cute is that there are some smashed pieces of marshmallows stuck on some of the pieces of paper! :)  She enjoyed squishing the paint soaked marshmallows too, so good extra sensory learning!!

Crafting with Leaves

In an attempt to integrate the multitude of fallen leaves into our crafting, I picked up a few on my way home with the girls to use in a craft.

Things you'll need:
 - Leaves (recently fallen so they won't crumble)
 - Different paint colors
 - Paintbrush(es)
 - Paper
 - Crayons
 
The first thing we tried was your typical leaf rub by placing a leaf under a piece of paper and then rubbing the side of a crayon on the paper over top of where the leaf is under the paper.  This picks up the veins and stem of the leaf showing up darker with color.  Emma had much more success with this than Alex who quickly stopped paying attention, so we moved on!

My next idea was to use the leaves as stamps.  The girls painted one side of a leaf of their choice and then pressed the painted side down onto the paper pushing with their hands on the leaf and then picking it up by the stem.  This again was much easier for Emma and she got really creative with it and made a flower out of the leaf prints which is the first picture you see in this post and below is a picture of the work in progress.

Alexandria is much more of a 'paint my hand and stamp' kind of painter with all of the hand crafts we've done, so she proceeded to move on to that while I tried to get Emma to use the leaves as paint brushes by dipping the edges into paint and then using them as a brush on the paper (below is a picture of Emma leaf painting).  Long story short, a bunch of different ideas and the best one that came out was the stamps.  All in all it was a great time with some natural items incorporated; a great way to keep using the leaves in different ways to keep your children's interest.

 ...wonder if the tongue sticking out helps? :)