Summer of Blazing Imagination # 5 - vehicle art run

Did I mention how much I love simple, and inexpensive projects to keep kids busy? Well I do (so if you have some feel free to share)...and here's another great example.

Step one - find a (medium sized) truck, car or some kind of rolling vehicle.

Step two - tape a washable marker to it so that the tip rest on the ground.

Step three - lay out large sheets of paper (if you have little ones, you may want to tape the paper to the floor so it is stationary).

Step four - drive the vehicles all over the paper.

This is what happens - simple, beautiful art!

The dots are from the markers sitting still in one spot and bleeding through. I thought about moving them a little higher on the trucks, but I kind of liked the different effect it was giving.

The picture doesn't actually do this piece justice, it is really beautiful...I think I may have to frame it and use it in our new classroom!

Summer of Blazing Imagination #2 - Shaving cream construction

Another day of searing heat in Texas, today we did Shaving Cream Construction for our Summer of Blazing Imagination...

This activity is SO simple...take shaving cream, spray it on a table or other surface add cars, trucks or any vehicles you have & let the imagination begin. B is a ENORMOUS construction fan, so ours became a snowed in construction site. What better way to cool down on a hot day than to play in *snow*!

The trucks working together to pile the *snow* ...I loved how they even made tracks like they would have in real snow.

If you know B or any of our family really, we're not big on being messy. It actually took some coaxing to get him to be okay with his hands being dirty. So these pictures are GREAT, because he is truely having fun at being messy. I'll admit it, I even had to bit my tongue a couple of times when he started to get really crazy with the mess...it was starting to take Mommy out of her comfort zone; but look at the joy on his face...everything washes out, doesn't it?

 We even added in some learning by writing letters & drawing shapes.

This was truely worth the $1.00 for the shaving cream. B spent almost an hour at the construction site & probably would have stayed longer if we didn't have other things to do. He even cleaned it up himself ! After all that hard work in the snow his machines needed a good wash down in the sprayer (aka sink).

Oh and in case you're wondering how he handled being messy...B had shaving cream everywhere, the last picture doesn't show how much worse it got. It made it's way up his sleeves, covered his arms, his shirt, the floor and the bench he was sitting on. I think he handled it pretty well ;) 

Summer of Blazing Imagination #1 - car wash

Welcome to the first official post of

Summer of Blazing Imagination.... In Texas our Summer is hot sweltering and long, it seems to start around the end of April or early May and end around September or maybe even October. Although, I don't recall it being this way as a child; but as an adult (and now one with a child trapped inside a house for the better part of the day, due to heat advisories) it's a different story. Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* the warm weather, it's the days of 105+ that I could truely live without.

So the "being trapped inside" got me to thinking that I needed to come up with something for us to do this Summer; especially since we're not dueing any unit studies. That's when it hit me, it's summer...let's do some fun, crazy, maybe out of our comfort zone kind of activities & share them with you, because I know I'm not the only one stuck inside with a kid trying to keep them busy.

Now onto our imagination activity...

Recycled Car Wash

What you need:

A box - whatever you have (we used a soda pack)

chennile sticks

crete papper

yarn

tape

I cut crete paper a little longer than the height of the box, then cut into sections about half way through and taped it to the roof of the car wash. Then the same with the yarn. For the chennile sticks, I used a pen & marker to get the twisted effect, then taped them on. You could paint your box or wrap it if you want to get fancy...but we had fun with ours just the way it was.

B loved this...he used it on his fleet of construction vehicles and then he built it into his train yard...all of his vehicles are clean as a whistle.

Even the kitty decided it looked like fun!