Our final activity inspired by Oliver Jeffers’ How To Catch A Star turned into two incredibly messy but fabulously funny activities.
I thought that they would be process arts without much of an end product
But actually the finished stars are all rather lovely
Would you like to see?
Yesterday when Esther and William got home from preschool
I was ready for them
We started with an activity that Karin from Cafe Bebe shared with me on Facebook last year
Throwing powder paint at contact paper
I ordered some Holi powder from Amazon
The colours were so vibrant
Perfect for making our sun catcher stars
I attached some sticky paper, contact paper
To our BigJigs easel
And then asked Esther and William if they would like to throw paint at it
I have never seen William so excited about an art activity
He was ready and raring to go
And he loved every minute of it
William literally just threw the paint everywhere
With gusto!
Esther threw the paint
But then smoothed and smeared it across the page
Their techniques gave very different effects on the paper
They loved working together and individually
To cover their pages in colour
Beautiful bright splodges of colour
After the paint had time to settle
I cut out the star shapes and stuck them to the window
Overlooking Baby Tilda’s garden
I did it once the children were in bed
And in the dark I was quite disappointed with our stars
But in the morning I was dazzled by our sun catchers
Our sun catcher stars
Esther and William were thrilled with their stars
The window where they catch the sun
Is where we eat breakfast every morning
Looking out at Tilda’s garden
When Esther and William had finished their paint throwing
We moved straight to our next activity
Shaving foam marbling
I thought it would be a good way to have fun
And a sneaky way to get Esther and William really clean!
For shaving foam marbling we used
Two baking trays
Two cheap cans of foam
Food colouring (we chose pink, purple, blue and green)
And we added in star stirrers too
Esther and William, particularly William, adored this activity
They got totally and utterly stuck in
Literally smothering and covering themselves in foam
It was wonderful to watch
I fell head over heels in love with my children
I drunk in their complete joy in this activity
After some initial exploration of the feel of the foam
We began to add some colour
Esther became very engaged in colour mixing and pattern making
William became engrossed in covering himself in as much foam as possible
Esther and I marbled the stars
We pressed them into the foam
And then scraped off the excess foam
To reveal the marbled pattern
We made lots and lots of stars
William mostly did this
He did make two stars
Which actually were quite stunning
With lovely streaks of blue
We put all the stars to one side
And I am going to string them together
To make Baby Tilda starry bunting
The finished stars are so very pretty
With their marbled swirls
A perfect finishing activity for our series inspired by
Oliver Jeffers’ How To Catch A Star
But our day was not quite over
Esther and William wanted to take their foam painting outside
And so we did
My lovely little girl
And my bestest boy
And we all played together and remembered our star in the sky
And the best was STILL to come
We took the foam paint up to the bath
Where Esther and William covered each other in pink and blue foaming paint
Before showering it all off
A wonderful way to end our day
And, of course, reading How To Catch A Star
Those sun catchers look amazing! Perfect for overlooking Tilda’s garden. Looks like they really enjoyed both activities! Might do the shaving foam one again this year with the boys Alex loved it when we did it a couple of years ago when we made marbled Easter eggs for cards-I think my boys would both be like William in covering themselves though! 🙂 xx
WOW! Looks like a lot of fun was had and the finished stars look beautiful, baby Tilda starry bunting is such a lovely idea x
Oh gosh, this looks like so much fun. S is somewhat scared of shaving foam or we would definitely try that one!