Painting and Stamping This Week

Painting (which is an outside activity given that D doesn't "get" that everything must stay in the kitchen & away from the carpet!), has tapered off since the temps have been up around 90 for a few weeks now.

Once we revisit painting, I'm hoping to:

*get out the thicker fingerpaints & let the kids make big messes on baking sheets :)

*use thicker paint and let the kids use forks & other objects (play doh "cookie" cutters) to play with texture & shapes

*hopefully have her trace the cookie cutter shapes with a paintbrush, q tip, or even her finger to get a better sense of the fine motor motions of lines & curves

*Best of all, see how D (15 months) does alongside E at the picnic table with a few colors of paint & brushes (will he stick to the paper, or will my basil & the BBQ see some action)

Until then (indoors), I"ll get out the

*basic paint with water

*scissors (coupons, scissor practice, greeting cards)

*let E play with our new & huge stamp pads (both thumbprint art & her new princess stamps). http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?product=3755&keyword=stamp&scategoryid=0 (oops - they're much bigger than I expected) and http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?product=25036&keyword=princess&scategoryid=0 (great storytelling potential later, but for now, just playtime :)

*somewhere we have a set of melissa & doug animal stampers as well

* I'd also like to see how foamy our new stamp pads are & if they have a fabric "top", then I'll get out the letter stamps and my old stamps from my childhood (nice big tub of those), otherwise, we might still need.

*the new stamp pads are big enough for handprint art (with minimal prep & possibly baby wipe clean up??) Might be time to break out a new pack of construction paper!

*the little alpabet stamps worked great last week (until I turned my back to wash a few dishes & she turned her fingers blue by really getting into her project) - those were especially fun for her and she played with letter identification & orientation, different font recognition & also stamping on a line (her choice) which further developed hand/eye coordination as well as "writing on a line" (sort of :)

*it's also time to find the "magic marker pens" that have mysteriously disappeared. We also have some sets of the tiny letter stamps (pictured), which have worked well as a random activity

OK - guess the dining table will still be our staging ground! :) Maybe I can just use the extra ikea storage tubs to figure out our activities one day at a time.