Homemade Sand

Are you on the sensory bin craze? If you don't know what a sensory bin is you can google it for about a million ideas. It is basically an "invitation to play" in a bin. Usually thematic. Usually based on the idea of encouraging imagination. Usually considered educational. Usually tries to improve fine motor skills. All good things, I suppose. I have not been on the sensory bin band wagon, for several reasons... 

1- it looks like ALOT of work.

2- I think it would entertain the boys for five minutes and then I'd be annoyed with all the aforementioned work I put into it.

3- I'd need to invest in a bunch of miniature toys.

4- I'm not so sure kids need help with their imagination.

Well, today called for an emergency activity... So I made cloud dough (me and play dough don't get along, but that story is for another day). Essentially 7 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil. I used canola oil because then I don't have to worry about when they eat it, because they will. You can use baby oil if you don't have this problem. I used some old old rye flour and so it has a nice sandy colour. I added a little peppermint extract to make it smell good. And dumped it in a small tub with some dinosaur toys and Popsicle sticks. Um... It has now been half an hour and the play is still going strong. Granted the original "dinosaur habitat" idea has degenerated because now there are alphabet magnets, spatulas, and tractors involved. But whatever. In conclusion, this was fun but I am not going to start setting up a new one daily, or even weekly. Hopefully the dough will last awhile, but first I have to find the lid to the container! 

Choo-choo!

Another book project! "Freight Train" by Donald Crews is a favourite in our house. If you love trains and rainbow colours and fantastically simple artwork then get this book. 

In the summer I was given two huge old rolls of newsprint paper. Huge. And I thought this book would make a perfect collaborative art project with the boys. We had a snowy, no school holiday, so I finally pulled a roll out of the shed. The inside of the tube is full of spider webs and dead bugs, but the boys thought that was cool, so whatever. Anyways, I let them pick a page from the book to copy (thankfully they both wanted the same page, so there was no fight) and off we went. The boys painted the background on their own (I traced a trestle bridge for Jacob to paint over) and then I cut out each train car, in the correct colour, and the boys each picked three to complete. They carefully copied the cars in the book. Then we did the tender and engine together because they did fight over who was going to do the best part. After it was hung on the wall it was noticed that we forgot the steam so I let them sponge it on with strict instructions to NOT paint the wall. Surprisingly they didn't paint the wall. 

Here it is:

Afterwards Jacob insisted on making a smaller pencil drawing all on his own. Here's a cute picture where he is working on it. It turned out fabulous, by the way.

I told you it was cute! What a little sweetie!!

Learn to Draw... Learn to Build...

I am officially in love with the Ed Emberley books, and I've only seen one. Jacob LOVES copying the pictures in it and then he took the book and used the drawing instructions to build the pictures out of blocks. This was all his idea! I just love it when creativity takes over like this.

Learn to Draw...

... the Ed Emberley way. There is a whole series of books by Ed Emberley and I finally got one from the library. Jacob loved it! And so did I, since my artistic skills are always being requested, and I am, quite frankly, not good at drawing trains, construction vehicles, farm equipment, or trucks.

Here is the book we got: 

Here is a fire truck I drew and Daniel added onto.

Here is Jacob's fire truck, complete with burning building. I didn't help at all.

Then he drew a fire breathing dragon.

Awesome. 

There are hundreds of pictures in this book, each one with step by step instructions. Basically, he says, if you can draw a few basic shapes you can draw anything. I can't wait to try more of this book and some of his other ones!