Moms: How are you keeping your kids & family engaged while you’re away? Tell us & win!

Our favorite art activity this summer has been making colored ice cubes with food coloring and then using them to paint outside in the hot sun. It's fun for the kids to mix a tray full of their own colors at night. The cubes freeze overnight, and the next morning they set up with big sheets of watercolor paper out in the sun and go nuts with the melting ice cubes!

I love arts and crafts time with my kids and so do they. We love using dried pasta with our art. We can paint or use marker on them and glue them to our paper.
We also loe to dye them with food coloring, and add them to our masterpieces!
There are so many shapes and sizes to play with and it helps my 2 year old learn colors and shapes!

Fun for them, fun for me and gives me something to do with the leftover macaroni we don't use!

We have a PUR filter on our kitchen faucet, but I do find it a bit challenging to switch when it's time (like right now, as a mater of fact). Look forward to seeing the new mount.

I know this is off-topic from art projects, but I'm not eligible to win anyway, and I wanted to chime in after reading the description of what's going on in the Kitchen in your BlogHer House. :)

Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer
elisa@blogher.com
My BlogHer profile truly shows you everything I do online...Check it out!!

I have cheap canvas & cheap acrylic paints from craft stores that I keep on hand. We load the canvas up with lots of paint. We just paint it on randomly until the entire canvas is covered. Then my daughter will draw whatever she feels like & we'll paint it together.
The act of painting random colors all over the canvas taps into the "creative" area of the brain. It's very relaxing & it frees you up to just paint -without worry of staying in the lines or making it look like something else.

Rebecca

http://www.beginningfresh.blogspot.com 

I have so many! Most of them include using bits of left-over supplies from past projects to put them to good use (instead of wasting them/throwing them out.) We loved making cereal-box purses with left over construction scraps and an egg carton. And recently, we made paper bag puppets - which is great for the creative play that happens when they are all done!

We love to do chalk drawings at home - both on cardboard and paper when it's nasty weather and outside when it's nice.

We make our own chalk, which is half the fun for the kids - they can make it whatever color they want and can do fun shapes with some of the molds I have.

When we do our drawings, we do "regular" chalk and I also always put out a bowl of water so that they can dip the chalk in it to make watercolor chalk which shows up with a completely different hue and makes for some extra special fun!

Michelle

http://honestandtruly.blogspot.com ( http://honestandtruly.blogspot.com/ )

http://honestandtrulyreviews.blogspot.com

@hone ( http://www.twitter.com/honestandtruly )

We love making our own "puffy paint" by mixing equal parts shaving cream and glue. Then we use shoes, cookie cutters, etc. for stamping it onto construction paper. The best part is that it makes some really huge "puffs" and after it's dry my little guy loves poking his fingers into it and making a new design that way.

Alissa A. Enders

www.havestrollerwilltravel.com ( http://www.havestrollerwilltravel.com )

We're pretty busy, so we try to combine boring everyday chores with ways for the kids to be creative. It gives them an outlet and sparks their imaginations, AND it makes the chores more fun (which helps the chores get done!) For example, we let them use their bathtub paints all over the tub and shower walls before we scrub the bathrooms. Then, they help scrub away ALL of the paint - it's a lot easier to tell if you've wiped a surface that's blue to begin with and white after :)

I like to collect things for crafts. It is amazing how creative kids can be when you give them a pile of things that you were going to throw away. We have made fish out of old CD's. Cut out some fins from paper and place between CD's, Glue 2 CD's together so that the shiny side is facing out. You can hang the fish and it will catch the light. It is very fun and cute! Add eyes.

Another classic in our house is to cut out a shape from 2 pieces of construction paper and set aside. Now grab all of those old used up bits of crayons that you would normally throw away. Have the kids carefully shave them using a kitchen peeler. Lay the shavings between 2 pieces of wax paper and iron on a low setting to melt. Use the construction paper cut out as a "frame" for the wax paper crayon shaving melting. Very pretty in a window. Home made stained glass!

You can make stained glass cookies too. Basic sugar cookies (refrigerated dough works) cut out a middle piece. In a ziplock bag break up some colorful hard candies. Keep the colors separate. Put the colors in the hole of the cookies. Bake like normal. Enjoy!

Dawn Thomas
Mom to 5 children

My favorite is painting pinecones. I have several Pine trees and the pinecones are available year round. My kids can paint using specific, holiday type colors.

