table of paper - treasure

Eli has been caught a lot stealing the texta's off the arts n crafts table. This boy has a creative itch that needed scratching. Not satisfied with a4 printer paper, or the cheap n cheerful big scrap book i bot them he will draw on anything. If you can't beat em, join em. Cover your coffee table, or dining table in paper, stick it together. I need to go and get an end of roll paper from our local newspaper that would have been really easy. But instead i had a roll of very cheap and nasty baking paper that i had decided was really no good for cooking. Sticky tape it doen to your table, place a container of pens in middle and its perfect for felt tip pen mayhem!

 The boys both did a bit of drawing, Eli was beside himself with joy he kept pulling an 'OH wow' face he spent ages drawing while Flynn played 'wheres my water'. After much drawing, pen tapping and twinkle star singing and  star drawing Eli  had, had enough and got more interested in throwing the pens than drawing with his mumma. He left to go jump on the trampoline, Flynns computer time was up so i coaxed him down to the coffee table drawing board. He needs a lot more encouraging to draw these days, but after i drew some dragon looking creatures and a awful knight he happily coloured in and made up a story to go with the picture. A lovely way to spend one on one time with my boys and i love how having an entire table top lets drawings and stories sprall nad spill out.

i hope you like this simple idea and try it out in your house, love sassy

lumpy bumpy road playdough - teusday treasure

Ok so i like making play dough for my boys its a good busy thing, today i was inspired by one of our favourite books, roadworks by Sally Sutton pictures by Brian Lovelock.

Its a great book for boys but im sure girls would like it too, flynn knows it off by heart. Lots of diggers and noisy sounds, so i made my usual play dough and added some black lentils to to the very dark blue and some linseed's to the yellow. It was fabulous, the more you move the play dough the lentils kind of bounce out at you. It looks like the speckled road in the book and we had a lovely play together making roads, pathways for pedestrians. We put up peg signs and planted pasta flowers. All in all it was a good time.

Snow in the tropics - tuesday treasure

Late again sassy, tsk tsk, well thats what happens when your living in snotsville, coughing grumpy children are wearisome to the mum.

Ok so my Flynn has been saying that it will be christmas when it snows, poor child has no idea that it really will never snow here. Christmas will be 30 something degrees celcius that about 86 in farenheit. With some christmas's past having 90% humidity....yuk hot and sticky basically were living in warm soup. On tv he has seen that christmas and snow go hand in hand...."grandma, it will be christmas time when its snowing and santa hohoho man will come with presents!"
His heart is set on snow, so i have been thinking about how i could manufacture some snow for him. Whatching a grown up movie, 'i don't know how she does it' this week and seeing the snow fluttering down gave me a nice and easy idea - A Snowy Sticky Contact picture!!

So i Cut the sheet of contact in half, saving one bit for the top. I ripped up lots of white paper into tiny peices, i got out some cotton woll balls and musten't forget the glitter! So you place on peice of cantact on the table, take the paper off it and sprinkle your ripped up paper so it falls like snow, then we took our cotton balls and made little mounds in the corners, to look like snow setteling on the window sill. Then he glittered. Then very carefully i placed the other bit of contact over the top and flynn pressed it together so it stuck well.




Then i put it on his window...magic..he sat back and contemplated his snow. Im going to assume that meant he liked it, hes not as forthcoming with enthusiasm when hes got the flu.
love sassy

christmas paper - tuesday treasure (a day late)

Its time for us to post some overseas Christmas goodies and we need some paper, so Flynn and i got busy today with some rollers and blue paint. I know that chrissy paper is cheap, but i think presents to loved ones wrapped in home made paper is a more thoughtful way to give gifts. Also it gives Flynn and opportunity to paint on really big bits of paper and that's always fun. It also makes the lead up to christmas that much more exciting for kids if they are involved in all the steps of gift giving. Flynn has been subjected to many christmas shopping trips lately as i madly try to get it done before the shops get to catastrophic. So he has helped choose presents, now he gets to make the paper, he will also be making cards and i may even employ his elfish little hands to manage the sticky tape at wrapping time. He will have a good understanding this way of the joy of gift giving, and i hope too that he will see christmas is about giving to loved ones not just about what hes getting.

ok so how did we make our christmas paper? We had some paper from flynn's daddy that he no longer needed, we got some silver paint and some blue paint, some little sponge rollers and i cut out some stencils. very basic stencils. I cut out a snowman and a snowflake and this was ok, but i cut them out of paper, big mistake they started to break and rip after the 3rd rollering. I then cut some stars out of a empty cat bikkie box and this worked fantastic. I cut one really big star, flynn really liked this one, and a few small stars. The biggest difference i noticed was he struggled with the first stencils because he was rollering around them, needed lots of help. But with the star stencils he was rollering the inside shape the star itself and this clicked with him so much better, interesting that the negative positive aspect would make a difference but at nearly four i can understand its easier to see what your doing. We quickly filled up two big pieces of paper, the silver paint was not bold enough so we combined the blue with it to get a shiny blue paint. I think the paper has worked out rather pretty, i think the key to stencil paper is to keep the stencils simple.

If your having trouble with the drawing up of a stencil you can always print a basic star from the computer, or just let loose and remember that your kids are very forgiving and will love whatever you do! my stars are a bit wonky x x

sassy

linked on mommy club wednesday linky & Its Playtime & tgif linky party & fun stuff fridays

black mail - tuesday treasure

Flynn and Eli made some black mail today. I had lots of envelopes and i gathered some balack art mediums, ink, black crayon, charcoal, and some sponge brushes and a little elephant stamp. I showed Flynn how the charcoal differed from the crayon by smudging it and layering it and he took to it like a duck to water. He loved the push pull quality of charcoal, he liked when i wrote his name that he could slowly dissapate it with his fingers. He stamped and dribbled the watered down ink. He enjoyed the activity and because it was monotone he really noticed the difference in the mediums, and enjoyed their unique effects and played with this for the same amount of time that he would if hed had lots of colours to choose from, he never asked for any other colours he was content to make letters for his grandma. They can play post offices this afternoon together. Eli liked being incuded but was mostly interested in stitting on the table and dribbling the ink over his legs.

I popped this blog post onto Milk and Cuddles wednesday Linky 

& playtime linkyn over on The imagination Tree