Mirror Painting

While looking for ideas to do with our night time theme, I came across painting on mirrors and now wondering why it has taken over 25 years years in childcare to discover this fun activity! I bought some A4 mirrors from ImagiDo as I know I will use them for other activities throughout the year. The children ended up spending the morning enthralled by it, first using the mirror as a mirror, giggling at their reflections, what they could see behind them etc before deciding to try the paint.

I put out a mixture of normal paint and some glitter paint, as they started to paint they talked about how they could still see their reflection and then they would paint over their reflection, giggling saying "now I can't" and repeating this till the whole mirror was covered in paint.

They then discovered by dragging the paint brush through the paint and /or twisting it around they could produce different patterns.

Washing up produced more interest as they realised the water made different patterns as the paint was washed away and that they could see their reflection again.

It was then back to the table to start painting again, they repeated this several times.

They attempted hand prints on the mirror

which left behind an interesting pattern.

They also enjoyed writing and drawing patterns on the mirrors.

I can see this will be an activity that will be asked for again and again, also thinking how ell this would work for fire/firework patterns, will have to remember this for next year when we do fireworks. Also be good to see if the children could paint their reflection in the mirror.

Painting My Patio

Making the most of the warm weather and sunshine, I decided that we would take the painting outside and I made up some patio paint - one part cornflour to one part water and some food colouring.

We all and yes that includes me enjoyed the activity. We painted shapes

lots of patterns

the brick walls,

I painted some numbers and was really pleased when one of my children recognised that they were numbers, ok not the right numbers but we are heading in the right direction

A house and the sun

and this is one of my little ones first painting on my patio

and lots of lovely patterns.

The sun has now been hidden by the clouds but patio will look very pretty for the next few days or until it rains.

More No Mess Painting

I've tried different types of no mess painting over the years, in ziploc bags, card wrapped in cling film but this has got to be the easiest and most robust that I have tried to date. I will state I have no problem with the mess that normal painting makes, it's about trying something different, seeing how paint etc moves.

Anyway last night my husband came in from work and thought I had finally lost the plot, as I was filling laminator pouches with paint and ironing them on the ironing board to seal them. I sealed two sides of the pouch, before I opened it out and poured a fair amount of paint in, then carefully lay it down and seal the other two sides with the iron on cool setting.

I had planned this activity for the babies but it wasn't long before the older ones joined in. They had fun, not just moving the paint around when the pouch was on the table, they held the pouch up and watched the paint move from one end to the other and then tipping it back the other way. Then they held them up on a sunny window and drew on them, it looked brilliant, an activity to do on a light box, me thinks. Definitely will be doing this again in the future, in the meantime, the pouches I've made will last a while.

Autumn Part 3

I love to make stain glass pictures for my windows, using tissue paper or kite paper, I have this lovely book that I use, it is in German but find the pictures are enough to follow without understanding all the written words.

I then cut out some leaf shapes for the children to then cover with tissue paper.

After the success and fun we had with sticky back plastic earlier in the year, I decided to create an autumn tree on my patio door. I cut out a bare tree outline and stuck it to the door, then stuck some sticky back plastic over the top. Then let the children loose with all the autumn bits I had collected and it stayed up for a few weeks, with the littleones taking pieces of and moving them around and adding other random pieces! I must admit it was lovely to draw back the curtains on a sunny autumn morning and to see this with the sun lighting it up.

                                                

Autumn Part 2

I put together a box of autumn resources that I had, a mixture of pictures, toy animals, leaves, acorns, conkers etc. The children enjoyed matching the items to the pictures and talking about what they could see, the different textures, colours etc.

Had the joy of harvesting our pumpkins, couldn't of planned it better, 3 different size ones, so we could compare size and weight!

I cut open one of the pumpkins for the children to see what was inside.

I scooped out the seeds for the children to see and play with, rather sticky mess but fun to do. I talked about how we could grow a new plant from these seeds.I had some pictures of the pumpkin growing from a seed to adulthood, to remind the children of what they had seen as our plants had grown throughout the year. We roasted some of the pumpkin for tea.

Decided to attempt conker painting, a seasonal variation on marble painting, interesting results depending on the shape of the conker, need to find the roundest ones, flat sides aren't so good!

We made some leaf pictures with the leaves we had collected on our walks.

I made a very simple board game, that went down well with my after school children

and matching pairs too, good discussion starters too.