Art – Page 14 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Sticky Football Field

As you know, I’m always looking for ways to make Sunday afternoon football games more interactive for Becca – since she’s not as interested in staring at the screen as we are! So, in my ever-continuing love of all things contact paper, and knowing how much she loves putting her hands on the sticky tree we made, I thought – why not let her walk on it?

Here’s what I did – I printed off two end zone signs for our favorite team (#WEARETEXANS), and printed off the sideline numbers (you could easily print them for both sides – I just did one). I laid out the contact paper on the floor, and taped it down with painter’s tape (don’t use masking or you’ll leave residue on your floor!). Then I laid down one end zone sign, and Becca placed the other. I put down the 10 and 30, she put down the 20. I put down the 50, she put down the 40. Until all the numbers were down. Then we counted them by 10s. Then, we ripped green paper for grass, and sprinkled them all over the “field”, and she began to walk on it. She LOVES the stickiness on her feet! She says it feels cool. It’s also super fun to run cars on because they make a great sound, and she loves to roll the football across it because that makes yet another cool sound!

You could also extend this by cutting yard lines, and putting a center logo on the field. We just didn’t do that this time. 🙂

Total Prep Time for Mommy: About 10 minutes – since I had to type up the yard line numbers, and print out end zone logos.

Total Play Time for Becca: About 20 minutes at a time every day, all week. Very worthwhile activity! She has been recognizing the numbers and counting all week, too. 🙂 Sneaky mommy.

Four Seasons Button Trees

On Thursday, I showed you our fall button tree. Well, Becca loved that activity so much, that I decided to take it a step further, and do a little mini-lesson on the four seasons. She’s well aware of them, and points out the different seasons – especially when we watch Peep and the Big Wide World on Netflix Kids. (If you haven’t watched these science videos with your kiddos, they are fabulous for age 2 all the way up through ELL grade 1!) But, I also found this little music video on YouTube that is cute and puts them all together nicely. Becca was even singing it later in the day.

Then we sat down and looked at our trees. I had the fall tree there, but also three other blank trees. I had already purchased/gathered buttons for the other seasons, and she was most eager to do winter. She loved the snowflake buttons we’d gotten at Michaels, and was super excited about putting them on. Then when we did the spring tree, she got tired of placing individual buttons where she wanted them, and started grabbing whole handfuls and laying them over the branches – which I glued where she placed. She was pretty much done by the time we got to the summer tree, but she put on the bigger buttons before getting down to go play. I added the rest of the green buttons, and I’m really pleased with how they all turned out.

My ultimate plan with these is to get a canvas from Hobby Lobby or Michaels to attach them to, and display them as art in our home. You could easily do the same, or plan to matt and frame them – you’d just have to use flatter buttons. Our snowflakes are very 3D because they had loops on the back instead of button holes.

You could also maintain your child’s interest longer by only doing one tree in a day. I was excited about seeing them finished, so I did Spring, Summer, and Winter all in one day. You could easily make it a week-long activity by showing the music video, watching some Peep episodes, and checking out library books about each of the seasons. Especially if you are introducing this topic for the first time. Becca is already familiar with the concept of the seasons – it was more about creating the art than anything else for us.

Fall Tree Activities

There are a ton of fabulous fall tree activities out there, but I’ve really been striving to be somewhat original in my activities. All of my ideas are of course spurred from something I’ve seen online, and in no way am I saying I’m the first to ever do these this exact way… because I’m sure I’m not. But here are three activities we’ve done in the past couple weeks to create fall trees different ways, modifying someone else’s ideas.

I’m loving contact paper activities. I saw this post from Allison over at No Time for Flashcards, and it really got me thinking. One of the fine motor activities I haven’t really done with Becca is paper tearing. So, I gathered three sheets of construction paper – one each of red, yellow, and orange, and I did something I’m horrible at… I drew a tree on contact paper. (Draw it on the non-sticky side.) Then, I got out my painter’s tape and taped it – sticky side out – to one of our back door windows. And I taught Becca how to tear paper! We had a blast tearing our paper leaves, and sticking them on the tree. And, I left the paper where she could access it throughout the past couple weeks, and she has added more leaves as time has gone by. Despite my disdain for my drawing abilities, she immediately knew it was a tree, and has been very proud of her fall tree! So, I count this one as a success!

