Chenille Stems

This week's art project unfolded quite on its own, which can be exciting and worrisome for a mom who likes to keep her house tidy! As was mentioned in an earlier post, I have made a lot of our art materials accessible to the girls, with the exception of paints and paint brushes. Yesterday I went for a short run and left the girls in dad's care, and when I returned I found chenille stems (formerly known as pipe cleaners) scattered across the floors in basically every room in the house. Rebecca and Elliot had found the unopened bag of 100 assorted chenille stems and quickly emptied the entire contents of the bag as they traipsed through the house, likely following the cat we are watching while grandparents are on vacation. After a quick moment of panic and a "What's going on here?" I realized that Rebecca was busy bending some of the chenille stems together into little creations. The following picture shows what she came up with.

The girls had also opened up a bag of beads and were stringing beads on the stems, or, in Elliot's case, stringing them on the stems and then slipping them off in rapid succession. For those with young toddlers like Elliot, chenille stems make an ideal material for stringing such beads as they are easy for little fingers to hold on to and the whole process is fabulous for strengthening dexterity. I have to admit that, while it sometimes makes me anxious to think about what can come from two young children exploring art materials at their own speed (this morning Elliot was putting colored pencils inside everyone's shoes), I am encouraged by the fact that they are starting to let their creativity take a life of its own! Yesterday for Father's Day Rebecca decided to decorate the house by stringing ribbons around all the door knobs, and she had so much fun doing it!

Candle Dipping

Last Friday our family took advantage of our new summer schedule and travelled up to the foothills for a day of hiking and enjoying Columbia State Historical Park. While at Columbia we enjoyed ice cream (much deserved after our morning hike), panning for gold, and candle dipping, and it is the latter that I am using for last week's art project. For $2 Rebecca chose a plain white candle and, with help from dad, dipped the candle in several different colors of hot wax, giving the candle a layered look. She chose red as her base color (no surprise here), and proceeded to add layers of orange, green and blue. Elliot made it clear that she wanted to take her turn as well, but I couldn't justify taking the chance of her sticking her little fingers into the pools of hot wax. Maybe in another year darling.

More Paint

In case you haven't noticed as yet, my favorite medium by far is paint. I think Rebecca's is also. The other day we were at a concert in the park when we found a bunch of magnolia leaves laying on the ground. I love how large and waxy magnolia leaves are, and as soon as I pointed the leaves out to the girls they immediately set to filling their little arms full of leaves. On the drive home we were brainstorming what we could use the leaves for, and Rebecca decided she wanted to paint them. So I pulled out the paint and brushes, put the girls in play clothes (or no clothes as in Elliot's case), and we painted the leaves. Rebecca diligently covered the entire back side of every leaf, while Elliot, noticing her bare skin, decided instead to paint her body.

I guess that should teach me not to let her paint unclothed! The funniest part was that she named each body part as she was painting it, saying "toes," "knees," etc.

After the paint dried I took thread and strung the leaves up as a sort of mobile, using two sticks that Rebecca collected on another trip to the park as the cross bars. The girls really liked the result. As the leaves twist on the threads you can watch the painted sides disappear behind the unpainted sides and vice versa. We might make a trip to the craft store and pick up some pastel-colored beads to string on the threads to dress them up a bit. Perhaps we should even look to add some different shaped leaves as well.

I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas!

This next project was entirely for educational purposes. I have been thinking a lot about the nutrition of my children recently, so I thought I would spend some time teaching Rebecca about the food pyramid and the different food groups. If she had her way she would eat peanut butter crackers and pasta for every meal, and while she likes plenty of other foods as well, these are what she requests when given an open-ended meal choice.

To start us off I went to www.mypyramid.gov and printed off a personalized food pyramid for Rebecca which laid out how many ounces/cups of each food group a preschooler her age is to eat in one day. Next we flipped through magazines and cut out pictures of food to match and glue on each respective food group. Now Rebecca loves to use glue sticks. Unfortunately she loves them so much that they don't last very long before all of the glue has been used up and we find ourselves opening the packaging of a new stick.

Finally we made up a chart to keep track of her daily food habits, which she fills in after each meal. I thought that by showing her what the requirements are and how well (or not) she fulfills those requirements it would give her (and me) a better idea of what kind of food choices to make throughout the day. The next couple of photos are what we came up with. The chart is a sample chart from yesterday that includes everything except for afternoon snack and dinner, which I am proud to say ended up completely filled in by the time those two meals had been consumed.

After three days of filling out charts I think Rebecca is a little weary of it, so I won't press it further, but her pyramid is posted on the side of the refrigerator as a constant reminder of balanced eating. Where was Elliot during all of this? I set her up at the little table with stamps and stickers, which she seemed completely content with. She is still too young for scissors, and with her fondness for chapstick I'd hate to see what she does with glue!