Pretend Food Made with Sponges

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Ness

“Sponge” cake, anyone? Playing pretend restaurant is one of R’s (4 yrs) favourite imaginative games. Sometimes he will “cook” up some fabulous concoction using old expired ingredients from the pantry, other times he uses our plastic play food. Last week, we thought it would be fun to create our own play food using sponges. This was a very simple project using supplies we already had on hand, and we spent the morning “baking” a sponge cake and making “toast”.

Our most delicious “sponge” cake and toast!

The beauty of this project is that you don’t need too many supplies – just a sponge, some paint and a paintbrush, and a pair of scissors or a knife to cut the sponge. We also used some tissue paper (not pictured) to make a cherry on top of our cake.

We began by drawing a triangle shape on the top to represent a piece of cake and, using a knife, I cut a triangle from the sponge. Our sponge was one of those great big thick ones you use for washing the car, which worked perfectly to make a nice high piece of cake. I cut the triangle piece of sponge in half horizontally to represent the top and bottom half of the piece of cake but in hindsight I wouldn’t bother with that next time.

After I had cut out the sponge, R got to work painting and decorating. He painted a white line through the middle to represent cream, and he added some purple “icing” on top. He then scrunched up a small piece of red tissue paper to make a cherry. Finally, he added some more “cream” with some added touches of white paint. Delicious!

There are so many things you could use to decorate the top of the cake – glitter, sparkly cut out shapes that you can buy from the craft store, or even little dots of paint all over the top to look like sprinkles.

The rounded ends of our sponge really lent themselves well to making toast. I used a knife to cut a couple of slices of toast and R painted the “crusts” brown.

We don’t have any brown paint so R had fun mixing black and orange to make a toasty brown colour. He loves mixing colours and all of our painting sessions tend to end up as a colour mixing experiment.

Once R had finished decorating the food, we set them aside to dry. Then it was time for a very elegant afternoon tea! Sponge cake anyone?

You simply must bring out the good silverware for an afternoon tea party, right? How very civilized! We still have quite a lot of sponge left over so we think we might make some cheese next (the sponge is the right colour and it has all those holes!) What types of food would you make?

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Puffy Paint {Math, science and sensory play in kids’ art}

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Ness

We had so much fun with our raised salt painting, watching the reaction of the paint as it mixed with the salt, so I knew R(4) would just love the transformations that take place with puffy paint. This activity has it all – art, math, science and sensory play. Can’t ask for more than that!

There are a few different recipes for puffy paint, some which call for self-raising flour, some which call for plain flour mixed with baking powder. I opted for a recipe shared at Two Happy Homemakers which called for plain flour and baking powder. Of course self-raising flour is just plain flour with baking powder added to it, but I thought that having to add the baking powder ourselves might add a fun science experiment to this activity.

DIY MICROWAVE PUFFY PAINT RECIPE

1 tblsp plain flour
1 tblsp salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 tblsp plus 1 tsp of water
food colouring

Mix all the ingredients together. Paint onto paper. Put the painting into the microwave for 20 seconds. Do not leave the microwave unattended during that time. Carefully remove the painting and observe the wonderful transformation! Be careful – the paint may be hot when it is removed from the microwave.

NOTE: We were not very precise with our measurements. R measured the ingredients himself and we weren’t too fussed if we had a slightly heaped tablespoon or if we were slightly under with the measurements. We also found the mixture very thick so we added more water. If you would like to include math within this activity, then be accurate with your measurements and talk about quantities and capacity. You could even count the number of times you stir the mixture.

We made six batches of the puffy paint recipe, adding one batch to each hole in a muffin tin. It’s hard to see, but the above picture shows the science component of this activity. When we added the water to the mixture, there was a chemical reaction between the baking powder, salt and water. The mixture began fizzing and bubbling the same way that baking powder and vinegar react with one another.

Once we were happy with the consistency of the puffy paint, we began adding colours. This is always R’s favourite part of any art or cooking activity.

Mixing, mixing. So much messy fun!

The colours were so bright and happy. We experimented with mixing colours and combined red and yellow to make orange, and we mixed green and blue to make aqua (although it looks like dark green in the photo).

Even though we added more water than was listed in the recipe, the paint was still very thick. If we do this again we will probably add more water so it is easier to work with. It was fun though trying out something with a texture we haven’t worked with before.

Waiting patiently by the microwave.

R was fascinated with the transformation. This added a wonderful sensory element to this art activity We also talked about the science behind the puffy paint, discussing why reaction had occurred.

This was a definite hit with R and we’ll be sure to do this one again. There were just so many dimensions to this activity from creating the paint, watching the baking powder reaction, colour mixing, painting, and finally “cooking” our pictures and seeing the paint become puffy. Playing, learning, creating. That’s what it’s all about!

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Painting without a brush – blow painting

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Ness

As you know, when it comes to creating ways to play and arts/crafts for R(3), I’m all about using inexpensive or recycled materials, and everyday items found around our home. This fun way to paint certainly fits the bill on every level. It doesn’t get any easier and simpler than blow painting – painting using a drinking straw! This one’s an old classic, but we’d never tried it before. R enjoyed this so much – his attention was held for almost half an hour which is quite a long time for him when it comes to painting. Here’s how we did it……

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Big Messy Fun

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ness

Last week we took advantage of the one tiny break we had from the rain and went outside for some big messy art. Recognise that mish mash of colours on the left? Yep, that’s our homepage image. Those colours make my heart sing!

I began by taking out our roll of butcher’s paper. We have this one from IKEA. These rolls of paper can be found in lots of dollar stores and craft suppliers, and they are so economical. They seem to last forever, even for the most prolific of artists. R(3) often likes to put one brush stroke down on a page and call it done and he goes on to a new page, so we go through a LOT of paper. Buying one of these rolls was the best thing I ever did. After cutting four long strips from the roll, I then taped them together to make a large sqaure canvas. The idea is to create as much space for rolling, spreading and pouring paint as possible.

I laid the paper outside, and R began to pour paint all over it. Even this stage was great fun for R as he squeezed and shook the paint bottles, discovering how his movements affected the way the paint splashed or poured on to the page.

I thought it already looked great, before the fun messy part had even begun!

Next we added rolling pins and sponge rollers to the mix.

It wasn’t long before R started coming up with his own ideas about how he was going to create this art and THAT’S when I knew we were having fun. First he found a stick in the yard. He soaked it in paint and stamped it across the paper…

Then it was hand prints and finger prints….

Next R engaged in some sensory play, squealching and squeezing the paint between his fingers, and running his slippery hands over the stones that I had used to weigh down the paper on to the ground…