Kid's Craft Idea: Colored Rice Art Activity

Nathan's in a fun crafting phase now, and he's eager to try new things.  Although he's getting bored with standard variety crayons, an activity he never seems to get tired of is gluing colored rice to construction paper.  He's getting better at making designs on paper with the glue and I can see his coordination improving when it comes to sprinkling the colored rice on the wet glue.

 

 

 

I dyed all this rice a few months ago to use with Nathan and my friend's kids when they came over for a visit.  Each child got a small plastic cup full of each color: red, yellow, green and blue.  They managed to share one bottle of glue and get colored rice all over my dining room floor.  But, hey, that's what vacuums are for.  I knew in advance it wasn't going to be neat, but also not prohibitively messy.  I like to keep my messes somewhere in the middle.

Now the colored rice has been recycled many times and is of the rainbow variety, no longer in separate cups by color.  Even better!

Here's how I made colored rice for this art activity:

In a small ziptop bag, mix:

1 cup of uncooked white rice
1/2 tsp rubbing alcohol
a few drops of food coloring

Make up a bag for each color.

Mash around until the food coloring is spread evenly throughout.  When it comes to the food coloring, more is better if you want saturated colors.  The first color I tried came out weaker than the others because I was timid with the food coloring for some reason.  Get wild!  Really go for it!

Then spread out the rice on a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet (or counter top, if you don't need the space for something else) to dry.  It's helpful to shake the wax paper before the rice is fully dry to keep it from sticking together and forming clumps.  Even if clumps do form, they're easy to break apart with your fingers.  You could even get your kids to do it.

The alcohol keeps the dye from coming off on your/your kids' fingers, but if their fingers come in contact with the glue and then they touch the rice, all bets are off.  The color will transfer.  FYI.  But it's food grade, so what the hey.

Have fun!  Let me know if you give it a try.  :)

Last Sewing Project (for a while, anyway) -- a Bed for Nathan's Baby

Hi there!  We're still waiting for Baby #2 to make his appearance (he's five days late and counting!), so I gathered up all my spare energy and used today's naptime to start (and finish!) one more sewing project.

You might remember the doll I sewed for Nathan from the Winter 2011-2012 issue of Living Crafts magazine.  I made it with the intention of Nathan having his own 'baby' to tend to while I tend to our Baby #2.  But like most of the toys I lovingly make myself, this one didn't really grab his attention and got little use. 

I can't blame him, really.  He's a boy who loves trucks and cars and all things boyish, and he'll probably grow up to be a man's man, like his father.  (Does that make him a boy's boy now?)  Also, back then I don't think he grasped the "we're having a baby" concept.  But now he does, and he started playing with the doll a litlte bit and added him to his core group of "guys" (stuffed animals) that make up his bedtime menagerie.  He even said recently, "Soon I'm going to have two babies!"  Almost made my heart melt.

So I thought I'd make the baby some accessories so Nathan can actually do something with his own baby while I tend to mine -- I made him a bed with a sheet and pillow.  And he loved it!!

Naptime for baby!

Put him somewhere good for safe keeping.

Naptime's over!

Time to get grabbed in the face!

It's bedtime now!

Tucking him in.

Happy boy.

Good night kiss for baby.

He's actually reading him a bedtime story!  I love how this sweet boy pretends.  I love this sweet boy!

After a few minutes of putting the baby to bed and then "waking him up," Nathan asked for clothes for the baby to wear and for some diapers.  So next I'll make some felt diapers with velcro closures and will try to figure out how to quickly make some clothing for Nathan to throw over the doll's perma-jammies.  I don't think I have time to knit something, yet don't know when I'll have the energy to lug out my sewing machine again and wrap my brain around another custom-designed project.

I wish I'd taken better photos of the bed, sheet and pillow while we had daylight.  I tried hard to make the sheet look like a real sheet, although I added some topstitching for extra detail.  The striped fabric (from a hand-me-down crib sheet) made it easy to press hems without having to measure, and I eyeballed the size of the sheet and pillow.  I even machine sewed the pillow shut after stuffing it, instead of dreaded hand-sewing.  I love how it came out!

The bed itself is a cardboard crate from Cuties brand clementines.  I wrapped a piece of sheet around it and neatly folded and hot glued the edges onto the bottom of the box.  I wish now that I'd also secured the fabric inside the box,  but I think the fact that I didn't makes it look more cosy and bed-like and less cardboard-box-like. 

I love saving things to use later in crafts (like the clementine crate) and being resourceful with the materials I have on-hand (like the hand-me-down crib sheet I never used because the colors didn't match Nathan's room).

I'll try to feature the baby's diapers and clothing, if I ever get around to creating them before the real baby gets here.... and I haven't forgotten about my last installment of the baby's nursery before the big reveal.  I'll try to do it very soon!

It's a Numbers Game

When we casually started introducing Nathan to the alphabet a while back, I quickly realized that numbers came more naturally to him. 

So when I saw this project in Growing Up Sew Liberated: Making Handmade Clothes and Projects for Your Creative Child I knew I had to make it.  

It was a perfect choice for the boy, who can now count to five on his own and knows all of the numerals, thanks to this toy.  Plus, I was happy to make something for his room, especially because I'm making so many things for the new baby's room.

And sometimes it's just darn fun to clip the numbers onto the stick in any old order and play the way a two-and-a-half-year old boy should.