We’ve had a very busy day today.  We decided to have a painting afternoon and try out a few different Spring ideas I had spotted on the net over the past few weeks.  Before I share our top 5 Spring Painting Activities I like to let you know about one or two things that I have coming up on the blog later in the week. We are in the process of putting together a new playroom.  We had a fantastic playroom, unfortunately it was on a different floor to the rest of the living areas in our home.  While it was a gorgeous, large, light and airy space with the children as young as they are I couldn’t leave them up there alone for any amount of time, plus every time we would get started on something up there one or other would want to go to the toilet, which of course was downstairs!!!!!!  Later in the week I’ll be sharing our new, slightly smaller but much more accessible playroom.  I’ll be sharing my tips for designing a playroom that is child centred, that encourages, independent play as well lots of fun family time!

So, back to our art activities.  These 5 ideas are not mine unfortunately (I will be sharing some of my own Easter ideas in a few days), I have spotted all of these on either Google+ or Pinterest and I have linked through to each of the original sites for you to easily take a look at the original posts and the fab blogs I found them on. I’m a believer that art activities are all about the process rather than the finished product (that’s my training and background), it’s about exploring and experimenting along the way and trying out different ways to be creative.  We adapted the activities to suit us and I also gathered a few bits and pieces to use as inspiration – a vase of tulips, pictures of sheep, books with spring colours, a branch from our garden. Our Top 5 Spring Themed Painting Activities:

1.  Print Making with Cookie Cutters – a simple, fun, idea from Learn~Play~Imagine.  Both Ooodles (2) and Doodles (4) loved this one.  D experimented with adding a number of colours to each cutter whereas O loved mixing and swishing up the paint with her hands and the cutters.
2. Printing Easter Eggs with a Potato Masher – why didn’t I think of this one before – really simple but extremely effective idea from De Tout Et De Rien: Acitivités pour le Préscolaire (a fab bilingual blog – French and English).  Our masher is not a full oval so I encouraged D to draw egg shapes with his brush and then print the pattern with the masher.

3. Spring Cherry Blossom Tree – we had so much fun with this great activity – a combination of blow painting and finger prints from Housing a Forest.  This activity is probably more suited for slightly older children.  I could definitely see myself doing this with a class at school.  Both D and O loved the concept of blowing the watery paint with a straw.  O decided to create her own masterpiece at this point but D stuck with it and was delighted with the end result, but as always for us, the best part was the process and the fun we had experimenting and trying out our ideas.  We used wine corks to create the blossoms on the tree.

4. Tulip Painting with Forks – love this idea.  Found this on Blog Me Mom.  We had so much fun making these prints.  D had the great idea of joining all 3 of our paintings together to create our tulip garden.  Simple, colourful, fun activity.  We kept a vase of tulips on out table while we painted as real life inspiration.

5. Egg Carton Spring Sheep – we adapted this delightful idea from Blog Me Mom.  We didn’t use egg cartons to create our sheep.  We used the wine corks we had used earlier in the afternoon for the cherry blossoms.  This was D’s favourite activity and he is so proud of his sheep.  O spent the whole time chatting about how her sheep was Shaun the Sheep from CBeebies!

As you can see from the photos we had really great fun with these activities.  Hope you enjoy them too.

Ciara x

PS I am slightly addicted to Pinterest and I have pinned tonnes of ideas for Spring and Easter, feel free to take a look and follow if they capture your interest!