Painting with cars

Nothin' like another 'classic'! Even the baby can do this one. This is definitely an outdoor activity *grin*

Sidewalk Chalk Games

Okay, so I'm quite proud of this game I created. It came out of nowhere one day when we took out the sidewalk chalk. It's supposed to be a game about feelings. However, two of my 'feelings' ended up being 'Hairy' and 'Sunny,' and I know those aren't real feelings, but we had fun, and Rachel knew which was which, so whatever, right? So it started with me drawing a couple of 'feelings' faces, like this one.

He's actually looking a little more worried than angry, but it's a bumpy driveway, so what can you do? Anyway, the idea is to ride your tricycle to the faces I say (Ride to the happy face! Now ride to the angry/worried face!). Then (more genius on my part), I drew lines in between them, like this:

Each face had a different kind of line attached, so Rachel followed the lines (with feet, not her bike) AS WELL as learned the names of different kinds of lines (wavy, straight, zig zag, spiral). Nothing like adding a little vocabulary lesson to your physical movement, eh? Here's some more of my delightful artwork for you:

As you can see, I wrote 'Hairy' on the left top of the picture. Rachel wrote it on the right in Rachel writing. Looks a little Arabic if you ask me. She's probably a genius. Here's her picture:

 I don't remember what feeling it was. I just remember that she told me. Sorry. Mommy brain!

Maybe it was a picture of someone throwing up? The feeling would then be, 'Sick' I guess!

Fly Swatters + paint = oh yeah!!!!!

I was inspired by Teacher Tom, preschool teacher and Blogger, to do this activity. We chose to do our Fly Swatter painting outdoors.

I thought it'd be great to set up our paper (we purchased a butt end of a really big roll from the paper mill in town for only a few bucks) on the side of the shed, but it had rained recently and trying to use masking tape on wet wood just doesn't work! Maybe thumb tacks would have worked, but I was too anxious to get started, so we moved it to the deck. We have the benefit of having an old, rotting deck that we'll be (hopefully) tearing down this summer, so if I get paint all over it, it doesn't matter!

First, you dip . .  .

Shaving Cream is not just for your face or legs!

If you're inspired to get REALLY messy, here's a GREAT one. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you do this outdoors. It's easier to clean, and your house will smell normal if you do!

Make shaving cream mountains, add food coloring,

mix well,

and make a big mess!!! You can add people and cars, but we just had fun squishing!  I sprayed Rachel and her friend, as well as my tray and my deck down with the hose, when we were all done. Even I had a lot of fun squishing the shave cream!

As an update to a previous post where we made colorful paper towels with droppers and food coloring, we made a few more one day. We've used them as a long table runner at Rachel's birthday (it complimented her rainbow cake, which I got inspired to do here at 'Whatever').

(*Note - I made a princess cake, so there used to be a barbie in that hole if you're wondering ;o)

We also made some into little butterflies, adding stickers to their wings!