Father’s Day Banner

Before I share with you our fun Father’s Day, I wanted to share the banner that we made in honor of my husband, the BEST Father for my children! 

We started out cutting triangles from cardstock.  Then I painted each of the children’s hand, left and right and they made their hand print on the triangles.

Even the BIG boys let me paint their hands!  They are good sports and were actually happy to participate!

Banana Taffy’s Big Ole’ hand barely fit on the triangle!!

When they were all done, we had this.

After the paint was dry, I outlined the hand prints with a black marker and then Strawberry Taffy painted the letters on each triangle that spells out “Happy Father’s Day!”

                    

After that paint was dry the children wrote messages to their daddy on the back of their hand prints.

Next, I laminated the triangles and Strawberry tied them together and hung them up, like this:

Mr. Taffy LOVED it!!  He had so much fun reading the messages on the back.  We’ll be able to bring this out each year and the kids will love seeing how their hands have changed.  Seeing all those hands up there, in all those different sizes blesses me more than I can explain!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Adding in some Easy Art~Artistic Pursuits Review

As a member of the Old Schoolhouse Crew I’m happy to share with you a recent product that I reviewed.  Artistic Pursuits is a very doable and gentle approach to learning and teaching art. 

With some very basic supplies and the ability to read and follow directions I was able to let my children explore and learn.  I love ART, but I hate “doing” art.  It’s so messy…takes so much time to set up and clean up…But Artistic Pursuits has done a really good job making all those jobs easier for me.  While the book can’t clean up after itself (wouldn’t that be nifty?!) it does make the lessons simple and non complicated with lots of warning as to what we will be doing ahead of time so I’m not standing there going, “where’s the….?”

 

Drawing, coloring and then later painting with water, a “happy memory.”

And while the lesson was to paint a picture of a wonderful day she had, she draws what she wants her future to look like-all things barns and horses.  That’s okay, art can be flexible like that.  Here’s a sample lesson to check out.

Isn’t it pretty? And it wasn’t messy at all!  She was so happy with her creation!  And I was so happy to give her this time to explore water colors.  Another thing I really liked is that there were examples in the book of what other children made for the same assignment.  That took the pressure off for them to make their art as perfect at the “master” they were learning about.  We have had meltdowns in the past when a certain art book made them feel like their drawing had to be as good as the example.

Even I gave it a try.

I’ve never used water color crayons before.  It was pretty fun!

Even my little guy tried out a drawing.  He always loves to be included.

• Written to the student - NO teacher preparation is needed
• Complete art history - Examining works of the Great Masters
• 32 projects in each book include drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and more!
• Easy organized system for handling materials
• Sharp color images printed on bright heavy-weight paper, soft bound(From the Website)

I reviewed the first book in a series of 3 aimed at children in grades K-3.  Artistic Pursuits sells this non-consumable book for $42.95 , they also sell Art Supply Packs.  We’ve only gone through 5 Lessons, but as soon as we finish this book I’ll be getting the next one.  This is art even an art-phobic mom like me can handle!

To see what the other members of the Crew thought of Artistic Pursuits and to check out different levels of books, visit the Crew Blog!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Disclaimer-I was given this Art Curriculum for the sole purpose of this review.  All opinions expressed here are my own, I was not paid.

Christmas Craft

So last Friday we got our act together, primarily because of Strawberry, and did a craft with Blue-Raspberry and Bubble Gum. The goal: To make potato stamp cards. Christmas trees with Robins.

First I cut up a potato and made two triangles and two little squares (one set for each child). Then I took some card stock and cut it in half and then folded it to make a little note card. The children then painted their stamps and made beautiful note cards out of them.

We used thumb prints for the Robins and stars punched out of yellow paper for the top of the trees. This was a really quick craft and a lot of fun too!

And if you happen to send a gift to my children this Christmas, you just might find yourself in possession of an original!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Bit by the paper crafting bug...

So, my mom made those adorable Christmas memory books for us, so I got to thinking about how I have a ton of scrapbook paper and I could probably make a similar book for my nieces. So that's what I did today. AND IT WAS SO FUN! I should have taken a picture of my mess, because boy was it HUGE! I made one book for each girl, different shapes and with colors I think are their favorites.

This is Pillars book, Strawberry did a few pages in this book. She made the page with the heart and I did the other one.

Miracle's book. Hers is my favorite because there's lots of brown and pink.

This last one is Rosebud's, her book has a candy theme, except these two pages I guess. :o) Lots of room for secret notes and pictures and journaling!

Now if you happen to see my nieces, don't tell them about these, because I am planning on giving them to them for Christmas. But I realize the MAJOR risk I'm taking here...they read my blog after all. :o) I had to show my mom though, and anyone else who is interested! By the way, I am going to add ribbon to the rings, I just don't have any right now.

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Painting fun!

I'm feeling pretty good because for the past two weeks I've planned, implemented and cleaned up a craft! Really, I know it doesn't sound like much, but this really takes a lot out of me! We did a little leaf study today, learning about the different parts of a leaf so I decided our craft should be around leaves. One neat thing we did was collect leaves from our own trees and paint them on the "bumpy" side. Then we would press the leaf onto the paper. Taking a marker, we would trace around the outside of the leaf. The images turned out so nice looking!

We even experimented with dipping acorns in paint to see what kind of pattern they would make. Blue-Raspberry and Bubble Gum were concentrating so hard during this project, I couldn't BELIEVE how quiet they were!

The other leaf project we did, and this one was actually first, was dipping cookie cutters into paint and stamping them onto the paper. Also with the stamping, we made acorns with thumb prints and a brown ink pad. They drew the acorn "hats" by hand.

Well, I had more pictures on here, but for whatever reason I keep deleting them...disobedient fingers!!

Our second week of school went good enough, it wasn't as beautifully smooth as last week. I had a few more "things" come up that somewhat stole from our school time. Funny how good things can take from other good things huh? All is well though and next week will be extra fun because we have a field trip planned. Besides the field trip, Chocolate Taffy and Mr. Taffy are doing a Bee Lesson at a local Montessori School, that will be a fun experience for all involved!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy