Painting with Magnets

This was a project that Logan did a few weeks ago at the library with Mrs. D., and I am so in love with the cleverness of it! If you have followed my blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I love kids' painting projects, and we have done many, many, many of them, but this was completely new to me. I love that it mixes art and science, too!

Materials:

• round metal cake pan/pie plate
• white paper (card stock works well)
• pencil
• scissors
• magnet
• paper clips
• paint (tempera works well)

Directions:

1. If planning to make more than one of these, you will want to first make a round template for tracing. Place some paper inside your cake pan/pie tin and draw around the inside. Cut out this circle and use it for tracing all your other paper circles. Cut them out.
2. Place a paper circle inside of your cake pan or pie tin.
3. Add some paper clips (Mrs. D. had everyone use two large, plain, metal clips).
4. Next, pour in a little bit of paint. Mrs. D. let each child select two colors. Logan chose yellow and blue.
5. Give your child a magnet (preferably one that is not small enough to be swallowed! Ours were wand-style and were perfect for this.) and show him how to move it around on the bottom of the cake pan or pie tin. (You might need to help hold the pan, too.) This will move the paper clips around. Tell him to move the clips into the paint and then spread them all over the paper, using the magnet. (Help as needed, and make sure that magnets are nowhere near his mouth.) Talk about the process. What do you notice happens? Logan saw that the two colors mixed together to make green.
6. Once the painting is complete, allow it to dry before displaying.

Tool Box Stamping

Do you ever find yourself so far behind that you don't even know where to begin? That's how I feel about blogging. I know I want to, but... It's just so long since I have done these things that I wanted to write about. Anyway, hope they make some sort of sense, because I felt it was worth sharing, once upon a time. This project was something that I found for our Sunday school kids to do as a wind-up for our VBS, which took place ages ago, right after school got out in June! (Don't even get me started on how fast this summer has flown by. I swore that school seemed like it was NEVER going to end, and then once it did... Oh, boy!)

So, I found the inspiration for this craft here. The main difference is that she has used paint and I wanted something less messy for our Sunday school kids (for reasons I am sure you understand). My solution? Stamp pads. We have plenty in our resources at church, so I had my two kiddos test it out at home with assorted nuts, bolts, screws, and nails, and it worked splendidly.

{Finished Tool Box Prints}

Materials:

• paper (we used white card stock)
• stamp pads in assorted colors
• various nuts, bolts, screws, nails (careful about ages of children and whether or not you allow sharp points)
• paper trimmer/scissors (optional, for cutting paper smaller)
• something to clean up with: damp towel/paper towels/baby wipes 

Directions:

1. I used a paper trimmer to cut our 8 1/2" x 11" card stock into quarters, making the pieces about postcard size. This is not necessary.
2. Set out paper, assorted tool box items, and stamp pads.
3. Have kids press nuts, bolts, screws, or nails (flat side recommended, although Mia did discover that the threading on a screw makes an interesting design if you twist it over the paper) onto a stamp pad and then onto paper to make a print. Repeat as desired.
4. Allow ink to dry completely before displaying your projects. These would make fun greeting cards or wrapping paper, should you choose to stamp them on say, a roll of Kraft paper (which can be found at Dollar Tree).