Painting with Balls

Oh my kids had so much fun with this one!  

Materials: 

Tray (pan, or foil pan)

paint (we used finger paint)

Paper (I like finger paint paper because it doesn't rip)

balls or marbles

I taped the paper to the tray to ensure that it wouldn't move around when the kids were rolling around the balls.  

My son got the hang of the rolling but my daughter was more comfortable controlling all of her markings.  

Results- Beautiful!!  These totally showed their personalities too!

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Letter E

Have you noticed that I LOVE Confessions of a Homeschooler??  Mostly because the printables are free and are great for laminating and using in the future.  So here is was our E week.... 

Sorting capital and Lower case Elephants

Tracing practice- I love these activities for my little guy.  Writing his letters are still a bit overwhelming for him so this is great beginning tracing practice!

Elmo Roll- This little Elmo went everywhere with my son this week.  He isn't really a big Elmo fan either.

E is for egg shell!- Although it is kind of hard to see in the picture, my son glued egg shells to his letter E's!  (We had the boiled eggs as a snack... yum)

Elephant Cutting practice- Cutting is GREAT fine motor practice and a really important skill that kids sometimes lack when entering kindergarten... even though my son usually only gets about an inch into the page :)

Elephant size sort

Elephant patterns

Make an elephant! I loved this activity!!  First we started with color mixing.  What kid doesn't like mixing paint??!  (Brown, white, and Blue should do the trick).  I usually have all the materials cut and ready but if your preschooler is more skilled with scissors, draw out an outline on the paper and have them cut everything out

(tip for this craft, tape the ears to the table or you will have paint everywhere!)

painting the ears and trunk... 

painting the plate... 

Glue the eyes and trunk and presto!  

Hand print elephant- While we had the gray paint ready, when went right into our next art activity.  I cut the elephant ears ahead of time. 

I think these are supposed to be trees above the elephants.  So cute! 

One more Elephant craft- 

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Art Activity- Paint with water and chalk

Materials needed: 


Black construction paper, Chalk, water in a jar lid or small cup or bowl, sponge or paint brushes 

Directions- 

1. Have child "paint" the black paper with water (mine thought that pouring the water on the paper was the way to go)

2. After the paper is wet, have the child draw with the colored chalk.  This makes wonderful and bright colored markings!  

Note- Don't stress to much about this activity if the child is more interested in the painting than the drawing portion.  My son was more into dropping the chalk into the cup of water and my daughter just wanted to soak herself with the water.  Remember- they are still learning and exploring even if they don't do it exactly as you'd planned :)  Also, I choose to do this outside so I wouldn't go nutso when someone spilled water or started coloring the walls but you could also do this as an indoor activity on a cookie sheet with less water.

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