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Play dough play with Cloud Dough

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Cloud Dough! Have you heard of it? Me either, and I thought I’ve heard of most everything arts+little kids related. Karen at Flight of Whimsy introduced me to the recipe, and as soon as I learned about it I knew my  3 year old would love it. The consistency of the dough is lovely to feel [...]

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Driftwood Sculptures and See-Saws

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We went to a San Gregorio State Beach, a beach absolutely littered with driftwood and some of the most wonderful soft sand. My 10-month old was in sand heaven! Driftwood sculptures (like the one at the top) spotted the sand for as far as the eye could see. (which wasn’t too far, truthfully, given all [...]

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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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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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Flour Sifter

We have a make-shift sensory tub that often makes its way into the middle of our kitchen where we conduct experiments, make “cakes and pies,” and mess around with the feel of stuff. Some of the things we’ve filled it with are dry beans, oobleck, jello, vinegar and baking soda, and rice. I’m always on [...]

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Creative Challenge #5: Plastic Bottles

Make something with Plastic Bottles In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to raise a little awareness toward the enormous amounts of plastic bottles used around the world, coupled with some thoughts on recycling and upcycling those bottles into creative products. My family is hooked on bubbly water, and while the number of bottles we [...]

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Growing Big Ideas

“Ideas aren’t self-contained things; they’re more like ecologies and networks. They travel in clusters.” -Kevin Kelly, Futurist and Author of What Technology Wants We had a big pile of CD cases, just waiting to be repurposed into…something! BioColors paints are known for their plasticity (they don’t crack like tempera), and I thought it we could [...]

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Funnel Painting

This was inspired by an idea we found in Mary Ann Kohl’s Preschool Art. I know I’ve said this many times before, but Mary Ann’s books are brimming with creative and engaging projects, and each of mine are dog-eared in a million places. We used materials that we already had around the house — low [...]

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