June 2011

Thrifting for the Mud Pie Kitchen

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.  – Joseph Conrad Did you know that yesterday was International Mud Day? One of my fondest childhood memories is pretending to feed my friend Alexandra’s cat the ooey gooey mud pies [...]

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Interview with Lisa Chouinard from Feto Soap

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I’m excited to be joined today by soap artisan Lisa Chouinard who hand makes small batches of soap from her shop, Feto Soap, in Austin, Texas. We made soap last month for Mother’s Day, so when I recently learned about Feto Soap at the Maker Faire, I thought it would be fun to glean some tips from a [...]

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Face Collage for Scribblers

When I was an art teacher, the youngest age group I worked with was Kindergarten so I rarely had the chance to witness a child’s transition from scribbling to representational drawing. My three year old daughter is at the precipice of representational drawing and it’s an exciting place to be, but she can get frustrated [...]

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Pounded Flower Bookmarks

Last week I wrote a guest post on The Crafty Crow where I shared instructions for making Pounded Flower Bookmarks. This high-energy (and very loud) art activity tied in with one of our favorite kids+art books, A Day With No Crayons. The set-up only requires a handful of colorful flowers, a pounding tool (like a [...]

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Land Art with Children

We were invited by Rashmie of Mommy Labs to join Forest Fiesta, an online celebration of World Environment Day (June 5) with her and about twenty other arts and education bloggers. This year’s host country was India, and Rashmie came up with the inspired idea to act as our Indian blogging host. Thanks, Rashmie! When you reach [...]

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Mud Pie Kitchen: Beta Version

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This may not look like much, but we’ve been testing our mud pie kitchen and getting a fresh perspective on what works. It used to reside in another part of our yard, and I thought that moving it might make it more accesible. And it did!! I fashioned the stove/sink from two wooden crates I [...]

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Corncob Popcorn Experiment

We visited a local farm a few weeks ago and after actually milling dried corn into animal feed, we were sent home with a cob of dried organic corn to make into popcorn. Did you know that it’s perfect for popping? I didn’t, so for us this was a true, yummy experiment. We put the [...]

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Six Ways to Take Art Outdoors

The weather is heating up over here in Northern California, and we’re spending most of our time outdoors. If you’ve been following my dilemma about coaxing my daughter into our garden, I’m thrilled to share that we spent about an hour puttering and potting out there this afternoon, and this was after we spent three [...]

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50 Art Materials for Toddlers

About three weeks ago I asked my Facebook friends to consider a list of essential toddler art materials, and I received some wonderful responses and additions to the list. Thank you to Linda, Di, Miranda, Sally, and Tina for sharing your thoughts with me. Fifty is a big number, so don’t fret if you can’t gather [...]

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