I love buttons. Like seriously LOVE buttons. As a kid, I loved going over to my Grandma’s house, pulling out her button drawer, and playing with all the buttons – sorting them, stacking them, whatever. Just digging my hands into them. I guess it was my very own “sensory bin” back before that was even a term. HA! The cool thing is that I now have a button box – that includes all of Grandma’s buttons, all of Cody’s Mima’s buttons from her sewing table, and quite a few new buttons that I’ve added myself. It’s an awesome resource, and a ton of fun! So I saw this post from Maggy at Red Ted Art, and it got me thinking – I could create a button tree with Becca that was specifically fall! So, I found a tree clipart online (after having learned my lesson on the contact paper tree… Mommy can do lots of things, but drawing just ain’t one of them!), and printed it on some beautiful textured blue card stock. (Want your own tree? Get the free printable here! I simply typed “winter tree clipart” in Google and found this tree from ClipartBest.com and made it fit like I wanted on my document… I’m saving you the work!) And after the tree was printed, we sifted through the button box, found some fabulous buttons, and then set to work. Becca placed each button where she wanted it, and I used the hot glue gun to stick them down. We had some serious fun making this tree, and I think it turned out simply beautiful. She is so proud of her button tree!

I knew I was going to do this post, so I stretched myself, and said, ok what’s at least one more way I can do a fall tree? I had to dig deep for this one. But, I used what we had laying around – tops to Becca’s favorite applesauce pouches (thank you, HEB!) and decided to work on her random number matching skills. The girl can count – like mad. But sometimes just seeing a number (beyond ten), recognizing it, and then being able to match it to itself out of order… well, that’s still a little rusty. So here’s what I did. I drew on a large sheet of construction paper (again, apology for my lack of drawing skills, but she knew it was a tree, so who cares?) a tree, and then traced around a pouch cap to be sure my circles were the right size. I covered the whole sheet in contact paper since laminating and using twenty mins later wasn’t an option… Then I labeled each pouch cap with a number, and colored the circles on the tree random colors… and labeled them with numbers as well. It helps a little because they aren’t all one color, so she knows that the orange ones on the paper will be from the peach applesauce pouches, and the red ones on the paper will be from the plain applesauce pouches – so it helps her check the numbers and make sure she’s on the right track. She keeps going back to this activity and pulling out new numbers. I’ve found that she likes to start the activity in the morning before we go anywhere – she’ll place one or two pouch caps – and then later in the day she’ll place three or four more, come back later and place a couple more… she just doesn’t have the energy or patience to do all twenty of them at one time. Which is fine with me. I plan to stick these pouch caps in a bag, and pull this back out next fall – when she should be able to do all of them in one setting.

Halloween Sensory Gel Bag

Becca loves sensory gel bags… and they are super easy to make!!

You’ll need:
a strong freezer bag (quart size is perfect)
clear book/box tape
clear hair gel – clear works best for this b/c you’re going to be adding your own color… I found a great big bottle at Dollar Tree and used the entire bottle in this bag.
food coloring
stuff to go in it – So I made mine orange, and just used a bunch of sparkly black sequins I had – to make it sort of Halloween-ish. I saw an idea online that used google-eyes of various sizes. Or, you could get a bunch of little spiders (I saw them at Dollar Tree) to put inside, or leaf confetti (also at Dollar Tree) if you wanted to make it fall, but NOT Halloween. So there’s lot of fun options!

Make sure before you put ANYTHING inside that you secure all three closed sides with book tape to prevent little holes and leaks. Then, fill with your gel, food coloring, and stuff. Squeeze as much air out as possible, and zip closed, then fold the top down and secure with more tape.

Becca has been enjoying hers not only for picking up and squishing, but also for viewing on her light box! And how awesome does it look with the light shining thru?

Apple Theme Center

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your participation!

