Art Week Part 4: Trash to Treasure

Some of the best art supplies come from the trash or recycle bin! Give your kids some duct tape, screws, nuts, glue - whatever and let them have at the trash/recycle pile!

Kandinsky art by No Time for Flashcards

Love the color wheel from Little Illuminations

Robots from Spoonful

Some fun recycled art from maureencrosbie on Flickr

and I love Modern Parents Messy Kids recycled art roundup

Travel Tuesday: Rainy Day Disney Magic

It's no secret that we are Disney fans around here. Disneyland and hopefully Disney World soon is definitely on the top of our favorite travel destinations. Something about the magic of being there just sticks with us. One of the things my boys have always loved to play is Disneyland. They pretend that they are there in different ways. They've done Pirates of the Carribean in the pool, Astro blasters around the house etc.

The one that gets "played" over and over is The Jungle Cruise. It's my oldest's favorite attraction and always has been. I used to have to pull him around the backyard in the wagon over and over pretending we were on the ride. Did you know they are working on a Jungle Cruise movie (with Tom Hanks AND Tim Allen)? We are SO excited!

One of the ways you could bring the Disney magic home if you're stuck inside on a rainy day is by making your own attraction playset. We made up a Jungle Cruise playset to show you how.

 The boys drew animals and cut them out. Taped an opened up paper clip to the back to set them up, made a boat out of craft sticks and duct tape and the rest was up to them.

We made a video because this must be seen to be truly appreciated ha!

What is your kids' favorite attraction?

Dis­clo­sure: This post is part of a spon­sored cam­paign for Dis­ney on MomTV. I received a pro­mo­tional item as a thank you for participating.

Art Week Part 2: Air-Blown Art

My son saw me doing this one day and instantly wanted to try. It's become one of his favorite ways to paint. It makes a great wrapping paper or personalized birthday card without much effort!

You'll need water colors, a paint brush, water, paper and a straw. I like to do this project in a box to contain some of the mess. The longer they paint the messier (and more fun) this project gets.

Load up your brush and water color of choice with water (a bit more than you usually would which isn't hard for kids to do)

Let the color drip onto your page

Using your straw blow the paint around the page - the more water your paint has, the bigger the drop, and the farther the paint will go.

Repeat until your masterpiece is finished.

That's it! Easy, messy and fun!

For those that asked the watercolors we used are Artist Loft from Michaels they are actually good quality and fairly inexpensive (I used a coupon)!

Unplug and Build (a Revell Giveaway)

We've made the decision to work on stepping away from the electronics and purposefully interacting with our boys more often. We do try to spend a lot of time together as a family but we want to make sure that we are setting aside time specifically for them. They love to talk about what WE used to do as kids. You know, back in the olden days.

----------------> Click HERE to read more and enter for your chance at one of 2 $50 Hobby Lobby Gift Cards and a Revell SnapTite Model Kit of your choice!

Building Week Part 3: Chain Reaction

This is SO fun your kids will want to do it over and over. Mom Trusted has a great chain reaction you can build from popsicle sticks that will surely create some giggles.

Want to see one in action? It will surely make you run to the store for sticks!

Building Week Part 2: Strong Shapes

This is an easy, fun experiment to find out how strong different shapes are. Shape 1 sheet of paper into different shapes and see how much they can hold. We made a triangle, square, and cylinder.

We used books and loaded them on slowly (in the same order for each shape)

The triangle won with 12+ books! The cylinder held 9 and the square held 5 (but the seam was a little weaker on the square too) We used this information to make a card pyramid and discussed our thoughts on how the Egyptians built their pyramid without modern technology.

A house of cards is rewarding, but frustrating lol!

A coffee break was definitely needed. What are you building this week?!

Building Week

Welcome to Building Week - this week we'll cover different activities that involve "building". Today I wanted to focus on our favorite building material, LEGO bricks, but switch it up a bit and pair it with learning. There are so many ways to mix them together and they are all great for visual learners which both of my boys are.

Matching patterns with DUPLO from Rockabye Butterfly

Math with LEGO bricks from Homegrown Learners

 Create structures (easy or hard) photograph them and have your kid recreate them! from My Little Princess World

A lot of great math ideas from The Pleasantest Thing

Another great LEGO instruction book - perfect for beginning builders from Kids Activities Blog

How do you use LEGO bricks for learning?

Pirate Week: Part 3

Since I'm only one person and can only do so much in a week I thought I'd load you up with lots of pirate inspiration from others today!

Make a treasure map from a paper bag from B.Nute Productions

Egg Carton treasure box (and treasure) from Nurture Store

Jello boat snack from The Remodeled Life

Build a pirate ship from Kate's Creative Place

Walk the plank from Chick a Bug

Between a Dog and a Hard Place has a GREAT pirate week up on her blog (good for younger kids too!)

A Pirate play date from The Busy Budgeting Mama

A sand jewel hunt from The Fickle Pickle (you could do this in the park)

and pirate sensory play from Momma's Fun World

from Crayon Freckles

And Navigating the Preschool Years