Kyle's Craft Explosions o' Fun!

Now that Kyle is almost 18 months (OMG) we're getting pretty crafty here at the house! He's VERY active and it seems that coloring, crafts, anything of this nature seems to calm him a bit...it's awesome!

About a week ago we decided to try painting on the porch! It was our first time, so it wasn't perfect, but he sure had fun! We used flour, water and food coloring to make some paints. I used too much water as you can see, but Kyle didn't know the difference. He had a blast getting all messy! We attempted to use some white paper, but that lasted about 12 seconds. The paint washed off of the concrete...and baby...no prob. :)

Is that not the cutest face ever??

I've realized it's getting harder and harder to keep Kyle entertained. The other day when the weather was gloomy I was desperate for something fun to do inside. What did I do? Looked in the pantry. Beans...hmmm...

Yes, it was a huge mess, but he loved it! What toddler wouldn't like to play with a huge bowl of beans? He only tried to eat a couple before he learned not to do that. He isn't smiling here, but wow he was having the BEST time just making a huge mess! He was pouring the beans, sitting in them, touching, smelling them, trying to peel them, it lasted maybe 30 or so minutes! I had to continuously pick them all up and put them back in the big Christmas bowl (BTW, this isn't my bowl...if you recognize it let me know!) for him to play with all over again.

Now, THIS is by far my FAVORITE craft this week. We mixed water and corn starch, and it makes this totally weird, dry, slime gook stuff! It looks like it's dripping wet, but it's not! It's firm to the touch!

cornstarch, room temp water, coloring

This was shot just before he took his first taste of it...and it was not good! So, we got that out of the way early!

Kyle played with this for maybe 45 minutes...he loved it! We added different colors, cut it, mashed it, it was SO weird! I'm definitely doing this again on a larger scale. A huge pile of weird melting/but not really wet slime would be awesome! I took some cute video of him playing with the gook, but I haven't uploaded to our youtube channel yet.

He loved trying to swirl the coloring...we also used spoons, forks and spatulas to manipulate the gook!

We've also begun our daily coloring activity. I need to buy some white butcher paper, but until then he's loving his nightly coloring time on the coffee table...we just tape paper down and let him make his masterpieces! He even tries to copy my swirls and shapes now! Perhaps we have another artist in the family!? :)

So far, purple appears to be his fave. :)

So, I'm trying to get in 4-5 crafts a week until school/work starts in August. I'm loving how much Kyle can do now that he's getting a little older! This just gets more and more fun!

Next up...big box o' feathers and pompoms? Sounds fun!