Monthly Archives: February 2012

Field Trip: Back to the deCordova

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We took advantage of an absolutely beautifully mild February day during the kids’ break week and returned to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. (Our first visit, in the summertime, is described here.)

This time, we made sure to find The Musical Fence, which we missed last time.

{We visited with our cousins this time!}

There was sketching again.

And we discovered the grounds (and inside, too!) had been yarn bombed as part of the Biennial.

I knit a bit (ahem, understatement!), so my kids knew exactly what they were seeing. The trees were wearing sweaters!

Hands down, the kids’ favorite exhibit indoors was Capturing Resonance, which is new since our last visit. Photos aren’t allowed indoors, so you’ll have to click over to see. We called it the “glittery bits,” and then we discovered it created noise, too, with our help. So cool!

Have you taken any art-related excursions lately?

Shrinky Dink Fun

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Materials: Plain Shrinky Dink sheets, permanent markers, colored pencils, hole punches

I have a vague memory of Shrinky Dinks from early childhood, involving an avocado-green oven and those pre-printed Shrinky Dinks that require no more creativity than coloring books. But then I began seeing tutorials for using recycled plastic, and then I saw blank sheets in the local toy/science store and tucked them away for a Christmas gift. Today we finally took them out to play! We’re not breaking any new ground here, but it was new to us and totally fun, and we have lots of blank sheets left!

I’d pinned a tutorial for Shrinky Dink buttons a while ago, so I definitely wanted to try that out. All the kids love buttons, so they all wanted to make some as well. We also printed out a sheet of computer-created stars for tracing and had the ruler out for squares and rectangles. V, being the oldest (and the most deliberate), decided ahead of time what size he wanted his finished square to be and then did the math to figure out what size plastic to begin with. (The package says pieces will shrink to about 1/3 their starting size.)

This is our output, pre-shrinking:

The wow factor of putting these in the oven and peeking through the window cannot be overstated! It was seriously cool! We tried the toaster oven first, but it just didn’t seem hot enough, plus we couldn’t fit much in at a time, plus we couldn’t all see, since it’s on the counter. Conventional oven is the way to go.

I realized afterwards that I made more pieces than the kids. Oh, well. (Did I mention how fun these are?!) Here are the kids’ creations:

V's creations

V wanted to re-create his stamp as a pendant for either a necklace or a key chain. Once he saw how much fun the rest of us were having with buttons, he made one, too.

N's creations

N wanted to make a star magnet and ended up with a smaller one than he’d counted on–but it still works as a magnet just fine (I cut a small square of self-adhesive magnet strip for the back). He had a hard time envisioning what 1/3 would look like. He really enjoyed making buttons, too.

G's creations

G does her own thing! She began with a the big button template (made using a 1 1/2″ hole punch, with the smaller holes punched with a normal hole punch), then colored on a rectangle, then punched a 1″ hole out from that, then had her brother add button holes to it. She also happily helped us count to 30 (the number of seconds you leave them in the oven after they flatten back down, to set them) and 15 (the number of seconds you leave some folded-up paper on top of them to keep them flat while they cool).

And here’s our total output of Shrinky Dink creations, after shrinking~mine are included in this photo, too.

I’ll have to experiment to see if the ink we used (permanent ultrafine Sharpies) will hold up to laundering, so we know whether these buttons can be used on clothing or are merely decorative. N is thinking about a career in button design*, so if that’s the case, I’ll need to make sure he has the right ink. And I may join him in his business venture, because this is the most fun I’ve had using the oven in quite a while!

* Check out all the Etsy items made using Shrinky Dinks!

Weaving Process For a Preschooler

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That cold-and-cough virus has been running through my kids for more than a week now, and G is the last to get it. When the kids are sick, the TV tends to be on more than normal (normal = hardly at all), and Thursday morning (when I felt badly, too, and needed to crawl back into bed) G and I ended up watching a meh sort of kids’ show, but it showed how spiders (animated ones, anyway) weave a web. Later that day, I asked G if she’d like to try weaving like a spider, too. 9We ended up with two different methods; materials are listed separately for each.)

Materials: Inner hoop of an embroidery hoop, yarn, strips of fabric cut about 1″ wide

I happened to have a 7″ hoop on hand, but larger would probably be even better. I began by tying a length of yarn straight across the diameter of the hoop. I added two more pieces, for six “wedges” total, but you could do more for an older child. (G is three.)

I held the hoop for her, and she began weaving the fabric strip over, under, over, under. With this set-up, it was easy for her to see where the fabric should go next, because the wedges were so defined. And with me holding the hoop, she could use both hands, almost like she was sewing the fabric through the holes.

