Pumpkin Painting & Decorating for Toddlers

Halloween Activities

Pumpkin Painting & Decorating

Always use tempera paint (not acrylic) with young children. To help the paint adhere to the pumpkin you can mix it with liquid glue in the paint tray before starting.

She is painting 2 pumpkins, one for herself and one for her baby sister.

Preferably wait for the paint to dry overnight before decorating, but obviously that didn't happen here. I pre-cut foam shapes for eyes, nose and mouth and you can have your child glue them on or use the self-adhesive foam sheets like I used and they can just stick it on.

Kids love googly eyes so I suggest you stock up if you're doing art regularly with them.

Allow your child the freedom to place things where they want to, even if it doesn't look right. You can give them general guidance but if they don't follow it just remember it's their artwork, not yours. The experience is more important than the finished product!

This is how it turned out. You can use many other materials like glitter (I recommend glitter glue because it's less messy), stickers, playdough, markers, pretty much anything you have on hand.

 

Painting Activity for Babies

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

Finger painting with babies might start out with fingers... but it can quickly turn into full body painting! Yes, this may seem very messy (and it is!) but the end result is a masterpiece that you can hang on your wall and your guests will think it's a modern art piece you bought at the gallery. Well, maybe not quite.. but you'll have some great wall art for your kid's room.

When my daughter was 8 months old I started painting with her. I placed an old sheet on the floor to contain the mess, then I laid down one of my large canvases. I squirted some finger paint on the canvas, one color at a time, and she eagerly went to work. She started spreading the paint around the canvas with her fingers, then proceeded to crawl all over the painting and use her whole body as a paintbrush. The result was impressive!

 

 

Tips:
1: Make sure your child is at least 6 months old and is able to sit up on their own. If your child does not crawl yet you can rotate the canvas for them or place the child on different parts of the canvas. If your baby is crawling, let them crawl all over the painting. It might seem like the canvas is bending or caving in, but it should snap back into place later.

2: My daughter started out in a t-shirt onesie but I quickly learned that it was much easier if she paints without any clothes, just a diaper. This makes it easier to quickly place her in a bath right after the activity. Also, the diaper actually creates some interesting designs when it is dragged across a painting!

3: Start by squirting one color on one part of the canvas. Let the child finish spreading that paint around. Then squirt another color somewhere nearby and let the child work on that. Keep doing this until the painting is complete.

4: Let the child complete the painting at their own pace - some babies might be done in 5 minutes and decide to crawl away in search for the next adventure, while other babies might sit and paint for quite a while.

5: You may know from experience that complementary colors (colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. example: red & green, blue & orange, yellow & purple) will turn a lovely shade of brown when combined. In order to keep the painting bright and colorful and minimize brown areas try to avoid using complementary colors next to each other.

6: Yes, babies put everything in their mouth. These Crayola finger paints are non-toxic, but if you prefer you can make your own homemade finger paints with this simple recipe.

 

FREE Printable Art Collages

4 Free Art Collages for your child to practice their art skills! Includes Build a City, Build a Farm, Create an Ocean, and Create a Face. Includes both color and black and white cut-outs.

There are 3 levels of difficulty depending on your child's age and skill level:

1. Parents cut out the colored pieces for the child to glue.

2. Parents cut out the black and white pieces, the child glues them and also colors the picture at the end. 

3. The child cuts out the pieces, glues them and then colors them in. They practice cutting, gluing and coloring at the same time!

Download your Free Art Collages Here

For more art skills practice, take a look at The Ultimate Art Skills Pack for ages 3-6 years. This is a unique set of 20 printable activities that help kids practice ALL of their art skills at the same time: Scissor Skills, Gluing, Tracing, Coloring and Drawing!

Free Alphabet & Picture Tracing Printables

Say goodbye to boring letter tracing sheets! In this fun pack, your child can trace a picture, color it in, and trace uppercase and lowercase letters on each page. Practice writing and drawing skills at the same time. Also great for reinforcing letter sounds!

 

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. 

This FREE set of alphabet worksheets is perfect for preschool and kindergarten kids learning and reviewing the alphabet.

Materials Needed:

• Printer
• Paper
• Laminator (optional)
• Sheet protectors (optional)
• Dry-erase markers (optional)

You can either print these no-prep sheets and give to kids as-is, or you can make them reusable by laminating them or putting them in sheet protectors. Then give the kids dry-erase markers to use. Afterwards, just wipe clean and reuse!

Click Here to Download your FREE Alphabet & Picture Tracing Printables

For more Alphabet worksheets, see the following posts:

Free Easter Printables for Toddlers and PreK

Spring is in the air! And that means Easter is right around the corner. Get ready for the season with this fun, free printable Easter Learning Pack for your toddlers and preschoolers! Featuring number recognition, number quantity, counting, shapes, patterns, alphabet letter cases, letter sounds, sight words, letter tracing, sorting, visual discrimination, coloring, puzzles, pre-writing tracing, scissor skills practice and more!

