Decorating the School-bag (Or the things I can do if I put my mind to it)

All this week, my son has been going to orientation at his new school. This has been kind of a pain for me, because he's been going for a couple of hours a day, a.k.a. half the morning, which has made it very awkward to plan activities for myself and my daughter.  On the other hand, I'm pleased the staff are so careful to settle the incoming children before the returners get back.

My son has, to all appearances, really enjoyed it.  I attended a parent Q & A / meet your fellow parents event on Monday, during which my daughter sat on my lap and entertained herself by asking me: "Where are your nipples?" (Currently, nipples are her favourite part of the human anatomy--possibly just because of the sound of the word.) Thank-you, beloved child, for helping me face my fear of embarrassment in social situations.

However the real disaster came earlier on Monday morning, when my son's teacher handed him a brand new schoolbag, told him he could decorate it however he wanted--and then pointed to a little girl's bag by way of example.  Said girl's bag had caterpillars and flowers painted on with glitter and was completely adorable.  My son was captivated at the thought of transforming his bag similarly; I was horrified.

I am not really artistic in any practical way. I'm always nervous of art projects more complicated than 'give child materials and leave them to it.' It's probably no coincidence that my son is rather behind in art himself.  At age four, he's been writing his letters for over a year, but he only recently started actually drawing things, and colouring in our household means scribbling an abstract mass of colour through which the line-art underneath shows through. At any rate, I knew that the visions my son had were beyond us. Besides, we were all out of paint and our glitter glue stock was low.

So when we got home, I got out the markers (felt tips) for my son and told him to draw whatever he wanted, hoping he might surprise me. He let his two year old sister in on the action, and the result was a colourful scribble all over the back of the bag. I told myself that at least this was his creation, not mine, but the truth was that this was a bag he was going to be using for years to come, and it would be distinguished from everybody else's by being... a messy scribble.

I fretted over this for the rest of the week, and eventually came up with a plan.

The Plan

Today, I gave my son a spray bottle of water and a scrubbing brush. We squirted the bag thoroughly and then he scrubbed over the markers, blurring the washable inks across the canvas to create a watercolour effect.

Once that was dry, he picked out a simple picture of a rocket ship from a colouring book and I copied that onto the bag in first pencil, then Sharpie. Then he painted it (I'd restocked on paints)--and for the first time in his life (and without me mentioning it!) he carefully painted each element of the picture a different colour. I helped a little, but mostly filling in the main body of the ship when he got bored and moved onto the wings. I also painted in the flames at the back when he was unsure how to do it.

When that was dry (huzzah for a sunny day!), I broke out our glitter glue.  This was the only time I over-rode his wishes in design, since he just wanted to scribble any colour anywhere, and I insisted that we had to match the colours already on the ship. I was afraid that if I let him have his way, we would end up with the same messy scribble we started with. Besides, I wanted the glitter glue to act as a sealant, since the paint was washable and this bag is going to get rained on at some point.

I'm not entirely sure how you're meant to use glitter glue, but we found that we got the best result by squirting a line and then spreading it with our fingers.

The final result:

It's flying past a nebula or something...

It's not Monet, and I still worry about what's going to happen when it rains, but this is, I feel, a bag he can be proud of for the next few years (and an artwork that we can gladly keep in the memory box once he's done with the bag). I am tremendously proud of him for putting so much care into it--and have resolved to be less scared of doing art with the children going forward.

I am, however, already worrying about what we can put on my daughter's bag when she joins the school next year...

Fizzy Art

Now that it's so hot, I'm breaking out my indoor activities again.  One of my son's favourite things to do just lately is what we call Fizzy Art: i.e. adding food colouring to the kitchen science of vinegar and baking soda for a quick creative blitz.  I can't recall where I first heard about this, but here's my take on the activity.

What You Will Need

• A large amount of Baking Soda (i.e. think in terms of cups, not teaspoons)
• Vinegar
• Food colouring
• A dish, tray, tub... (I use a disposable roasting dish, but it cleans off perfectly every time with just a quick rinse)
• Small cups/pots to minimise clean-up from spills (I use plastic shot-glasses; mini play-doh pots would be ideal since they are hard to tip over)
• Eye droppers
• Paper towels
• Instructions on how to get food colouring out of clothes (I can vouch for this method with inexact measurements used two hours after the initial stain--it probably helps that vinegar is involved from the start)

So here is our set-up.  The first time I ever did this, I just put a thin layer of baking soda down and it was swamped by the amount of vinegar the children deluged it with.  These days, I buy my baking soda from a wholesaler and I pour it approx 1cm thick.

I have two children, aged two and four, so they each have their own dropper and their favoured colours on their side. When I refill the cups, they may swap colours.  If possible, it would probably be more effective to provide one eye-dropper per colour, since they can be a little careless about emptying the dropper before going to the next colour.

Directions:
Obvious enough...

• Step 1: Fill dropper with coloured vinegar.
• Step 2: Squeeze vinegar over baking soda.
• Step 3: Admire the result.
• Step 4: Repeat until supplies/attention span exhausted.

This really is fantastic to watch.  The baking soda looks and feels beautiful to start with anyway, it's so soft and white.  The fizzing of the chemical reaction (green in the above photo) is always fun, but when the bubbles subside, we're left with cratered patches of colour (the blue and orange above).