When she reached the end of one strip, I just knotted on a new one and she kept going. The end result doesn’t look like much, but it is–it’s a really helpful step on the way to learning the weaving process. (G was quite pleased with herself.)

Materials: Cardboard, x-acto knife and metal ruler (for cutting), yarn, stapler, paper strips

Next, I created a more traditional weaving set-up for her by cutting out the center of a sturdy cardboard rectangle. Then I looped yarn around, tied it, and stapled it down. This time I cut 1″ strips of paper.

The yarn is doubled, so I reminded her to go over or under both pieces of yarn, not through the middle. She knew just what to do, reciting “over” and “under” as she worked.

I held the frame up for her, which again made it easier for her to work the strips through. The paper isn’t attached, so we can take it out and do it again, for more practice, or use fabric strips next time.

The top strip of blue paper is woven through the yarn that goes around the top of the cardboard–she wanted to weave one there, too. By the time she was ready to stop, she’d really gotten comfortable with the motion of weaving. This is propped up in the living room, ready for when she wants to go back to it, or take out the papers and start over–much like you might use lacing cards again and again, as part of the process of learning a new skill.

Patterned Paper Bag Heart Banner

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Since November, I’ve been decorating our big sliding glass door to the deck with a seasonal banner of some sort. Our thankful banner was even created from paper bags! So when I saw that TinkerLab’s paper bag challenge fell at the beginning of February, I figured it was a great opportunity to get the kids involved in creating this month’s banner—but with a lot of open-ended process to balance out the product.

Materials: Paper bags (I used brown lunch bags, which are thinner); paint; scissors; materials to create patterns (ie, sponges, cork, pom-poms…whatever your kids want!); heart template; glue or glue stick; yarn for hanging; mini-clothespins (optional)

First I cut open the paper bags and cut off the bottoms so we could lay them out flat. Then we painted them in layers. We covered them in a solid color and then let that dry before going back in to make patterns.

V used gesso on one of his bags because he wanted to use watercolors on the second layer, and we weren’t sure how the watercolors would get along with a layer of tempera paint. G added all her colors of paint pretty much at the same time.

Making the patterns was so much fun! I gave G one of the bags I painted so she could use the sponge to make sponge prints.

She also used the sponge roller to layer some more paint on her own bag. V dropped red liquid watercolors onto the bag he painted with gesso, and a really fun polka-dot effect resulted.

Both boys also used the sponge on one of their bags, and on his second, N made dots with a wine cork and a big pom-pom. We ended up with a pile of colorful paper!

Once the bags were dry, I cut a heart out of cardstock so that all our hearts would be the same size (more or less). We traced hearts onto our bags and cut them out.

The boys were very specific on which parts of their patterned paper they hoped to get on their hearts, so they mostly traced on the painted side. G isn’t quite up to cutting on a line yet, so rather than have her end up frustrated with this part of the project, we gave her the scraps and a heart paper punch.


When the hearts were cut out, we glued them together in pairs so whichever side you see, it’s patterned. Because the watercolor soaked through the bag, V decided not to paste those together—one side shows white with red, and the other is paper bag color with red. G, of course, could participate with the gluing. We thought about gluing the hanging yarn inside the middle, but with so many of us gluing, and at different times, in the end we decided it would be simpler to hang them off the yarn with mini-clothespins.

And what about the hearts G punched out with the scraps? I added some more to her pile and sandwiched them again, this time with a length of perle cotton in between, to make a sweet little hanging string of hearts.

If you’d like to add your project to the link-up, you can do that below. If you’d like to enter to win a $100 Visa gift card and 3-month subscription to Kiwi Crate, make sure to add a link to your project at either TinkerLab or the Kiwi Crate blog (all particulars can be found here). And be sure to visit these other creative bloggers to see what their kids created out of paper bags for the challenge:

Paint Cut Paste, Imagination Soup, Hands On: As We Grow, Child Central Station, Putti Prapancha, Irresistible Ideas for Play-Based Learning, Teach Preschool, The Chocolate Muffin Tree, Nurture Store, Small Types,Make Do & Friend, The Imagination Tree, Toddler Approved, Red Ted Art, Kids in the Studio, Rainy Day Mum, Glittering Muffins, Sense of Wonder, Mom To 2 Posh Lil Divas, Come Together Kids, My Creative Family, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, A Mom With A Lesson Plan, Angelique Felix, The Golden Gleam, Clarion Wren, Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo, Let Kids Create, De tout et de rien, PlayDrMom, Creativity My Passion, Kiwi Crate, Tinkerlab

Happy Valentine’s Day, and have fun!

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