This FREE Easter Learning Pack features 31 hands-on activities, and it is available for Free to all email subscribers. Here is what's included:

Literacy Activities:

-Cut & paste Missing Letter

-Letter Sounds Matching

-Find Letter E

-Sight Word Matching

-Word Tracing & coloring

-Letter Case Matching

-Do a Dot: E is for Egg

Math Activities:

-Numbers 1-5 Puzzle

-Numbers 1-10 Puzzle

-Numbers 11-20 Puzzle

-Counting 1-5

-Counting 1-10

-Cut & Paste Correct Number of Eggs

-Shape Matching

-Patterns

-Color Sorting

-Size Sorting

-Color by Number

Pre-Writing/Fine Motor:

-Trace Horizontal Lines

-Trace Vertical Lines

-Trace Shapes

-Trace & color Easter eggs

-Trace & color Easter rabbit

-Do a Dot: E is for Egg

Visual Discrimination:

-Which one is different?

-Matching Easter egg halves

-Easter egg hunt

Scissor Skills:

-Cutting straight lines

-Cutting zig zag lines

-Several Cutting & pasting activities

Puzzles:

-Numbers 1-5 Puzzle

-Numbers 1-10 Puzzle

-Numbers 11-20 Puzzle

This Easter Printable Pack is FREE for all Totschooling subscribers!

What can I expect as a Subscriber?:

-You will receive access to free printables that are not available for download on the website. This includes holiday and seasonal packs, as well as other themed activity packs.

-You will get access to a collection of Board Book Printable Activities and Nursery Rhymes sequencing.

-You will receive 1-2 emails per week with new posts, freebies, sales and additions to the site.

-You will receive a special subscriber discount for the Online Store.

-Your information will never be shared with anybody else.

How do I get my Easter Pack after subscribing?:

-After confirming your email address, you will receive a Welcome Email which provides the link to the subscriber's page. This subscriber's page is where you can download the Easter Pack as well as ALL other subscriber freebies.

-Please check your email thoroughly for this email including spam folder, promotions folders, etc. If you still do not see it, please email me at totschooling@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you the link.

Free Do a Dot Spring Printables

Happy Spring! Enjoy these free Spring themed Do-a-Dot sheets, featuring a bird, butterfly, tulips and kids playing in the park. Includes both color or black & white.

If you haven't tried Do-a-Dot markers (affiliate) with your kids yet, they are really awesome and easy to use. I highly recommend them for toddlers and preschoolers! 

Download Free Do-a-Dot Spring Printables Here! 

See ALL of our Do-a-Dot printables Here

Prewriting Game with Doodle Board

 

This post may contain affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

I was playing with my daughter and her doodle board today, and I got inspired to make a little game that would be fun and also help kids with their prewriting, drawing and tracing skills!

The game is very simple. Print and cut out these game cards which tell you to draw a shape or trace an object. Each player picks up a card and draws or traces what the card says. I also included some blank cards so you can make your own and customize it to your child's skill level.

DRAW this:

TRACE this:

 

Click here to Download Game Cards!

Recommended Products:

Easy Mother's Day Pop-Up Card

Every time I open up a card or book and see that it has pop-ups, I feel a little happier. And Mother's Day is all about making moms happy. So here is a little tutorial on how to make an easy pop-up card with your toddler or preschooler - it really is easier than you think! This is a nice craft that even Daddies can do with their kids (hint hint). I also included some (optional) printable clipart that you can use to finish off the card, but you can easily use other craft supplies like tissue paper, stickers, etc. Just remember that whatever is inside the card should be relatively thin so that it can actually close.

Step 1:

Have your child create 2 paintings on a heavyweight type of paper. Then let the paintings dry completely.

Step 2:

Choose which painting will be seen on the outside of the card - fold in half with the painted part on the outside. (ours was the purple one) The other painting will be on the inside of the card - fold in half with the painted part on the inside. (ours was the greenish one) You now have 2 cards. You will place one inside the other as I show in the picture, but not yet - first we have to make the pop-outs in the middle.

Step 3:

Take the "inside" painting (the greenish one) and make 4 short cuts (about 1/3 of the width of the paper) along the folded edge. I drew 4 lines on the picture below to show you more clearly.

Then press in the little strips of paper so that they "pop" out from the inside of the card. Fold along the edges of the pop-out parts so that they retain their shape. You now have 2 pop-out parts but if you prefer you can just do 1 large pop-out in the middle by making 2 cuts instead of 4.

Step 4:

Put glue on the non-painted sides of the 2 cards and glue them together. Make sure you put a lot of glue around the edges and corners. You can then close the card and set it underneath a pile of books for 30 minutes to make sure it stays glued together nicely.

