Glitter marble painting: Kid crafts

September 7, 2016September 1, 2016catherinemryan

Glitter gets a bad rap: It sticks to everything, makes its way into every crevice in your house and can apparently scratch a kid’s cornea—yada yada yada. But I am a Glitter Cheerleader.

I love the way glitter catches the light. I wear a craft project’s collateral glitter with pride, even days later. (Doesn’t glitter in your hair or on your blazer just say, “I’m a mom of a preschooler and I’m not afraid to flaunt it!”) And I love the way Peeper gets so freaking excited whenever I suggest we do a glitter art project.

The other day, when I suggested we try something new—glitter marble painting—was no exception. Her face lit up like a glittered disco ball.

Unclutter your kid’s art: Turn it into a masterpiece!

June 29, 2016catherinemryan

If you’re new ’round these parts, you might not know: Peeper loves art. She loves to paint. She loves to color. She loves to glue. She loves to squish her hands into finger paints and give herself a standing ovation, splattering red and blue all over the walls.

(Ok, that last one is more performance art, but still.)

All those days of keeping busy with kid crafts leads to a lot of saved projects. At one point, the kitchen counter, the wine rack, my work desk, the fridge and the dining room table were all buried under my preschooler’s crafts.

I knew something had to change. I had to unclutter my kid’s art.

Unclutter your kid's art by turning it into a masterpiece! Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

A fashionably fierce sweater craft

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016catherinemryan

Kids sweater craft: Princess and the Pony

Princesses are everywhere these days.

Disney has overrun the toy aisle, Pandora stations and the playground.

Now, I’m not a hater: I adore certain Disney movies, and Peeper’s first movie was Cinderella. But I can’t help but notice that a lot of princesses are, well, passive.

That is not the case with Princess Pinecone, the titular royalty in the picture book The Princess and the Pony.

A princess book with sass

Princess Pinecone lives in a society of warriors. But her parents haven’t quite caught on: They give her cutesy sweaters instead of cool warrior presents like shields, spiked belts or—what she truly covets—a fierce warrior horse.

When her birthday rolls around, she does get a horse—sort of. Princess Pinecone gets big-eyed, doughy pony who farts too much.

But she can’t give a birthday present back, she figures, so she keeps the pony. What happens at the next warrior brawl surprises everyone.

Getting crafty

After reading The Princess and the Pony about a hundred times, I made a book-inspired craft for Peeper. And I’m not the only one: Check out the brute-inspired crafts at the Raising Fairies and Knights Monthly Crafting Book Club!

Monthly Crafting Book Club

Princess Pinecone and the rest of the brutes in the book come to realize that cute can be strong, and you don’t have to be just fierce or just adorable—you can be both.

So Peeper and I created a fashionably fierce sweater craft.

This sweater craft is great for fine motor skills—though if your little is as young as Peeper is, she may need a little help winding the yarn around the paper.

Princess sweater craft

It’s also very open-ended. There’s no “right” way for the sweater craft to look: The process of winding and stamping (and hand-slapping, if you’re Peeper) is much more important than the final product.

After all, process art helps young kids feel more confident, since they don’t “fail” to make their project look identical to the model one, writes the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

So hit up your library for a copy of The Princess and the Pony, then join us for some cozy—and fierce—fun.

Kids sweater craft Princess and the Pony

Fashionably fierce sweater craft

Supplies

cardstock paper
yarn
painter’s tape
paint
cotton balls

Instructions

Cut out a sweater shape from a sheet of cardstock.
Tape one end of the yarn to the “back” of the sweater. Then have your child wind the yarn around the sweater. (You may have to help by guiding her hands or playing out the yarn.)
When your child is done wrapping, tape the tail of the yarn to the back of the sweater. This will secure the yarn so it doesn’t move.
Squirt out as many colors of paint as your child would like. Invite her to stamp the paper with a cotton ball (it’s so cozy, like a sweater!). The more she paints over the yarn and fills up the white space, the more contrast she’ll get.
When she’s done, untape and unwrap the yarn. She’ll see the white lines left by the yarn—giving her a striped sweater!