I’m all about quick, easy ideas that I can throw together in just a few minutes. This center was not one of those ideas. So if you are just starting with sensory activities for your kiddos, this is not the place to start. BUT – any one of these ideas on their own IS a fabulous start. You just might not be ready to put them all together on one day to create a center.

If you’ve read my blog much, you know that Becca is typically satisfied for quite a little bit the first time I intro an activity, and then beyond that, it usually only gets about 5-10 mins of play in a day, every now and again. The great thing about this center is that she has really been glued to it for quite a while, and will go and select a different activity different times… which makes me happy since I did take about an hour to put it all together. (As an aside – I’ve started this week going around and putting away old activities – storing them in labeled Ziploc bags – so that in a couple months I can pull them back out and they will be new again. Sneaky Mommy! 😉 )

The first thing you’ll need for your center is a place to put everything. Maybe you have an adorable little bookshelf that everything goes on fabulously. Or maybe you have a water table like ours (aff link) that is just waiting to be filled…

Here are the activities in my Apple Theme Center:

Word Building/Reading
Apple Sorting/Tossing
Rock Dumping/Shaking
Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building

Word Building/Reading
This activity has been in my brain for a while, but I hesitated to do it with her because I actually don’t have a set of magnetic letters. And then it hit me – I DO have magnet tape! So, I wrote the words I wanted on index cards, and cut out the letters. Then I stuck tiny pieces of magnet tape on the back! This little sheet tray I got at Dollar Tree in the cooking section. It’s also the perfect size for her little hands to haul out of the center and over the automan or couch for more intense play just focused on this activity. She has begun to try to read the words as sight words, and is doing really well.

Apple Sorting/Tossing
Again with Dollar Tree – I found these little green and red apples in the home decor section, and then I pulled the red and green buckets from her Farmer’s Market Set (Get Yours Here – Aff Link) and she can sort them. She has also enjoyed setting the bucket on the ground and stepping back to toss the apples into the correct bucket – making it a great gross motor activity, as well.

Rock Dumping/Shaking
I read somewhere that you could make rocks or other hard materials scented by adding tea leaves to them (I honestly don’t remember where), so I got these green rocks, again, at Dollar Tree in the home decor section – literally right next to the apples – and I added Apple Crumble Black Tea to it – so they smell like apples! I had thoroughly cleaned and dried out a coffee creamer bottle, which is absolutely perfect for this activity. She loves to use the funnel and scoop to put the rocks into the bottle, then close the lid, shake it, and then open the lid and shake the rocks back into the bowl. It’s turned into a super fun activity that covers several of the senses. (SO IF YOU’RE JUST SELECTING ONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES TO START WITH, THIS IS A GREAT ONE!)

Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building
We LOVE the book Ten Apples Up On Top. So when I saw this idea from Ellen over at Cutting Tiny Bites, I just new we HAD to do it. Here’s how we extended her activity a tad. I printed up this sheet (FREE PRINTABLE HERE!) of ten apples, and let Becca paint them. (I had planned to do red, green, and yellow, and then discovered we were out of paint. So that might be an extension you’d want to add.. so that as you build, you can build a pattern!) After they had dried, I cut them out and taped them onto ten blocks. We only had nine that matched, so the tenth one is the “roof,” as Becca calls it. So here’s how you do it – as you read the book, you stack an apple block on top each time that the animals in the book add an apple. It’s super fun. Although if you pick a heavy top block like we did, you’ll end up with all ten apples up… and then dropping. But, that just adds to the fun!
Looking for the Ten Apples Up On Top Board Book? Here you go! (aff link)
Looking for wooden blocks? Try this set! (aff link)

Fyi – your Apple Theme Center will not stay looking like my top picture for very long. After lots of love, it might look something like this… but just know that this means its being well loved, and your child is getting lots of benefit from it… and if your magnet board looks like ours, you’ll know your hubby has been playing as well. 😉

Total Mommy Prep Time: All told, it probably took about an hour to put it all together – maybe a little longer?
Total Becca Play Time: She spent about 45 minutes here the first day, and has easily spent 15 minutes every day since then on these activities. VERY beneficial and well worth my time to put it together!