plip, plop, drip, drop- rainy day crafts

With the rainy weather coming and going for the last month now, our house has embraced the opportunity of craft time around the theme of rain!! surprise surprise
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needless to say it can be hard at times to entertain little ones and big ones for that matter when outside is wet, wet wet and all one can hear is the pitter patter or gush pour of the ever constant rain :S
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one must muster all their energy into coming up with activities, idea's, opportunities and play, at a time when imagination and

creative spirit may be the only way to avoid going bonkers!!
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I wanted to share some of the crafts we have made

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Plip, Drop, Drip, Drop rain

To go with the rain theme, as well as the obsession my children now seem to have with Umbrella's I came up with this craft activity. .
I gave them both a sheet of white paper with a silhouette outline of 2 children cuddling. Cut out an Umbrella out of patterned patter and put it all together with glue.
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After supplying them with blue paint, paint brushes, chucky glitter shapes, gloopy glue and white cotton wool balls- they had everything to make their very own magic rain creation.
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I found this cute little rhyme to set the scene for them:
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Plip, plop, drip, drop
The rain begins to patter.
Plip, plop, drip, drop

Watch the raindrops spatter. 

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  Plip, plop, drip, drop

  The puddles are shinny and round.

  Plip, plop, drip, drop

  They're scattered all over the ground.

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  It was immensely cute when Declan suggested that the two  

  children where none other than "my cute sister Thalia and

  Declan" -I love that my munchkins have a special little bond

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  Thalia loved playing with the glitter and Declan had a great time making the puddles with paint and glitter combined, even a rainy cloud made an appearance.

The cotton wool clouds just weren't Thalia's thing, typical girl sticking to all things bling!

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Rainy weather man
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Declan and I got our crafty hands together to make our very own weather man and a very stylish weather man is he. Okay so he might be made out of a toilet roll but he is transformed with much imagination and love to become what he is today sitting on a shelf very proudly, he even has his own custom made umbrella :P
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 Here he is in all his pride styled and created for the rainy weather.

Declan had much delight in sprinkling the rain (rice grains) over him to create the pitter patter of rain.

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Obsessions of the heart:

Simply too cute not to share

Firstly Thalia's creation to the left was created after Thalia found this very special bubble picture in our collage box.

Thalia is besotted with all things bubbles at the moment and can relate most things in life back to bubbles :)
So when she found this picture she was very quick to show mummy, a decision was made with Mummy's help to stick the picture on a piece of paper for painting time.
Thalia enjoyed using one of her other favorite items...FOOD  to paint away and create her own apple bubbles.
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 She was so amazed when I cut the apple in twain and said we could use it for painting, my little miss piggy may of been offended at first that I would use precious food in such a way but she soon grew to love the way the apple made shapes on her special paper.:)

 Declan's creation's above also show some of his obsessions of late.

 The painting up the top has been titled by Declan "the fly and the hungry frog"

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 Declan stared his painting by painting a big green blob and asked "what animal is green mummy?" to  which I answered "a frog". Declan quickly made it his task to create a frog crafting his green blob into not just any frog, but 'the hungry frog' from one of his favorite books.

In the book the frog has big googly eyes so Declan told Mummy in good time that he must have some googly eyes for his frog.

Mummy whipped out some plastic crafty eyes from the cupboard and off he went.

Soon he added 4 long legs, a red tounge and the frogs lunch- a fly who also desperately needed googly eyes :P

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It was so cute to see his mind at work, focusing on his special goal to create a much loved character from the pages of a book.

Although the result of the journey is adorable, it was the journey that hit that special spot.

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The painting below shows a one minute painting by Declan which after much consideration he slushed his hand in the blue paint, slapped a little hand print on his paper and exclaimed "my best colour is blue!" :)

He is certainly making it clear  in more than one way lately his love for the colour blue: choosing clothes, pointing out blue objects and having a soft spot for all things blue.

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It's a wonderful thing to see both my children's personalities coming out more and more each day and crafting is one of the many ways in which they can express themselves, we love craft!!!

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So what crafts are you doing today??

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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