Don’t forget to try out the other The Princess and the Pony crafts at the Monthly Crafting Book Club!

Princess and the Pony monthly crafting book club

Celebrate summer with messy painting

June 20, 2016June 8, 2016catherinemryan

Art, at its best, is a full-body experience—at least according to my kids. And with summer here (happy first day of summer!), it’s the perfect time to get outside for some messy painting.

On a recent afternoon, Peeper, Kiwi and a few friends did just that. I squirted paint onto plates of shaving cream, and the kids dove in: Within minutes, we were all messy. And within minutes, we were all having so much fun.

After all, we often tell kids to be neat. Use a napkin. Don’t spill. Wash your hands. Keep your hands to yourself.

With the weather warming up, though, it’s a great excuse to play outside. And with a little set-up—and a lot of shaving cream—you can let your kids’ creativity go wild. Come on, color outside the lines!

Summer Fun Messy Painting Play Date - Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

5 Little Monkeys craft {with download!}

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016catherinemryan

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
“For the love of all things holy I am not reading this book one more time!”

5 Little Monkeys craft process art download I have a love/hate relationship with the book 5 Little Monkeys. After about the sixth time of reading it, all that repetition makes me want to jump off a bed and knock myself in the head.

But the repetition is great for pre-readers: Books that have repeating sequences, like 5 Little Monkeys, strengthens a child’s neural pathways and primes them for learning to read later. For example, all that repetition helps kids add to their vocabulary faster, reports research from the University of Sussex in the UK. And the familiar rhythms of a repetitive book helps that child remember what comes next—a skill that later helps them predict or hypothesize what comes next.

I saw this all in action with Peeper and 5 Little Monkeys. I used to pass the book back to her while we were driving around. After a while, she would “read” the book to herself—including counting down the number of monkeys.

All that repetition really worked!

Turns out the repetitive motion of painting is a great parallel for this story. When I found Raising Fairies and Knights’s Monthly Crafting Book Club, I was in: I wanted to make a fun art project that went along with 5 Little Monkeys, too!

You may also know what a proponent of process art I am. So I didn’t want to create a craft that had a clear expectation of how the craft should look in the end. Instead, I created a project that let Peeper do her own thang while staying true to the spirit of the book. And with my hand-drawn download, you can, too!

5 Little Monkeys craft process art download 5 Little Monkeys craft download Read more →

Toddler DIY: Coffee filter bouquets

October 5, 2015June 11, 2016catherinemryan

Not long ago, we learned our next-door neighbor was sick. She had surgery and was recovering quickly, but I wanted to send over something to show we’d been thinking of her.

Naturally, I wanted to involve Peeper. We set to making a paper bouquet of coffee filter flowers.

Lessons in empathy

Peeper is still too young to understand why we were making the bouquet, and thank goodness. How wonderful to be unaware of things like cancer, anesthesia and prognoses. But it’s important to instill the value of doing nice things for others, so we made our own thinking-of-you package instead of buying a bouquet or card at the store.

One of the nice things about these coffee filter flowers is you almost definitely have the materials on hand. What’s more, it’s ridiculously easy and simple enough for even toddlers to do.

What are you waiting for? Even if you don’t know someone who’s ill, you do know someone whose day would be brightened by a hand-made flower or two. Read more →

Painting birthday party: Making a group easel [tutorial!]

July 13, 2015October 31, 2016catherinemryan

Peeper loves to create, so when it came to planning her second birthday party, I knew I wanted to incorporate art. Thanks to getting almost no sleep and leaving most of the party prep till the morning of, I had to scale back some of our painting plans, but one activity made the cut: the group DIY easel.

Peeper and her friends got to paint alongside each other in our front yard, and each kiddo took home a piece of art (or several!). Peeper’s painting is now hanging on our wall above the dining table.

The setup was surprisingly easy—and cheap—and we’ve left it up in our yard for now. Peeper continues to use it, and when we do decide to take it down, we’ll recycle or reuse all the pieces for projects later!

