Serendipity Stencil

The Squirrel and I set out to make a stencil. I grabbed a file folder because of its thickness. She drew a cat on it and I cut it out.

The file folder worked out great for a stencil because of the way you can set the paper inside it-- the bottom edge helps with aligning and keeping it in one place.

And when we decided to do a second color (the cat's stripes), I could easily trace the shape onto the back of the folder when closed, then open it up and cut out the stripes...

...and if she aligned with the folder's bottom edge when painting the second color, it turned out pretty good.

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 5.5
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Labels: cat, Erin Sherman, folder, stencil

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Snowflakes with Qtips

Holidays are over but it's still winter :) We made these fun snowflakes with Q-tips.
We cut a piece of white paper plate: hexagon or circle. We glued six Q-tips onto it, (low-temp hot-glue is easiest if you can). A button pressed into the center even helps finish it. TheSquirrel thought it was so cool she could use the Q-tips for something.

Her bedroom has a tree with removeable apples (via Velcro)... so we put Velcro on the backs of these snowflakes, to decorate her "tree" with them in the Winter. (For the Fall, we have autumn leaves to stick on there, and this Spring we'll stick blossoms on there.)

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age almost-5
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Puzzles from drawings

I asked TheSquirrel what should we draw and she quickly shouted "a great blue heron!" because we saw them canoing and they're always flying over our house. I was very impressed by her drawing, as she looked at a photo of a great blue heron. They have kinda wiggly long necks--hence the strange shape. Then I helped her notice each other feature.

I flipped it over to the other side and drew some lines for her to cut it up. (great cutting practice!)

And we have a puzzle out of her drawing! (It's pretty rough, would work better with higher contrast and thicker paper or more embellishing but this is all we had time for... go nuts with the idea itself!)

(And here is mine)

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 4
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Labels: Erin Sherman, puzzles

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Sea Shapes

We borrowed a library book involving shapes that become sea creatures in a cut-paper style...

and since today we integrated the letter D to our learning, we looked at the "semicircle" page...

and made our own jellyfish out of cut paper. This is TheSquirrel's, which was great for scissor practice. (The jellyfish I mean; I had to cut the fish for her)

And here is mine:

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age just4!
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Rain Painting

I was actually excited that it rained today. That's because we could try this project: Drip just a little liquid food coloring (or we had liquid watercolors) on a paper plate, then hold it out or place it in the rain to watch what interesting thing the rain does to it. (I guess the paint splatters a little as the raindrops fall into it). It's a very fun activity and one that allows us to interact with nature. If the green crusaders from renewable energy-focused Acre Resources see this, I'm very sure they'll give it a thumbs-up."

Then we took the textures it made to the computer and I asked the Squirrel, what does this look like? So she gave me ideas and we made these doodles:

And I made the space one above, and this flower one:

By: Erin Sherman & TheSquirrel, age 4!
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March lion and lamb

There's an old saying that the month of March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

Following a children's calendar craft, above is TheSquirrel's lion and lamb on paper plates.
Below are my lion and lamb, the way I work with patterns/texture on the pieces.

By: Erin Sherman & TheSquirrel, age just turned 4!
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Labels: Erin Sherman, lamb, lion, paper plates, Spring

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Pockets

From the library we borrowed a picture book titled "The Pocket Book," in which the character has ten pockets sewn on the front of her dress. I decided to do a dress-shaped project with TheSquirrel, (gluing on) ten pockets of different textures (scraps of fabrics or materials).

Then we wrote the descriptions of them, kinda like in the book. We wrote: "A scaly one, a roughy one, a dotty one, a plaidy one, a spotty one, a stripy one, a furry one, a purpley one, a silky one, and one to match my big blue eyes!"

What child doesn't like putting things into pockets? And, Hooray for glue guns!

By: Erin Sherman & TheSquirrel, almost 4!
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Fingerprinting Doodles

We discovered we can make little things with our fingerprints. Very fun, very easy, with very cute results! We were using stamp pads (work best, less mess), but for the colors we didn't have in ink, we used paint. Got it all from one book by Ed Emberley (view here).

By: Erin Sherman & TheSquirrel, age 3.5
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Fishing

We made some fish we can "catch" with a magnet. Kids have just as much fun with plainlooking fish. But here is how we gave them some style:

I had her choose two colors of rectangles, and give each one a pattern with the same color of marker ("squiggles, stripes, dots, circles," etc)

Mine are on the left, hers are on the right. We drew a fish on one of these,

then cut them out, one on top of the other to duplicate.

We cut triangles out of one of them, which will be glued on top of the other...

Then put a paperclip on each fish, for a magnet-on-a-string to pick them up.

This design was my inspiration. I did this as my first experiment with my digital textures style.

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 3.5
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Labels: Erin Sherman, fish

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Corrugated Frame

We made a corrugated frame to match The Squirrel's new Farm Room!
Here's what we did: Take a piece of corrugated cardboard (on the edge, you see that inside is made of wavy cardboard):

Peel off the top layer to reveal the corrugation (easiest to have a tool like a pencil to run up the grooves) This part takes the longest so if your child will lose patience, have this done beforehand):

Then cut an opening of any size, paint and decorate! :

(Then put a piece of cardboard of the same size behind it with the picture inside.)

Here are mine that I made for our baby's nursery:

I drybrushed white on top of the main color, and I used wire flower decorations, very scrapbooky.

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 3 1/2
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Leafy Trees Collage

TheSquirrel and I took a stroll in our backyard and had a scavenger hunt for nature objects like leaves, crabapples, a purple flower, a yellow flower, a clover, a walnut, etc. We pressed some leaves flat until the next day we could make these tree collages. (This was a few weeks ago when some leaves were falling but not all had changed color yet.) She sort of did what I did--hers is above and mine is below.
As I picked the orange papers for mine, she wanted pink for hers and I think pink turned out better-looking! The cutest thing is that when she was adding those tall thingys, she wanted to kindof "plant" them right into her "ground" by tucking them under the grass shape she glued down.

Now that the leaves are pretty much at peak color where we live,
here is something else I made with leaves!

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 3
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our pumpkin is junked

This is for Holli's contest. I got more excited as I found more cool things in "the junk drawer."
TheSquirrel made her own as I made mine. She says it's a pig. Anyway, she copied a lot of things I was doing--very fun.

By: ErinSherman & TheSquirrel, age 3
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Shiny Painting

The Squirrel and I tried a quick & easy technique. You paint on foil and while it is still wet you draw on it with something dull, creating instant shimmering good looks. Here are the directions from the book I saw it in, which gears this technique toward homemade notecards:

Cut a rectangle of gold paper (we used silver aluminum foil).

Apply a coat of paint and while it is still wet draw a simple design in the paint, then allow to dry.

You can cut around the scratched images leaving a small border (neater than what we did). Stick each one to a rectangle of colored paper.

And here is mine.

By: Erin Sherman & TheSquirrel, age 3
White Shoes

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