Spring Flowers

 Last week the girls and I did a little finger painting and made these cute spring flowers.  They loved getting their fingers in the paint and using their thumbs to make the flower petals.  I had to chuckle at how differently each girl approached the flowers. 

Dot was very precise in making her petals....working hard to keep them round, with white centers with a splash of color on top of the white.

 L was a little more free with her flower making and seemed to like hers larger and didn't mind if the petals weren't touching each other.

 They both liked finger painting the stems in.  

Isn't that beautiful?!  Put that in a frame and WOW!  Great job, L!

 So serious!

 Dot decided to make her stems shorter and a few with leaves.  

Love it!

And yesterday was a beautiful day so we spent a ton of time outside.  Dot really likes mermaids lately so we took her Ariel bathtub doll, some ponies and some pretend lizards (hey, why not?) outside to play in a bucket of warm water.  We put some landscape rocks in there too to make it more ocean-like.  They played here forever and it was such fun to listen to their little conversations.

Bunny Hand Prints

 I typically plan craft time during nap time for Nikkels, but today I thought he may be old enough to participate without taking away too much of this creative time for Dot.  He did GREAT!  The trick is to have enough activities to entertain him at the table during the down times and he loved it all.  For starters...this kid loves shapes and containers....put them in, dump them out, and repeat.

So, the hand prints.  I had seen something similar about the bunny hand print but I didn't like how the ears looked, so this is what I did....

Use a paintbrush and paint hand, skip the thumb.

 Then print on paper.....I didn't photo the next step as I had to help the kids create the "vulcan" or "Mork" symbol...kind of tough thing for a 1 and 4 year old.  When the print was dry, they made a pink thumb print for the nose, glued on googly-eyes and with a marker drew on the whiskers and mouth.  Done!

 Well....being the little artist that she is, Dot felt her bunny needed a body.  So she took some of the left over paint and finger painted the body on and glued on a cotton ball for a tail.  Then we bubble cut each bunny......NOW.....it's done!

For a side activity I got out the watercolor paints and let the kids paint on coffee filters.  You wouldn't believe the amazing things you can make with painted coffee filters.  More on that another day.  Nikkels really enjoyed painting.  He did need a few reminders not to eat the brush, but he did really well!

The paint dobbers are a huge hit too!

And check out this cute little picture Dot drew the other week.  Isn't it just adorable?  I'm kind of blown away by the puppy....I mean, she just turned 4 years old!  So fun!