This is something my mom would encourage of us. It's amazing how simply coloring with crayons can bring vibrance and life to a black and white picture.

I love to let the kids take pictures when we travel to get their viewpoint, then we make a collage from all our pics for framed display in the house.

Being an Italian family, we eat A LOT of pasta. I try to be sure to buy every variety and save a handful of each every time we use a bag/box. While we eat, we talk about what the shape could be used for. Then when we have some free time we make "macaroni art." Low-tech but a lot of fun.

I love to have my children cover their hands with different color paints and slap a piece of paper. Such beautiful hand prints come out from all the different colors. Then they can go wild with the colors. We use lots of paper towels when we are done to clean up hands and tables.

My hubby is taking the kids camping while I am at BlogHer, so I doubt there will traditional crafts! They will be GeoCaching though and I am going to have them make up some cards to leave in the caches identifing we stopped and found them. Markers, glue and papers will be invoved. I'm thinking of having them use paint to leave thumbprints....

Mandy W.

FourAgainstTwo.com

My favorite non-craft craft (or non-art art project) is ACTUALLY a BAKING project: rainbow cake ( http://stopdropandblog.com/2009/07/31/rainbow-cake... ), which has now changed to rainbow cupcakes ( http://stopdropandblog.com/2010/05/20/starting-off... ) (or anything involving more than one color of cake).

Who doesn't like a craft you can eat?

Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )), from Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ), is a freelance writer and newspaper photographer.

One of my favorite projects to do with my kids are vision boards. I'm a big scrapbooker, so we use a lot of my scrapbooking skills and materials to create a vision board for each of us and for the family.

I have my kids come up with several goals and then we go through the process of writing out various steps to the goal and then we put pictures to the goal and put them on a board.

This year I'm going to use cardboard cutouts of bodies that I found online because we are focusing on health this summer.

 - ScrappinMichele
Michele McGraw

http://scrapsofmygeeklife.com

Time for art projects has been an important part of my home throughout each stage in my children's development. Nothing equals the expressive, experimental and sensory experience of creating!

Collaging is a mainstay. Even the youngest children can assemble a collage piece when offered pre-cut paper options (including magazines, all different types of paper, strips or squares of textured toilet paper or paper towel, wax paper, cardboard, etc.), photos, feathers, ribbons, beads, googly eyes, pasta, rice, sand--truly, it's infinite. As they grow, they can be taught to use different scissors, papercutters, and safety blades to snip out their own pieces, to take photos to use, and to use a printer.

Supply a base of paper, cardboard or a found object, like a product box or paper towel tube; glue, paste or glue stick (even the dribbles of glue can add to a collage ala Pollack!); and maybe paint, crayons or markers too. You can limit the items for little ones, alter items for themed or holiday time, or offer your teen (and yourself!) a Moleskin to collect amazing expressions from images and text found in magazines and old books.

Limitless possibilities, and deeply gratifying to allow children to get messy immersing themselves in textures and visuals to see what unique piece their hands create.

Deb Rox

3 Smart Girlz ( http://www.3smartgirlz.com/ ) consulting

Blog ( http://www.debontherocks.com/ ) like a freaking butterfly, sting like a Tweet. ( http://www.twitter.com/debontherocks )

We love "recycling" art projects -- cardboard egg containers are our favorite! They can become caterpillars, treasure boxes, containers for plant seedlings, places to sort rocks/buttons/sticks/legos/little people.... The possibilities are almost unlimited.

Another cool recycling gift idea is puzzle piece jewelry! Pieces from puzzles that have lost too many pieces to still be fun can be glued together and decorated with glitter or a few rhinestones, glued to a jewelry pin backing, and you have a unique piece of wearable art or gift for Grandma. Older kids or creative adults could wire wrap other pieces into necklaces, bracelets, or even earrings.

Liza Barry-Kessler
Personal: LizaWasHere ( http://www.lizawashere.com/ )
Professional: Privacy Counsel LLC ( http://www.privacycounsel.net/ )

I have always done "Art with Food" with the kids. Using food dye to tint rice, pasta to then glue into creative artwork. They can fill glass blocks and or glass jars to create "landscapes". Or use it to decorate faces they draw on paper.

Shellie@Military_Mom
Blog4Mom