Tag Archives: painting

Summer Fun: Mud Painting

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When I think about summer, I think of the sudden increase is dirt and mud everywhere! Baths are a frequent necessity. Strawberry and Kitty love to dig, apparently only encouraged by their brother, who is on a new emphatic hunt for “rocks” hiding beneath our lawn and play set.
The only way to get by is to embrace it, I know! I knew the perfect picture book to go along with dirt: I’m a Dirty Dinosaur! by Janeen Brian and Ann James.
cover I'm a Dirty Dinosaur
One thing I love about I’m a Dirty Dinosaur is that as the dinosaur gets progressively dirtier, he spends time relishing in the mess: first his messy feet, then his messy hands, and then his messy tummy, and so forth. Strawberry loves to act out the simple rhythmic pages for each messy part of the Dino.

The most clever part of the simple art in this book is that the dirty brown that covers this adorable dinosaur in each picture is actually mud!  To extend the fun, we decided to make our own mud paintings.
201506mud painting3 Continue reading →

Chocolate Painting with I’m a Hungry Dinosaur

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With cocoa powder and chocolate, we made our own cake illustrations like those in the fun picture book I'm a Hungry Dinosaur.Last spring, we read a fun book called I’m a Dirty Dinosaur, in which the illustrations were created with actual mud. Of course, we had to make our own mud paintings! The same author has another book, I’m a Hungry Dinosaur, in which the illustrations were created with cocoa powder, chocolate, and sprinkles, so of course we needed to give a try to painting with chocolate ourselves. Continue reading →

Learning about Color Mixing with the Color Kittens

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The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown is a simple Little Golden Book about two cats, Brush and Hush, who love to paint with colors. There is a hint of fairy tale in their story (as it is the explanation of how the world has so many colors) and the text has a pleasant but irregular rhyme that makes it a delight to read aloud. Brush and Hush’s adventures in making “all the colors in the world” are childlike and loveable. Color mixing and making our own paintings is a natural progression from reading The Color Kittens together.
We practiced mixing our own colors after reading The Color Kittens. Then we painted our own pictures with "all the colors in the world." Continue reading →

Quill Painting to Learn about Then and Now

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My daughter and I have been having fun together since my seven-year-old son has been at day camp for two weeks. (More on this to come!)
One fun thing we discovered as we dropped him off at the beach for his Beach Day was a large feather. Strawberry was delighted when I showed her how we can “tickle” each other with the feather. She proceeded to tickle herself all the way home. I mentioned, in passing, that in the past people would use a feather or “quill” as a pen, by dipping the tip into ink and writing with it. She was so excited by the idea that she wanted to try it! Hence, we had a morning of quill painting.
Quill Painting
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