Tuesday, October 30, 2012

ABC & 123 Crayons


 Making Letter and Number Crayons

We first made these letter crayons  last February.  Prior to making these crayons Max was pretty much uninterested in letters.  After we made them I used them to teach Maxton his uppercase letters and numbers.  He loved matching them on  playmats I made for him.  He learned to recognize and name  all of  his letters and the numbers 0-9  in about 2 weeks at age 2! 

Since then we have made many more sets of these for gifts and of course to replace broken ones from our set.  We have extended this activity by  spelling our names and other high frequency words.  This is an activity he chooses to play with over and over. 

 

Peeling the paper off.


A completed set right out of the molds.

 

Letter and number playmats.


 

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Pumpkin Playdough



Recently we made some homemade pumpkin spice play dough.  It smells wonderful and Max has really enjoyed playing with it.  We used the following recipe.

Pumpkin Spice Play Dough:
2 cups water
orange food coloring (or combine yellow and red)
2 TBSP vegetable oil
1 cup salt
4 tsp. cream of tartar
3 tsp.
pumpkin spice
2 cups flour
This will make a lot of play dough.  We sent half of this batch to his preschool.


He used some fall inspired cookie cutters I found at the $1 Store.

                                                                                             


This same day we made some awesome Halloween Crayons for his friends at school.  We think they are super cool, Max can't wait to give these out.
 
old broken crayons






ready to melt





new spooky crayons

Saturday, October 6, 2012

SHARPIE TIE DYES

Maxton has made tie dyes a few times.  In the past we have always used fabric dye.  It is fun but very messy and the dye stains everything it touches.  This past summer we made red, white and blue shirts for Independence Day.
Here Max and Savannah are using Rit fabric dyes.


My niece Ella was told us about using Sharpie Markers to create tie dye shirts a few weeks ago while we were on a family vacation.  We decided to give it try and I think they turned out really cool.
We used Sharpie Markers, rubber bands, rubbing alcohol, medicine droppers and some cups.  
Some of the shirts we used the cups to make circles for the boys to color inside of.  It helped them to focus on one area of the shirt at a time.  On other shirts we twisted, tied off with a rubber band and colored between the bands. After you color your shirt you squirt the alcohol on the colors to make the colors bleed.  When shirt is dry set the colors by heating in the dryer.  
Before, a blank canvas.

Maxton coloring his t shirt.

Here is the whole gang.  From age 2 to Mamaw, they all liked this Maxtivity.

This is a shirt before we added the alcohol.

Ella drew little pictures inside each of her circles.  Her shirt was my favorite.

All finished and drying in the beach breeze.

I loved how everyone's shirts turned out different.  There was very little mess and the little boys could do this type of tie die very independently.  We will be doing this again very soon.