Your child will need to know how to use a dropper--though this is a good way to teach them. (I also recommend giving them a dropper or turkey baster in the water table / bath.) If they've not mastered that skill, expect some confusion and 'misplaced' vinegar.

If you want to get into the science of it, (or even if you don't, but want to be prepared for the inevitable day when your kids ask), there are 'simple' explanations of the baking soda / vinegar reaction here and here. The simplest I can reduce it to for mine is that it's a chemical reaction, which means the baking soda and vinegar are turning each other into other things.  One of those things is a gas, and that's what makes the bubbles.  That still goes over my four year old's head.

The End Result
I am fairly sure that older, more aesthetically conscious children, could produce a fantastic abstract piece of art with this, a surreal rainbow cratered landscape... What mine generally do is pile all their colours onto one spot making a mushy brown patch, with some squabbling over territory.

Please note that this took about five minutes, and included me refilling the cups once.  This isn't really something that's worth the effort of set-up if you're looking to occupy them while you get on with something else.  I have debated giving my son a small jug of vinegar and the food colouring so that he can refill their cups as needed (and experiment with mixing colours, if he so desires), but I am wary that my daughter will take matters into her own hands--a staining disaster waiting to happen.

I have managed to extend the game a little though....

Extension Activities
Given the chance, your child might well continue until all the baking soda is a saturated mish-mash of colour.  If it's too swampy, this is the time to clean everything up, but otherwise, you've got something rather akin to rainbow sand.  New sensory activity ahoy!

It really isn't the best medium, but you can mould it to an extent.  My daughter lost interest, but my son spent about ten minutes using the now empty cups to make sandcastles.  This does get messy, since once their hands go into the tray, the 'sand' will start coming out of it, and it might be better done out of doors--but I've never had a problem cleaning everything up again.  It's baking soda and vinegar after all.

Thanks to the inherent cleansing attributes of the medium, even the smallest tots should be able to help clean up the mess afterwards.  My children are expected to carry cups and droppers to the kitchen counter and use the paper towel to wipe up spills. I supply more towels as needed, empty the dish out and rinse everything off again.

Really, I should make the children do the washing up, but I am taking a break from cleaning up the puddles my daughter leaves on the floor.

For further art adventures in the baking soda / vinegar genre, check out this (probably best done outdoors) alternative: Exploding Paint Bags. This sounds amazing, but right now, I am far too much of a coward to actually try it out.

Making a Giant Board Game (with Montessori Pink Reading)

Quick post as we're treading water here. Potty training going swimmingly, children sick again, and endless cold weather. Not really cold weather, but that taunting weather... where it's just cold enough that you have to wear a jacket, and I have to persuade my daughter to wear her trousers, even though she's suddenly decided that all of them have become uncomfortable, and it's really still too cold for sandals, but I've put them into them anyway because their shoes are worn out and I am not buying winter shoes in May!

Anyway, the winter's given me plenty of time to expand upon our repertoire of indoor activities.  My son adores board games, and a couple of months ago, I had this moment of inspiration: I could build him a giant boardgame using our foam floor tiles (you've probably at least seen these around in alphabet form). 


I'd also been trying to find ways of getting my son to use his newfound (and very limited!) reading skills without repeating what he does at school. So my next idea was to make cards for each tile, so when you land on them, you have to do what the card says.  And when I say 'cards,' I mean 'pieces of paper with handwritten text' because I know that the more effort you go to, the less your children will appreciate it.

My son loved the result.

I built the above layout around our playtent.  If you land on the tile in front of the tent door, the card says 'zip' so you unzip (no nitpicking!) the tent, go through and come out of the side entrance, further down the board. 

There are several other props scattered around the board, next to the relevant card.  My son places the cards, and then I put the props down.

We move around the board by throwing a die.  Because we only have twenty-six tiles, it doesn't take long to finish a game, so we normally play it two or three times in a row, which gives us more chances to land on any one card.  Most cards are just a straightforward action, though a few move you forward. One has you miss a turn, but I haven't had the nerve to put in one that sends you back!

My son is on the 'pink reading' at his Montessori school, which means he can (if he concentrates) sound out three letter words with phonetic spellings. At school, he mostly does concrete nouns, so for our cards, I spent a day or two brainstorming three letter verbs, with a few other words thrown in. 

I can see us continually updating this game as the children get older, making it more elaborate.  God knows what it will involve by the time they're in college.

This is the list of cards that we currently use, with italics explaining where necessary. Not all of them are strictly phonetic, but my son has them all figured out by this point. There are less than twenty-six for the simple reason that I ran out of ideas.  Further contributions will be gratefully accepted!

Cut - scissors and paper provided
Dip and dab - Dip sponge in dish of water and dab on paper towel provided.
Dig mime digging (I am still trying to figure out a tidy method of indoor digging!)
Fan - fan provided
Go to red - go forward to the next red tile.
Hit triangle / cymbal / drum
Hop 2 - hop forward two spaces
Hug your fellow player
Hum
Jig 
Jog 2 - jog forward two spaces
Mad - make an angry face
Nap - miss a turn
Nod your head
Pat a cat - toy cat provided
Put on a hat - hats provided
Rub your hands
Run 3 - run forward three spaces
Sad - make a sad face
Sip water provided
Sit
Tap a tambourine
Zip purse or go through the tent

And on the final tile:
Win