Princess Week: Princesses Paint on Trees?

Friday was our day out, and we had so much fun! We started with a parenting group meetup at Creating Artists for Tomorrow, which was amazing! If you live in the Greenville, SC area and haven't been there, you're really missing out! Then we spent a couple of hours at the library before finally heading home.

Table Time

Creating Artists for Tomorrow is an art education program near our house that offers lots of art classes for different ages and levels. We had never been there before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. They offer a program called Table Time for children to explore with 4-5 different art activities. M was a little overwhelmed at first because there was so much to choose from, but once she got started she had an amazing time!

Here are some of the activities they had set up:

Painting with Cars

There was a bin filled with different types of toy cars and trucks. They had different sizes and numbers of wheels, and some had different textured treads on the tires. M spent a good amount of time experimenting with the different cars to see what kind of tracks they would make. She also liked mixing the blue and white paint.






Water Table

M probably spent most pf her time inside at the water table. There were just three small cups and a paintbrush, but for some reason she found this fascinating. She spent a long time pouring the water from cup to cup, and trying to trap the water between two cups. Whatever works, right?

Play-doh

We have play-doh out at our house a lot, but this was different because of the cool textured rolling pins, and the fact that they had uncolored play-doh and food coloring to mix your own colors. The rolling pins were the perfect size (I need to get some of these!).

Painting Outside
This was clearly the highlight of the day - painting trees! We went outside to find paint cups, paintbrushes, and jugs of paint. M started with red, and asked if she could paint one of the trees. Sure, why not? Everything in the yard was painted - the house, the trees and bushes, the grass, the steps. It was a child's dream, nothing was off-limits! M was so excited, and it was really cool experience for her to paint on something other than paper. I'd like to try something like this at home (not painting our trees or house... but some kind of nature painting - bark, leaves, sticks.)

 

Other activities not pictured: finger painting with shaving cream and food coloring (M isn't huge on getting her hands messy, so she didn't do this long enough for me to get a picture), painting with golf balls (this looked so cool - dip golf balls in paint and roll them around on paper to make designs - but I couldn't get M interested), and easel painting (we have an easel at home, so M wasn't interested - too many other new things).

We will definitely be back!

Library

I love our library. So does M. I literally have to drag her out when it's time to go! We're planning a Transportation Theme week for next week, so we picked out a bunch of books about cars, trucks, planes, trains and boats. I have a feeling this theme may last for more than one week...

Our library has a children's room with toys, books and puppets in the back of the children's area. They regularly move things around and rotate some of the toys, so I was excited to see a couple of new things on this visit. As soon as we walked in M noticed the Goldilocks and the Three Bears puppets that were stuck on the wall. I never noticed that the wall on one side of the room was actually like a giant felt board! The puppets had velcro on the back so they would stick to the wall - so cool!

I told the story of Goldilocks, and M moved the puppets around as we went (tasting the porridge, sitting in the chairs, laying on the beds).

They also had some different puzzles out on the tables. We have a bunch of nice puzzles at home that M is never interested in, but she loves all of the puzzles at the library. Weird.

She was pretty tired from all of the excitement of the day, and fell asleep in the car.

We wrapped up the day with a pink pig collage to finish P is for Princess week.

Check out all of the other princess activities we did this week: P is for Princess.

Princess Week: Snow White Apples and Letters to Cinderella

Fairy Tales
Yesterday we made Snow White's Poison Apples from The Fairy Tale Cookbook. While M ate, I read the story of Snow White from Grimm's Fairy Tales. The recipe actually called for grenadine to color the apples, but I decided to use cherry pie filling instead. I cored the apples and peeled the top half. I poured the cherry pie filling into a dish, and placed the apples upside down (peeled side down) for about 5 minutes to let the apple soak up the color. I moved the apples to a baking dish, filled the middle of the apples with cherry pie filling, and baked them at 300*F for about 30 minutes. Every ten minutes or so I spooned some of the cherry pie sauce from the dish over the top of the apples so they didn't dry out.

Of course, she wanted a second story, so we moved on to Cinderella. After we finished that story, I figured it would be a good time to get out our stationery and write a letter to Cinderella. I wrote a short letter, and M decorated it with princess stickers. I showed her how to address an envelope, add our return address and a stamp, and put it in the mailbox. I hope Cinderella writes back!

 

If you'd like to try yourself, mail a letter to the Disney character of your choice at:

Walt Disney World Communications
P.O. Box 10040
Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040


Letter P Collage
Our final activity of the day was a quick sticker collage. M loves princesses, and I really thought this week was going to be so easy, but I found that we ran through most of our activities in just a few days. I needed an activity to keep her happy while we waited for my husband to get home from work, so I rummaged through her sticker box and pulled out anything that started with the letter p: princesses, Paddington Bear, pizza, penguin, pig... whatever I could find.  

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To see what we did earlier in the day, click here.
Check out the rest of our Princess Week activities!

Princess Week: Toddler Friendly Stained Glass

When I think of princesses (and royalty in general), I think of castles, jewels, and elaborate architecture and furnishings. I wanted to find an easy way for M to recreate some of that majesty, so I decided that we would make some toddler-friendly stained glass.

