Painting with water

King Declan and Thalia painting it up

 We love to paint!!!
My munchkins often ask me if they can do painting as they enjoy it so much :)

Painting opens up a child's world of colour and imagination. Children revel in the experience of brushing, splattering, dripping, squeezing and squelching paint. The resulting picture is much less important than the creative process and the enjoyment of the experience.

Painting is bound to make quite a mess.....well at least sometimes.

Why not paint with water on a nice sunny day to make for some exciting outside water play.
Easy to prepare, no cleaning involved, no mess, cheap and fun fun fun.

 All you need is a bucket, bowl or container of water and some paint brushes and the fun can begin.

Fill your bucket with water.
Find a suitable surface for painting such as paths, walls, fences and so on.

My munchkins as you can see from the photo's were thrilled...
Thalia painted the house walls while King Declan painted his Castle!!! :P
As the painting and their little imaginations grew they moved on to painting/washing outdoor toys, painting the fence, painting pavers, watching how painting things changed it's colour and watched as the hot sun dried the "paint"

Endless possibilities to explore and all of it based around water.....a great activity now the days are getting hotter.


Other things to try:

Using paint rollers instead of paint brushes
Paint shadows
Add colour to the water.

Encourage your children to embrace the world of painting and they won't even now that they are learning new concepts, colour recognition, painting techniques, using their fine and gross motor skills, expressing themselves on a different level and so much more......all while having a blast :D

Bringing the outdoors in

I'm sure we all have those days where the weather is not kind enough to make it a good outside play day, weather it be rain, wind or heat.

.
In most cases this situation gives children the crazies and everyone seems to verge on insane!!
.

....well this is what happened to us last week, the rain was thumping down on the roof and it was windy, of course all my munchkins wanted to do was plead to go outside so I made a bargain.....we all got to get dressed in wet weather clothes to make a quick trip outside to collect a selection of leaves to be the subjects of our art morning.

.

We selected different shaped leaves, each with their own texture and character. Spiky, smooth, fury, long, thin, fat, strong, fragile, light etc

On arrival back in the house after removing wet shoes, shaking umbrella's and drying off with a towel we got to work. Carefully drying our leaves while we examined them closer.

.

The paints and paper came out and I demonstrated how if we paint a leaf all over and put it on the paper giving it a firm but gentle push, when we take the leaf away we can see a leaf pattern on the paper.

.

Well their eye's lit up and they wanted to have a go, Thalia needed a little help of course but Declan enjoyed exploring the different shapes and patterns he could make with the leaves.

.

Our morning turned from insane ranting and pleading to
happiness and fun as we brought outside in to play :)
.

The munchkins were also very pleased when a few days later they spotted some big new spring flowers in the garden. Declan was quick to tell us that they had grown bigger and bigger because of the rain and had decided to pop out and say hello.

planning to paint...what fairy fun!!!

My love of drawing, paint and exploring imagination has returned and I'm excited.

After constantly thinking over the past year "mmm I really have to get Thalia's paintings started!!!", it's actually happening..better late than never hey :P

To fill you in- For Declan's 1st Birthday I had schemed up, sketched,painted and hung a set of 3 paintings for his bedroom to the theme of knights, dragons and horses.

The top photo shows a close up of Declan's centre painting and the bottom photo of all 3 paintings together

I had planned to do the same for Thalia by her 1st birthday but it didn't happen :( along with being busy and probably a bit of laziness in there too.

I have been sketching for months now,going between themes of Princess and Fairy - at last I have my first sketch that I am happy with! horrah

I decided on a Fairy theme and this is the sketch for the centre painting of the three, it combines Thalia's love of books, fairy's, flowers and butterfly's...now for the canvas and paint!

will keep you posted.