Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Driveway Obstacle Course

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I’ve been toying with the idea of making an obstacle course for the girls all summer. But, for one reason or the other, it never happened.Perhaps it was a lack of ideas or maybe just a bit of summer laziness, but nonetheless, it never happened.

That is, until inspiration struck and I realized “hey, I can make an obstacle course with just a bit of sidewalk chalk!”

I got out all the sidewalk chalk and took over our driveway. First, I started with straight lines that the girls had to jump over. They then moved on to a curvy line they had to walk (or run) along.

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Next up were numbered circles, 1-5. They had to jump from one to the other in numerical order (or at least the preschooler did, the toddler just jumped as she pleased).From there, they moved on to the “tightrope,” which they had to carefully walk across. Then, they encountered triangles which they had to jump from one to the other.

Next up was the spiral. They started from the outside and followed the lines to the middle.Then, they had to walk (or run) along the zig-zag line.

At the end was a series of squiggly lines to jump over, they they followed an arrow back to the beginning.

We had lots of running, giggling, jumping and sometimes losing our balance.Best of all, we had fun. The best part for me was that the possibilities are endless and the best part for the girls was that it was a lot of fun!

Tape Resist Painting

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To be quite honest, I debated whether or not to post this project because as you’ll see, it didn’t quite turn out for us.

But, as had been the overriding theme during our art week, it was all about the process and not the end product.

We decided to tackle tape resist painting as our final project of the week.

I gave the girls pieces of painter’s tape and plain printer paper. I also provided two colors of paint. I wanted two colors that would mix well, so I chose red and yellow.

As you can see, AJ decided to tape her paper down to the table! I finally convinced her to try to stick the tape in the middle of the paper.

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Lizzie decided to make a box like shape with her tape. Then, they both set off to painting. Red was quite the popular color and Lizzie painted and painted until her paper was covered.

We let the paint dry for a little while and then attempted to peel off the tape. This would be the point that the project didn’t quite go as planned.

As you can see, the paint bled through a little and if you look at the wad of tape at the top of the photo, you’ll see that it pulled off some of the paper.

I think if we tried this again, I would use a heavier paper such as card stock instead of the copy paper. That should definitely solve the problem of the peeling paper.

Oh, and can I make a confession here? AJ slapped a little bit of paint on the paper and moved on to more interesting things… so, I decided to finish her project. I like to paint and I love art projects!

Lizzie’s project turned out really well, even though we did need to tape up a couple of holes. The important part was that she had fun and enjoyed the process immensely!

The lesson learned for me – it doesn’t have to be perfect as long as you enjoy it.

Sidewalk Painting

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Today, we took our art outside! The girls have been wanting to spend as much time outside as possible since the weather has been absolutely perfect.

I had planned on doing sidewalk painting during our art week anyways and this was the perfect day for it.

This is one of those projects that everyone is doing. Of course, everyone is doing it because it’s tons of fun and easy to prepare too! I used this post by Pink and Green Momma for inspiration and to find out how to make the paint.

The combination that worked well for me was one part cornstarch to one part water. I was also very generous with the food coloring. Keep in mind when making sidewalk paint, it will dry lighter and will also look chalky, thanks to the cornstarch.

We had great fun and I wished I had brought a paint brush out for myself. The paint was just way too tempting! We painted blobs and lines, circles and splotches. We learned that splatter painting was kind of cool and even made a few rainbows.

Our colors got all mixed up.Yellow turned to lime green and blue turned to teal. Of course, that just added to the fun!

And when we were all done, we took the muffin tin full of the leftover paint (which actually wasn’t much) and tossed the paint out onto the driveway. Splatter painting at its best!

This project was fun, cheap and relatively easy to prepare. We’re definitely going to do this again and again!

Cardboard Roll Stamping

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I’ve been hoarding empty toilet paper rolls lately (yes, an embarrassing admission). So to avoid ending up on an episode of Hoarders and also to make my husband happy, I decided it was time to use up some of them.I had recently ran across the idea of toilet paper roll stamping on Tot School and decided to give it a go. I squished the rolls into shapes at one end and set out a few colors of tempura paint (I loosened the paint up a bit with water because it seemed a bit too thick for this project).

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The girls were eager to get started, as you can probably tell by the hand hovering over the paint! My requests of “let Mommy take a quick picture” were just not heeded. Oh well, I let them go at it.

They started stamping and enjoyed the process immensely. Then AJ discovered that you could mix colors by dipping your roll in multiple colors of paint. Then Lizzie decided to get her fingers involved. Suddenly…

Yes, indeed, cardboard roll stamping evolved into handprint art! Look at those hands!

The girls used up many pieces of paper and all the paint I had set out. They had tons of fun and I’m proud of myself for just sitting back and letting them create (which is sometimes quite hard for me). Take a look at all of the finished products!

What have you been creating lately?

Window Art

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Art doesn’t have to always be confined to paper or even clay. After bookmarking this wonderful post by You’ll Thank Me One Day and arming myself with the revolutionary idea that wet craft foam sticks to windows, I set the girls to work.They each had a bowl of water, a paint brush and a bowl of craft foam shapes. The original concept was to paint the back of the shapes, then stick them on the window.

Well, evidently that wasn’t a satisfactory way to do this. The girls immediately started painting the water directly on the window then sticking the pieces on. Well, that works too!

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They stuck and stuck and stuck. They experimented a bit and learned that you can dip your shapes in water and they’ll stick to the window as well. That was a revolutionary idea for these two!

All in all, they loved this project.I know they’ll be asking to do it again and again and I’ll pull out the bowl of foam shapes again and again.

After all, what’s not to love. It’s relatively mess free (other than wiping up water from the floor) and it kept little feet from getting underneath me while cooking dinner (loved that bonus feature).

The next time you need to spark a little bit of creativity, remember, wet foam sticks to glass!