Quick Kids Art Using Recycled Waste Products

Noodle always likes to do something arty when she is home with me and Squish is napping.

Here are some of the things we have been up to lately. These are all quick and easy and primarily use waste materials which otherwise would have been discarded.

COUTURE FOIL HAT AND BANGLE

The bangles are literally just scrunched up foil.

The hat is lined with a re-used disposable plastic bowl, which gives it the firm shape. The flower is cut out from a cardboard tray.

EGGTRAY FLOWER

This is so easy that Noodle was able to do this on her own with a bit of supervision.

1.Cut out four 'egg holes' from the egg tray (with a bit extra cut out from in between to create the petal shape).

2. Tape a straw at the back as the stem. (We twisted a green pipe cleaner around the straw but you could use a green straw or paint the straw green).

3. Paint the flower as desired. 

FINGER PUPPETS

These ones came pre-cut in a craft set, but could just as easily be made with off-cuts of felt, stiff cardboard to line with (toilet rolls or foil inners will work well), some glue and a few googly eyes.

Psychedelic Hair Mousse Art

I remember previously seeing some interesting uses for shaving foam for art activities on Pinterest. When I spotted a bottle of hair mousse in my drawer which was older than Noodle (I am not sure why I actually own hair mousse since I have no recollection of ever using it), I figured that it should have similar tactile properties and decided to let the kids experiment.Today's quick, messy art activity with my little ones needed just three things: paper, the hair mousse and food colouring.

 

Top left: mousse squirted on paper | Bottom left: Food colouring fizzing on mousse | 

Right: End product

We squirted lots of hair mousse onto a page- both kids had a turn at this and found this bit hilarious. Then we sprinkled a few different colours of food colouring all over the page (today I used powder colour as this made the mousse fizz and make interesting noises, though I am sure other types might create better results aesthetically). We may have used a bit too much purple colour as this seems to have overpowered the other colours a bit.

Then the kids got to squish their fingers into the foamy, fluffy, fizzy mess for a fun, sensory experience. I let Noodle make patterns in the foam using a plastic fork and a toothpick. Then we blotted it a bit with a paper towel and left it to dry. The result was a psychedelic rainbow of colour.

The mousse is quite soapy and washes off hands without problems. Oh and the paper smells pretty afterwards.

Just stuff we did at home last week

There were a few rainy days this past week, so the kids enjoyed several indoor activities at home:

• We did a hand print painting this week using glitter finger paint to make a butterfly (I just added glitter to some regular finger paint). The top set of hands belong to Squish and the bottom set to Noodle. 

Butterfly hand prints

• Noodle painted a bird with the leftover paint and added a foam beak and googly eyes.

 

Glitter bird

• We baked a tasty chocolate cake. Nothing fancy, a box mix topped in caramel and sprinkles. Noodle did most of the decorating.

• We blew bubbles. 

Recipe for home made bubbles:

1/3 cup dishwashing liquid
1 1/4 cups water
2 teaspoons sugar

• We played I spy. For Noodle, I give her the sound the word begins with rather than the letter since she cannot really spell yet.

• We played (lots of) hide and seek. Squish is surprisingly good at this for a fourteen month old!

• We turned our lounge into a recording studio and had a sing-along, using the Yokee app, where the lyrics to practically any song are available.

Kitchen fun with Squish

There is not much that captures the attention of a thirteen month old for any length of time, but this very simple activity is one of my favourites with Squish.

 

Colourful plates, cups and bowls provide hours of stimulation for a toddler

I guess one could call it a simplistic Montessori type practical life exercise. I throw an assortment of plastic tupperwares, plates, bowls, spatulas, measuring cups etc. onto a large blanket and let him go wild. You will see that the food cups from our friends at Nuk made their way into the picture as well.

Most of the time, this activity is reserved for when I want Squish to entertain himself while I get some work done. In fact, he is playing with his plates and bowls as I type this (today, some different coloured golf balls were tossed into different coloured bowls, but sometimes a few large lego blocks or silicone muffin cups are added to the mix). I stick to large items with no possibility of being swallowed.

While he enjoys just jumbling them up or banging them together on his own, we also use them for more structured activities:

Colours

I help him to group items that are the same colour together and attempt to get him to repeat the colour names. So far we just have ehhhd (red) and boooo (blue).

Sorting

I get him to stack like objects together, eg. all the bowls or all the plates.

Counting

We count the objects as we go along. For now, his version goes "toooooo, teeeee, ten".

Language

As we go along, I name the objects, eg. plate or cup and ask him to pass me specific items.

Imagination

A thirteen month old does not engage in too much imaginative play yet, but Squish pretends to eat from the dishes or feed me and moves imaginary food from one container to the next.