4BoysToys on YouTube

New YouTube Channel!

It's been awhile since I've made a new blog post.  No I haven't fallen off the face of the earth!  We still do fun projects and experiments regularly, but the big difference now is that the boys do their own projects.  Gone are the days of me setting up invitations and creating new ways to play.  They use their imagination and go where that leads, and the best part is, they do all the set up and clean up!

Their latest creative venture is a YouTube channel!  Presenting 4BoysToys!  The four of them worked together to create, write, film, and edit this video.  All I helped with was the editing and uploading to YouTube.

They would be beyond thrilled if you'd take the time to watch their video and leave a comment.  Better yet, subscribe, so you get notifications when they make new videos!

Thank you for being excited for us and following our 4BoysToys YouTube journey.

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Painted Pasta Art

I can't help but look at dried pasta and see an empty canvas.  Can anyone relate?

Today I am joining forces with my fellow Rockin' Art Moms for #themacaronichallenge.  What is the challenge?  Create your own unique pasta project.  My boys thought dyeing pasta with erupting dye was the coolest thing ever, so I decided to set up an open ended art project for them using baking soda paint and pasta.  The whole process took a few days, and it evolved into erupting pasta art.

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Dyed Pasta Eruptions

We've been overdue for a new batch bin of dyed pasta, and this time I thought it would be fun to make eruptions while dyeing our pasta.

Sensory Play with Pasta

Typically when we dye pasta for art and sensory play we use this simple vinegar and alcohol free recipe.  Pasta is one of our favorite sensory materials for many reasons, one of them being because it lasts forever.  It's so easy to dye a few boxes then store for months and months of sensory play.  I buy our dried pasta at Dollar Tree when I it's for play, so this ends up being a frugal sensory bin filler.  This time instead of using my standard method to dye the pasta, I thought it would be cool to dye the pasta using erupting dye.  My boys are more than a little obsessed with creating eruptions, so I knew they would be all over this.

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Melted Crayon Art

Melted crayon art is the perfect way to use up old crayons and broken pieces.  Plus, it's gorgeous!

I remember "painting" with crayons on a warm skillet back in kindergarten, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  Throughout the years I've found a variety of ways to make art with melted crayons, and some of my favorite bloggers have come up with clever creations.  Before you get started, use this simple trick to peel crayons, so they are ready to go for your art projects.

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Play Dates

We love hosting messy play dates, especially in the summer when we can get messy and rinse off in the sprinkler!

My kids are super social creatures, and they constantly ask when we are having our friends over again.  There have been seasons of our life when we have hosted regular Friday play dates with our play group.  We had a busy year, so the play dates have slowed down.  With the weather warming up,and now that we've gotten into a better school routine leaving our Fridays free, my wheels are turning with some fresh ideas for play dates.  Stay tuned this summer for more play date posts.  In the mean time, here are 12 ideas for epic play dates.  

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Homemade Watercolors

Watercolors are one of our favorite art mediums, and homemade watercolors are simple to make.

How to Make Homemade Watercolors

We might be slightly obsessed with making our own paint recipes.  Homemade watercolors are high on that list.  There are several ways to make watercolors, and all are quick and easy!  Here are eight of my favorite recipes for homemade watercolors.

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Homemade Easter Egg Dye

We love dyeing Easter eggs, and it's so easy to make your own dye.  No kit is needed!

How to Dye Easter Eggs

Can I make a confession?  As much as we love crazy sensory play and fancy art projects we are pretty vanilla when it comes to dyeing Easter eggs.  We make our own egg dye, and I let the boys take the lead.  We do enjoy painting with Easter eggs and coming up with creative art projects with plastic eggs, but our egg dyeing is low key.

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Art with Nature

Spring is in the air, and the blooming flowers mean it's time to create some art with nature. 

Of all our favorite spring activities for kids, those involving nature and art are at the top of our list.  My boys love open ended art projects, and nature provides a beautiful palette for our creations.  These nature inspired art activities are sure to spark creativity and imagination in little ones and provides hours of outdoor entertainment.  

