painting – the joy of five

Arts And Crafts, Children, Families, Family Life

Ice Pop Paints

August 16, 2016May 16, 2017by thejoyoffive5 Comments

It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted any crafts on here and I have really missed sharing things with you that will hopefully keep little fingers busy for a while.
Mine love to get the paints out and with this good weather I thought it would be a great opportunity to make some ice pop paints and stick them in the garden stripped down to just their pants to save on cleaning up all the mess!

They are super easy to make and a great activity for the warm summer holidays.

Ice Pop Paints

A selection of different colour ready mixed paint.
Ice cube tray
Lolly pop sticks

Take your ice cube tray and fill the sections with different coloured paints. We did individual colours and a couple with layers of different colours.
Cut the lolly sticks in half and place one half into the centre of each cube.
Place in the freezer until hardened. We left ours for a good few hours.
Grab some paper and get creating.

Arts And Crafts, Children, Families, Family Life, Toddlers

Christmas Tree Craft For Toddlers

November 11, 2015by thejoyoffiveLeave a Comment

Christmas is on its way and one of my favourite parts of the celebrations is the decorating of the tree. Something I now allow the children to help with and then rearrange once they are in bed!!

An easier way to solve this problem is to create their own little tree from paper.

All you need to do is to find some green paper which you need to fold into half and draw half a tree along the folded side. Once this is cut out you will have a tree with perfectly even branches.

From there you need to pick some colours and paint baubles onto the tree.

Once they have covered the tree with the coloured baubles you can then cut lengths of coloured pipe cleaners to glue across the tree as tinsel.

This is a really simple craft which is great introduce little ones to the magic of Christmas.

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Sons

Colour Explosion Firework Paintings

November 7, 2015by thejoyoffive2 Comments

As an adult I still find all the beautiful colours and the spectacular explosions of fireworks amazing.

I really wanted the children to be able to recreate the splender through some artwork with the children.

I popped over to the wonderful Mum In The Madhouse and found some really cool ideas that I got some inspiration for to make with my own littlies.

I took two toliet roll tubes and cut lines halfway up the tube all the way round and then splayed them out. I then cut bits off of the lengths at random.

I put two different colours onto two separate plates and the covered the toliet roll ends with paint.

Number four had a great time creating explosions all over his page and it got him really in the mood for going out to watch the real thing tonight.

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Learning, Memories, Outdoor Play, Parks

Making Autumn Colourful

October 2, 2015October 24, 2015by thejoyoffive14 Comments

We may be having some fantastic weather for this time of year but Autumn is in full swing and the parks are littered with all sorts of natural materials that are perfect to take home and use to make some masterpieces with your little ones.

After spending a good while at the park tonight foraging around and making the most of the sunshine we went home and got together a selection of twigs, leaves, pine cones, acorns and conkers and took a large sheet of paper which we used to create a colourful Autumn pattern.

Next up we picked the roundest conkers we could find, painted them in different colours then placed a sheet of paper inside a baking tray and rolled them around and around to create a really pretty pattern.

Being late in the day I couldn’t stand the mess of number five joining in with the painting so a made a tray up for him containing all the items we collected plus some play dough which he happily sat poking and pushing around while the others got on with painting.

This is a great activity to get the children interested in their surroundings and using art to explore different colours and textures.

Arts And Crafts, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Fathers Day, Gifts, Handprints, Memories, Paint

Quick And Easy Fathers Day Cards

June 19, 2015by thejoyoffive1 Comment

Who doesn’t love little ones tiny hands and fingers, so what better way to decorate a Fathers Day card than to use their wriggly little fingers!!

A simple handprint makes a lovely picture and is wonderful to compare year after year.

I love to supplement my posts with pictures but tonight’s was hands on for me too so I’m a bit short on the picture front tonight.

For number five we just used the traditional way to hand print by sticking his hand in a blob of paint to cover the hand and then place the hand print onto the folded card to create the picture.

For number for we made a multicoloured hand by painting his palm and each finger a different colour. Again we then placed the painted hand onto the folded card.

I waited for the cards to dry and then added a caption to the front and let the boys help me write a message inside.

The eldest two would sadly rather buy a card now and number three opted to write on the front of hers about the things she loves about her Daddy.

I would much rather have a thoughtful, handmade card from the children and I’m sure my husband is going to agree!!

Allergy Free, Dairy Free, Families, Food, Messy play, Nut Free, Paint, Photography, Soya Free, Wheat Free

Bread Painting Treat

June 11, 2015June 17, 2015by thejoyoffive12 Comments

After school my children are always both bored and hungry; so to avoid sticking them in front of the TV with a snack tonight we killed two birds with one stone and prepared our own snacks.

Painting bread is super easy and loads of fun. It also requires very little equipment so I’m sure you will all have the bits indoors to get started.

Firstly get yourself some small pots and mix together some milk with a few drops of food colouring to create the colour that you would like.

We used oat milk so it would be ok for number fours allergies, but any milk would work.

Next grab some white bread and paint brushes and get to creating whatever design you wish.

Once they have created their master piece then allow to dry a little before toasting.

As you can see number four was not to happy with waiting!!

We simply buttered ours but you could add any topping you like. We also saved a few slices to make colourful sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch boxes.

Arts And Crafts, Crafts, Handprints, Messy play, Paint

Retro Crafts:Potato Printing

May 30, 2015June 3, 2015by thejoyoffive9 Comments

With a basket full of soft potatoes and some bored children on a rainy day I decided to go a bit old school and make some potato print pictures with them.

I can’t remember any of mine coming home with any potato printed items and I cant recall doing it myself since I was at school.

It’s such an easy craft activity that requires very little equipment or preparation.

We simply cut a few potatoes in half and number three then used her imagination to carve out some great shapes from the potatoes.

She created mainly raised shapes. Squares, triangles, simple lines and a little house. There was also a heart that she dug into the potato thus using the outside of the potato to create the picture instead.

Once the shapes had been made we rolled a large piece of paper across the table and put some blobs of paint onto some paper plates and then left them to get creating.