Decorating the Playroom!

We recently finished a section of our basement which has become a playroom for the Bug! We have a section for all of the gross motor and outdoor toys because the family room wasn't big enough for him to run and play! The other side houses his "messy" play stuff. It's nice to have another place to go especially after the winter we had!

But I don't like blank walls... So we started some art projects to cover the blank space!

I'm all for the "process vs product" approach for 99% of art projects but we were using canvas for wall art in some cases so I did add some masking tape to make letters on the canvas. The Bug picked the colors he wanted (black would not be on my list for wall art in a rather dark basement...)

You could easily make letter on paper or any material but it makes a great decoration or could be used for a card!

The Wheels on the Bus

The "Wheels on the Bus" song has been an obsession of the Bug's lately and since he's been into his new Little People too, we made an egg carton bus!

He has loved dipping his paint brush and there wasn't much yellow paint left so he had a blast!

He might have missed the egg carton but we painted both the inside and outside!

The next morning after the paint had dried, the Bug spent a long time putting the people into the "seats" and we sang the song over and over and made up new verses for the Little People he has (which wasn't easy...)

It was a great fine motor activity too fitting the people into the egg carton spaces!

Car Track Painting

The Bug has loved the song "Wheels on the Bus" a LOT lately so I thought we'd incorporate the song into our art activity!

We made brown paint to look like mud by mixing red and green paint and found that the Oball car he has had textured wheels making a cooler paintbrush!

He rolled the car back and forth as we sang and enjoyed exploring how the wheels moved the paint around!

Salt Dough!

It's no secret that the Bug loves sensory play so we try to do something every day. As we get closer to holidays where we need presents for grandparents (because we get all 3 grandparent birthdays and Mother's Day within 3-4 weeks every year...), I thought we better start some salt dough exploration!

The Bug did MUCH better with not eating the dough this time (he started when he got to a point where he was done playing). 

He really enjoyed stamping the eggs into it and pinching the dough. He wasn't into the cookie cutters yet but did put the pieces he pinched into them!

Excavating Ice!

The Bug has lots of little animal figurines so I try to incorporate them into his play though I have to pay attention to the fact that he does still mouth toys...

His favorite book has been Dinosaur Pet by Neil Sedaka for a while so we did lots of dinosaur play including excavating dinosaurs from ice! I froze the dinosaurs in glad ware containers (I filled them halfway with water, added the dinosaurs and froze it then filled the containers an refroze them to center the dinosaurs!)

We added some warm water to his bin and he played with the ice and watched as it melted.

We didn't do any more than that this time though you can try things like adding salt, using tools to pick at the ice, and other experiments with older children!