Want to get in on the artistic action, too? Here’s how to make an easy group DIY easel for your kids to paint their own outdoor masterpieces. Read more →

What is process art? Letting kids craft whatever the eff they want

May 26, 2015February 28, 2018catherinemryan

Toddler process art clay — Process art: When a honey dipping stick becomes a ceramics tool

For anyone reading this blog, it should be no surprise that Peeper loves her some art. Most of her hands-on time is very open-ended: I set her up with some paper and crayons or a paper plate full of paint, then let her go wild. (And by wild, I mostly mean become speckled green, black and orange in art supplies.) I thought she was just intuitive; turns out she is loving her some process art. But what is process art?

It turns out that free-spirited approach to crafts is good for kids’ creativity. “Process art is more important than end product,” writes Rachelle Doorley, artist and author of Tinkerlab: A Hands-On Guide for Little Inventors, on her blog. And focusing too much on what kids make, and especially what projects are meant to look like, is stifling.

Doorley also polled a whole slew of educators, artists and parents on what they wished they’d known about kids’ art and rolled it up into a fantastic blog post. Just about everyone agreed that art is all about the doing—and encouraging kids’ creativity—not about what gets done.

Our favorite children’s books, illustration edition

April 17, 2014catherinemryan

It is National Library Week, and what better time to write another roundup of our favorite children’s books?

Especially at Peeper’s age, words are not the only important factor in a great book: Illustration is at least as equally compelling. So when I head to the board books section at my local library, I flip through the pages to see if I like the visuals as much as the topic.

If I don’t like the illustrations, I put the book down and search for another.

Here, then, are a few of our most-loved, beautifully illustrated baby books (along with a few bonus stories!).

I Can Do It Myself! by Steven Krensky, illustrated by Sara Gillingham. Toddlers love the empowerment that comes from picking out their own clothes and feeding themselves, and this bright book celebrates that independence. Pop art-like illustrations (think Roy Lichtenstein) are fun, visually arresting and unlike anything else you’ll see in the children’s section. I can’t get over Gillingham’s use of contrasting patterns that are, on the one hand, potentially seizure-inducing but are whimsical and exciting on the other.

How Loud Is A Lion? illustrated and written by Clare Beaton. Readers tramp through jungle and savannah, wandering past antelopes and zorillas (what’s a zorilla? Read to find out!), and all the while a lion is hiding in the background. Beaton’s hand-stitched work is inspired by folk art, and she uses felt, ribbon, beads and vintage fabrics to create the gorgeous tableaus. Beaton has dozens of other books; we’re reading Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo? right now.

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Marlin, illustrated by Eric Carle. I couldn’t get away with a list of gorgeously illustrated kids’ books without mentioning Carle, could I? The rich, saturated colors against a white backdrop are his signature, and I love that I can see how he assembles the figures in this book. It introduces us to a menagerie of animals, and I can’t help but sing the text. This book transports me back to sitting on the floor in kindergarten, singing along and staring raptly at the pages my teacher, Mrs. Weineger, turned.

I already wrote about When I Was Born in my other children’s books post, but I have to include it again because I. Love. The. Illustrations.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include Peeper’s other two favorite books of the moment, even if they’re not illustrated.

Dog, by Matthew Van Fleet. Peeper has already begun to destroy it (the latest casualty: a wagging tail), but all the interaction is well worth a few rips here and there. She knows that the poodle has a fluffy coat she can touch and that the bull dog lifts its leg to pee. When she plays by herself, she lifts the pages and opens and closes the book over and over and over and over again. She could do it for an hour!

Reach, by Elizabeth Verdick and Marjorie Lisosvkis. Peeper laughs the minute I pick this one up. I know the rhymes by heart and could recite it any time, but she continues to be captivated by the babies who reach for their toes, milk, toys and daddy.

As a side note, I appreciate that baby faces books, including Reach, feature children of a wide range of races and ethnicities. Baby faces books are perhaps the only ones dedicated to diversity, when shelves are filled with white characters. (Of the 3,200 children’s books printed last year, fewer than 100 were about black main characters, according to this important op-ed challenging the whitewashed children’s book industry.)

What are your favorite books of the moment? What are your favorite illustrations?