I started with stained glass templates that I printed from here (turtle) and here (medieval patterns). The directions on this site described how to use colored glue to trace the lines on a pattern and then paint with watercolors. M doesn't have the dexterity to trace lines with glue, and I didn't feel like doing it myself, so I came up with a better (read: easier) plan.

I cut a piece of clear contact paper that was the same size as the printed pattern. I then traced the pattern onto the non-sticky side of the contact paper with a sharpie. I peeled off the backing to expose the sticky side, and taped the contact paper sticky side up on M's table.

I then gave M several sheets of tissue paper in various colors. I happened to have some tissue paper with glitter - bonus! M tore off small pieces of tissue paper and stuck it to the contact paper to complete her design. I cut around the outline of the template when she was done, and we were left with a super easy faux stained glass design to hang on the window!

I designed a stained glass castle, and M had a meltdown because she decided that she really wanted to do a castle too (I think she probably could have used a nap at this point...). I made a second castle (it literally took about 2 minutes to trace the design), and gave her some sequins to decorate the castle before adding the tissue paper. She was overtired at this point, so I ripped larger pieces of tissue paper to get her through the castle faster.

I preferred the look of the "glass" made with smaller pieces of tissue paper, but I did like that the overlapping of the larger pieces gave us the opportunity to talk about color mixing. I think it would be neat to make a kind of color wheel with tissue paper on contact paper to show how primary colors mix to make secondary colors. I'll have to keep that idea in mind for another time....

Here are a few pictures to show what we earlier that day:

Meetup with Friends:
We are members of a few different meetup and local Facebook groups, and I love how easy it is to find people to hang out with! It seems like there is always something going on (in fact, many times I have to choose between events happening simultaneously). What was that about unsocialized homeschool kids again?

 

M and two other friends played on a small playground, then we went on a short hike, and wrapped up with a picnic lunch.

Mini Hike with Sticky Bracelets
One of the other moms brought a roll of painter's tape to make sticky bracelets for the hike. She made quick bracelets for everyone with the sticky side out, and the kids had a blast collecting things in the woods to stick to their bracelets (and ours!). M had quite the collections of flowers and leaves by the time we returned!

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To see what we did for the rest of the day, click here.
Check out the rest of our Princess Week activities!



Linking Up With:
TGIF Linky Party
For the Kids Friday
Homeschool Creations Preschool and Kindergarten Community
Show and Share Saturday Link Up

Princess Week: Sensory Play

What Princess Week would be complete without a Royal Tea Party?


We started the morning with some pancakes (I used bottle cap letters to spell the word "pancake" so she could see that it started with the letter p), then moved to the playroom to look at her calendar and see what was in the Mystery Bag.

We read the two books (What Is a Princess? and OP book from My First Bob Books), then talked about what the cookie cutter and birthday candles could be used for.

We immediately pulled out her basket with several colors of play-doh, princess cookie cutters (glass slipper, castle and crown), a circle cookie cutter, a small cookie spatula, a small rolling pin, and beads and birthday candles for decorating.

She got right to work flattening the dough and cutting out different shapes. She added some birthday candles first, then added the different pink and purple beads to decorate the cookies.

When she was finished decorating (which took quite some time - she was very thorough), she preheated her oven and put the baking sheet in to bake the cookies.

While the cookies were in the oven, we took out her new Minnie Teapot Set and the table setting placemat I printed from Simply Fresh Designs. We worked together on the first place setting, adding a large plate, napkin, spoon, knife, fork, glass and cup and saucer. She then went around the table and set out the remaining dishes.

We put her flowers in the middle of the table, along with the teapot, milk and sugar. 

 

We got the cookies out of the oven, and she decided which cookies would be best for each of her "friends." She also poured tea and lemonade for each of her guests. She was really proud of herself when everyone was served!

After the tea party she wanted to read a story about princesses. We read "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" from Grimm's Fairy Tales - (Free Kindle Version), followed by "The Princess and the Frog." She followed along with her princess sticker set (can you see the princess standing by the well?).

She noticed the Letter P box when she was putting her princess stickers away, and took it out long enough to look at all of the objects. (She's making a face because I "stole" some of Daddy's pistachios to put in her box!)

After lunch and rest time, we went to the grocery store to stock up on ingredients for our Fairy Tale Cookbook meals. While I baked Snow White's Poison Apples (that we'll eat tomorrow), M baked a cake for me in her kitchen. Isn't it beautiful??

I bought an orange to use the zest in a recipe, and M wanted to taste it. I cut it into quarters for her to eat, but she started squeezing the juice out on her tray. I figured if she was going to juice it she might as well do it right, so I gave her my hand juicer and showed her how to squeeze the juice into a glass. This was a huge (messy) hit!

We wrapped up the day with some of Strega Nona's pasta. I don't have the book, so we watched this PBS Video instead.

Disclaimer: All Amazon links are Affiliate links.

To see everything we have done this week, check out the first post in this series: P is for Princess.