Messy Art Day

We had a couple messy art days last week (in the early morning hours - the neighbors probably think we are insane when they see us outside at 8AM playing!). One of the days, my camera somehow deleted the pictures. Whatever! But I did manage to save some pictures from another messy art day. 

Freezer Chalk. Lydia most enjoyed the cold texture and smearing that all over her hands! 

But after the chalk was warm Lydia enjoyed painting with it. 

 My camera deleted our finger painting experience AND the colored ice cubes. We made tons and tons of colored ice cubes and Lydia had a wonderful time throwing ice cubes at herself. It was a mess that equaled a very happy child!

The Carrot Seed Book

We have been reading "The Carrot Seed" book. Allot actually - multiple times a day!

I thought Lydia would like to grow carrots herself but after thinking about it - a 2 year old's attention span is quite small. Would she remember what was in the cup of dirt? Maybe. Would we actually be able to grow carrots? HAHAHA - we do not have green thumbs at our house.

So we planted carrot tops in water. I am hoping that the carrot tops flower like they are supposed to. If nothing else, Lydia is getting great enjoyment out of watching the water in the bowl!

Messy Art Day

Making sidewalk paint

Making finger paint

All our works of art! 

Using the sidewalk paint.

Newspaper Duty!

FINGER PAINT!!!!!!!

Painting is hard work! 

Wall Art...

One more sign that Lydia is now a toddler, WALL ART! She loves to play in her room by herself. I was fixing lunch and realized that her room is very quiet. I quickly ran the steps and my sweet little child came out of my office. This is not a good sign because the office is far from child proofed. But being a toddler she was very excited with her wall art and brought me to the wall to show me her art work.

The Artist

I am sure this is talent... 

We even decorated the window! 

After the artist got her picture taken with her art, she got to clean the mess... She actually did a pretty good job and we have chatted about no more art on the walls. (Next time, the camera will be put away. But who can resist documenting this first!!!!). And since the art didn't come off the paint, I think I may be able to talk James into painting another room :) Really the neon yellow walls are not that pretty...

Lacing Activity

Lydia adores her busy bag activities (adores may not be a strong enough word - it is all she ever plays with!). I went looking for some new activities for her because once again she was destroying her old ones and finding dangerous but NEW ways to play with them.

She has been lacing random objects from around the house but they have been just a bit difficult for the one year old's hands. (The curlers off of sponge rollers, pasta, the plastic shaker piece off of spice jars, etc...). She tries and tries - amazingly never gets frustrated - but also never succeeding...

And then Grandma gave Lydia a bag of credit card tape machine rollers. The perfect lacing tool for the one year old's hands! Lydia was so excited to finally have success :)

RICE!!!!!!

I was trying to decide if Lydia would like a sand box (the jury is still out). They are expensive, messy, and would we really play with it??? This is a little girl that cries every time she touches dirt.

So I decided to buy a "small sand box" (some people call my small sand box - Rubbermaid!). But it is very hard to find a small amount of play sand - kinda think it is tacky to fill my "sand box" up at the park and bring it home. After several weeks of my sandbox sitting behind the couch attracting somebody to go climb, I realized I either needed to re-purpose this sand box or fill it with something else.

We filled the box with rice!

This was an entire hour's worth of fun. We scooped. We dug. We measured. We got rice in our hair, diaper, and in our shoes. So obviously this is a very exciting joyous time.

So neat and tidy, before we start!

"Hhhhmmmm, what should I do with this". 

Since our first day of fun, we added some food coloring to our rice. Our rice level was getting a bit low so we have also added dry beans to the mix. Amazingly this toy, has been our favorite activity outside (it has even been more exciting than riding the trike!).

Not sure that I am going to buy the sandbox this fall. And when she is ready for the sand box, I think we are just going to find a large flat piece of Rubbermaid!

Pasta Art for Little Hands

We are always looking for new and different art projects to try out. Lydia loves coloring and "artsy" things but there are not that many things that an independent one year old can do solo. Last week we tried pasta art and it was a huge success. Minimal chewing. Worked on our fine motor skills. And had fun!

We also tried the same project with rice but as I thought the rice was just too small for little fingers. The pasta though was perfect!

Pasta Art: 
Step 1: Mix pasta with a couple colors of your favorite food coloring. 
Step 2: Let dry (we let our pasta sit overnight!)
Step 3: Put glue dots all over paper. 
Step 4: Let child have fun gluing pasta all over paper. And removing pasta. And repeating! A solid 30 minutes of fun at our house!