Raita reading to Freya

Watercolor painting

Freya would be absolutely thrilled if we had painting or play dough time every day. Today I broke out the water colors and gave her a little lesson.

Items you need:
paper towel
small glass of water
water color paint box
assortment of brushes
thick paper card stock will work for this if you can't find water color paper

set up your table as shown.

Make sure that you wet your paper before painting and also your water color paints. I usually just run both under the tap water quickly.

First talk about how we dip our brush in the water, dab it on the paper towel then put it in the paint box. This will help to keep your paint box from quickly becoming brown.

Then they can paint away. Usually when they start they like to push the brush down and scribble like they would with crayons. It is pretty important to point out that we pull the brush instead of pushing the brush so that we don't ruin the bristles.

Then to change colors, we always put the brush back into the water, dab it on the paper towel then get our new color.

It may seem complicated but my 3 year old Freya was very happy to do each step. And she was delighted when I pointed out that if we pull the brush we can make lines!

We haven't talked much about what happens when we mix the colors. That is next!

My favorite book about painting is Paint Day, Bing! We love this because he paints with water colors and they we're always reminding him Don't Spill the water Bing! I love how the water gets dirtier and dirtier at each page.

Freya caught a lizard. It's missing it's tail and is tiny but amazingly still alive. She had it in the house and was hiding it in her pudgy little hands. I told her to take it outside and she pitched a fit because she really wants to show Chloe. So we put it in a jar with holes in the lid. We also had to feed it grass. We read Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse last night and I am wondering if she thinks it is the magic lizard in the book. HMMMMMM



And on to pumpkins and baking.
My dad use to always make us pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They were the absolute best cookies. You just make your standard CCC and then add half a can of pumpkin to the batter. I saw this recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. Chloe really wanted to take a picture of the batter. It looks pretty disgusting but I am telling you, these are better than pumpkin pie.

Freya has informed me that she is a super model. Not sure where this came from but she seems to think she has it all down. Here she is striking a pose, I love the face.

We may need to get Fancy Nancy from the library today.

Freya and I attend many play dates. We usually have a craft of some sort to do. Here we are painting an egg crate and transforming it into a caterpillar.

We spent the play date reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar

while eating many of the items the caterpillar ate!

To make an eggshell caterpillar:

Cut off the top of the egg crate. You can use this for your paint pallet. Then cut the egg crate into half lengthwise.

Have your child paint the caterpillar.

Once dry, hot-glue some googely eyes on the front. Then poke two holes in the top of the "head" and put a pipe cleaner onto each hole so each end sicks out of the top. You can then shape the pipe cleaners to make them look like antennae.