And that's it! We now have a pop-up card! Keep reading for the decorating instructions.

Step 5: Decorate!

Have your child decorate the outside of the card with whatever you have on hand, stickers, glitter, or you can use some of the free clipart I have. We decided to keep it simple and just glue a little heart that says "mom".

Step 6: Now that the outside is decorated we can glue the things that we want to pop-up on the inside. We chose two flowers from my clipart and glued them to the pieces that pop out.

Then we cut slits in the "grass" and glued it to the bottom of the flowers.

We called it "finished" after this because I really didn't want to cover too much of her beautiful paintings. If your child can write, they can use a sharpie or marker to write on top of the painting. Here is our finished card - inside and outside.

You can download the Free Clipart Here

Mother's Day Flower Craft

 

Mother's Day is this weekend and if you are still looking for a last minute craft idea - here is an easy and beautiful one! It took me a minute to gather the materials that I already had on hand, and the activity took about 10 minutes. The result is something you can frame and give to a mother or grandmother to melt their heart.

 

Materials: tempera paint, heavyweight paper, tissue paper, pom pom, popsicle stick

 

Here are the steps for your child:

 

-Paint a piece of paper with yellow paint (or whatever color your child wants)

-Paint a popsicle stick with green paint (skip this step if you already have a green popsicle stick)

-Glue the popsicle stick, vertically in the middle of the paper.

-Give your child a large piece of tissue paper to crumple up and then glue to the top of the popsicle stick

-Give your child a smaller piece of a different colored tissue paper to crumple up and then glue on top of the first tissue paper.

-Glue a pom pom in the middle of the flower on top of the tissue paper

-Glue green tissue paper for the leaves at the bottom of the popsicle stick

 

For a beautiful frame that fits 3 dimensional craft projects like this, check out this amazing company that I am affiliated with. All you do is slide the artwork right in. This would make such a wonderful gift, or a great way to display your child's artwork in their room.

 

The Ultimate Art Skills Pack Review & Giveaway!

 

As you may know, I recently created The Ultimate Art Skills Activity Pack which is a series of 20 printable activities for children ages 2-6 to practice ALL of their art skills at the same time: scissor skills, gluing, tracing, coloring and drawing!

 

Ashley from Click here to check out the review & giveaway! While you're there, be sure to check out the rest of her blog - she has tons of super fun, creative & educational ideas for kids!

 

M is for Monster: Craft & Activity

This post is sponsored by Dollar Tree. All opinions are my own.

Teaching my daughter letters has been a bit of a challenge. It's just not something that interests her. So I have to get really creative these days to come up with projects that are so fun, she forgets she is learning! Luckily, I got the opportunity to make this awesome project from the Dollar Tree Value Seekers Club! After we made this adorable Monster box craft, I came up with a fun little game to practice letter recognition and letter sounds!

To create this Monster box craft, you will need the following supplies:

• tissue box (Dollar Tree)
• paint (optional)
• circle labeling stickers (Dollar Tree)
• construction paper (Dollar Tree)
• googly eyes (Dollar Tree)
• tape or glue (Dollar Tree)

The instructions for making this Monster box can be found at the Dollar Tree Value Seekers Club. Membership is completely FREE! You'll find tons of crafts, recipes, décor, tips, contests, insider information, and frugal ideas. The content changes every month, so you'll have lots of fresh ideas for each season, holiday or just every day fun! All the materials can be purchased from Dollar Tree, and you can even print out the project sheets to take with you to the store as a convenient shopping list!

This Monster box was such a cute craft, and super easy for a toddler or preschooler to make. (I helped with the eyes and teeth, but that's about it)

As we were making the Monster, I told my daughter that this Monster likes to eat only letter M's and things that begin with M. It won't eat anything else that begins with a different letter or sound! Those "rules" set us up for some fun activities!

For the first activity, I took out some letter stickers that I had in my craft supplies. But you can also use letter tiles, letter magnets, or any other moveable alphabet pieces that you have on hand.  Fortunately, we had a lot of letter M's, so I gave my daughter a bunch of letters to feed to the Monster (about half of them were M's and half were other letters). She took one letter at a time, called out what the letter was, and determined whether the Monster would eat it or not. This is a great game for letter recognition and can be modified depending on what materials you have!

For the next game, I collected a bunch of small objects and toys from around the house. I tried to find as many things as I could that start with the M sound. I found a mirror, a mitten, a monkey toy, play money, a marker, Minnie mouse, a small map, a mouth and a moon. I also added a bunch of other small objects that don't begin with an M sound. One by one, she identified each object and if that object started with an M sound or not, and fed the correct ones to the Monster.

This game can be modified for a lot of different learning activities, whether you want your child to practice letters, numbers, sight words, colors, etc.

For more fun crafts and ideas like this one, sign up for Dollar Tree Value Seekers Club. It's FREE!