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Painting with Eggs

It's that time of year when Easter eggs abound!  We usually go a little over board in the egg painting.  Why?  Well because it's fun of course!  We still have the same stash of plastic Easter eggs from the very first year that I filled them for JZ and J-Bug who are now seven and five.  I'm pretty sure I bought them at the dollar store or another value store.  With all of the fun art projects we've done with eggs, we've certainly gotten our money's worth!

In addition to creating art with plastic eggs we love to extend the creative play of dyeing real eggs.  I'm not an advocate for wasting food, but for these ideas the eggs were eaten first!  Be sure to check out all the ways the egg shells were used for art and other fun ways to paint with eggs, both real and plastic!

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Drip Painting with Plastic Easter Eggs

Do you have a couple dozen plastic Easter eggs saved from years past?  We do, and I'm always dreaming up fun activities to do with them.

Painting with Plastic Easter Eggs

Last year we made prints with plastic eggs.  This year I decided to try something different.  The little holes in plastic eggs has always screamed art and sensory play opportunity to me, so I finally stirred up something I thought of awhile ago.

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Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

J-Bug is more than halfway through his kindergarten year, and I decided it would be fun to share details about the curriculum we've been using.

How to Homeschool Kindergarten

I don't often blog about our homeschool journey, but I realized that I should!  I get so many questions about our curriculum choices, schedule, and organization, so as time permits I'm going to share bits and pieces of our homeschool life.

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Homemade Tempera Paint Recipe

Have you ever made homemade tempera paint?  This might just be the easiest paint recipe we've ever made.

Egg Paint Recipe

Can I make a confession?  I only recently found out that it's spelled tempera and not tempura.  I have countless posts on my blog calling it tempura paint.  Whoops!  A few readers pointed it out.  Maybe someday I will go back and edit all my old posts.  Or maybe I'll just continue to ignore the mistakes and move forward writing new posts.  At least now I know how to spell tempera!  We go through quite a bit of tempera paint in our house, and we also make a lot of homemade paint.  How fun to be able to make homemade tempera paint!

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Painting an Egg Carton

It's egg dyeing season which means you probably have extra egg cartons around, right?  Actually, we go through about a dozen eggs a day, so we pretty much always have egg cartons on hand.  We recycle most of them, but every once in awhile it's fun to put them to good use with an art project.

Recycled Art for Kids

My husband always gives me a hard time for hanging onto random items.  Every piece of packing material or packaging looks like an invitation to create art.  I have to make myself recycle some of them, otherwise our house would turn into a junk yard.  When I'm able, I put the recycled items to good use.  These recycled egg carton paintings were a huge hit with my three year old twins.

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Fizzing Bath Paint Recipe

Bath paint is so quick and easy to make, and it keeps little ones entertained for long periods of time.  The best part is that the mess is all contained! 

Color Surprise Bath Paints

We love making our own paint, especially erupting paint.  These fizzing bath paints were inspired by our color surprise eruptions and this color surprise fizzing paint from Mess for Less.  While being stuck indoors during a storm I knew that a new bath paint recipe would occupy my boys for a good hour, leaving me free to tidy my room.  (We did this activity in my bathroom, so I was close by and supervising the entire time.)

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Frozen Rainbow Eruptions

In case you haven't noticed by now I have an obsession both with rainbows and also with baking soda and vinegar eruptions.  Rainbow eruptions make the most gorgeous eruptions ever.  Since we've had a heat wave I added a frozen element to the science play.

Fizzing Ice Rainbow

We have made rainbow eruptions before, and we love playing with rainbow ice.  I fell in love with these ice volcanoes from Reading Confetti, so I decided to combine the three ideas to make frozen rainbow eruptions.  Her frozen eruptions are different than these, so be sure to check out how she made her volcanoes.  Also, she has a great tip for getting the volcanoes to mold in a way that they will freeze just right. 

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Oobleck Recipes

Hands down our favorite play recipe is Oobleck.  This non-Newtonian fluid is fun for kids and...well..adults too!

