We decided to make some feelie goop on the porch.
Feelie goop is a simple, non-toxic recipe of cornstarch and water. I found the idea in the fantastic book "First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos."
The activity took a minimal amount of planning ahead (I happened to have two cups of cornstarch already in the pantry.) I set up the feelie goop station on the porch while the kids were still napping. Cleaning up was easy-peasy a few hours later, after the kids were inside reading stories with their dad.
Buddy Boy and Junebug were smitten with the feelie goop immediately. Stirring, mixing, touching, squeezing, and adding food coloring.
Miss Bee, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the feelie goop. She was far more fascinated with the plastic box the food coloring came in, as well as playing with the glass measuring cups.
But Buddy Boy and Junebug just couldn't get enough of the feelie goop! They played for over half an hour.
Meanwhile, Miss Bee (who never even touched the feelie goop) got bored, and made her way down the porch steps to the hand washing station I'd set up.
Soap bubbles! Now we're talking!
After a while, Junebug took interest in what her sister was up to on the lawn.
...which gave her another idea...
...to use the glass measuring cup and the hand-washing water to give the porch plants a drink!
This fun went on for several rounds.
Until Buddy Boy, the third child to arrive at the hand-washing bowl, decided to experiment with dumping all of the hand-washing water out onto the grass.
Game over!
But we had a great first time with the feelie goop. It's a project I'm sure we'll do again.
What books or other resources do you use to get ideas for art projects to do with your kids?
I've done feelie goop with my kids too, and they love it. A current favorite with my girls is shaving cream body paint. You put shaving cream into a muffin tin and add different food coloring, then they can rock out painting their bodies -- usually they strip down to avoid getting the clothes dirty and finish up with a bucket bath on the porch. Not too long ago they made a "cake" out of all the different paint and then a giant mess on the porch, they got very creative and had fun cleaning it up! This and lots of other awesome ideas came from the Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions. I think its awesome that you're starting yours so young doing crafty activities...I LOVE craft projects too, so from a very young age I've been doing "projects," which Eibhlin got into more than Orla, who has only taken an interest recently. We've got a sideboard that I keep stocked with all kinds of supplies that they can get to easily, including all the messy glitter, glue, buttons, pointy scissors, all the "dangerous" stuff. I've been doing projects with them to give them ideas and waiting for the day they make up their own stuff. Now Eibhlin will sometimes wake up in the morning and make a whole project before I'm up -- using all kinds of stuff in ways I'd never envisioned, it is so fun to watch. Recently a friend showed me a shelf full of her daughter's sketch pads full of all her art. I thought it was a great idea and got notebooks of unlined paper and helped the girls decorate their own notebooks so that now we can keep -- not all, but a lot anyway! -- of their art in one notebook to save. Happy crafting!
Posted by: Becca | 08/09/2012 at 12:38 PM