15 Ways to Play with Oobleck

Oobleck is so easy to make.  All you do is combine equal amounts of cornstarch and water.  I usually pour the cornstarch into a container first then slowly add water.  If you add too much the Oobleck will be runny.  I suggest working the mixture between your fingers to be sure you've mixed in all the cornstarch clumps before adding more water.  Of course you can add more cornstarch if the mixture is too runny, but sometimes that means opening a new container or not having enough cornstarch.  It's best to add the water slowly until you've got the right consistency.  If the mixture seems too firm and hard to play with, add a tiny bit more water.  You can add color, glitter, and much more.  I've gathered our favorite Oobleck recipes and put them together to create one amazing collection of ways to play with Oobleck.

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Fizzing Rubber Band Snap Painting

If you haven't tried rubber band painting with your kids, you need to shut off your computer or phone and do it right now.  Well, maybe you should read the whole post first.  Then do it.  Seriously, this is one of our very favorite painting activities ever.

Erupting Rubber Band Painting

How to Paint with Rubber Bands

This post contains affiliate links. Here is my full disclosure policy.

Supplies:

• rubber bands
• cookie sheets
• washable tempera paint
• baking soda
• spray bottles
• vinegar
• watercolor paper (optional)

Directions:  I mixed roughly 1/8 cup of paint with a tablespoon of baking soda.  I repeated this for each color then poured small amounts of each color on the watercolor paper.  I've seen rubber band painting done many ways including by painting the rubber bands first and squirting paint on the paper first.  I chose the second option since I knew my boys would want to get right down to the part where the paint splats and makes a big mess.

JZ (7) was the first to sit down and snap a rubber band.  He jumped in surprise at the paint that splattered on him.

He started stretching and moving the rubber bands strategically to place them where they would connect with the largest pool of paint.

As you can see, this is a very messy activity.  We've never had an issue with washable paint staining, but I suggest wearing play clothes.  Here are tips for messy play as well as laundry tips to avoid stains and keep clothes bright.

The other boys quickly ran over to join in the fun, and they made it their goal to see who could get the messiest.

After the paint was sufficiently splattered, I pulled out a spray bottle full of vinegar.  The boys went to town covering the paint with vinegar and watching the fizzing fun.

The watercolor paper is optional, but I recommend it if you plan to keep the artwork.  The paint will dry overnight depending how much vinegar is sprayed.

For more fizzing paint recipes follow me on Pinterest.

More messy ways to paint and play with colors:

Combining Art and Science ~ Erupting Paint Recipes ~ Color Mixing Activities

    

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Homemade Scented Watercolor Paint Recipe

It has been way too long since I've shared a new paint recipe!  Well actually, this isn't a new recipe.  We've made it before.  Since these scented watercolors are so easy and inexpensive to make I decided they needed to be in a post of their own.

Kool Aid Watercolor Paint Recipe

Occasionally we reach for store bought paint, but more often than not we make our own paint.  We made these scented watercolors for the first time a couple of years ago when we had some friends over for a Kool Aid themed play date and then again when we painted in the rain.

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All About Reading Pre-Reading

I use the All About Reading curriculum with JZ and love it, so last year when J-Bug asked for school work of his own I decided to try out the All About Reading pre-reading level for preschoolers.

Pre-Reading Curriculum for Preschool

Let me start by saying that I don't think preschoolers needs formal curriculum.  Preschoolers should play and explore and have quality books read to them often.  That being said, younger children usually see what their older siblings are doing and ask for work of their own.  That's what J-Bug did.  He loved All About Reading.  It was a great fit for him.  He especially loved Ziggy the Zebra.  A year later now in kindergarten, Ziggy still often makes an appearance in our school days.  (Ziggy comes in the Deluxe package.)

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Frozen Inspired Foaming Sensory Play

Are you kids tired of Frozen yet?  Mine sure aren't.  They still walk around singing, "Let it Goooo!"  

Elsa's Frozen Heart Sensory Play

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