Red Leaf Suncatcher

September flew by - the return to school, the beginning of soccer season and gymnastics classes, and weekends full of birthday parties and family gatherings meant that we barely had time to be home. You may have noticed that we were pretty quiet on the blog during the month of September. Although we did have a little time to play, create, and learn our focus mostly pulled us in other directions.

So this week, when things finally calmed down, we were excited to wind up with an extra home day. Some beautiful weather and the arrival of the foliage season pulled us outside. 

While we were outside we found ourselves collecting tiny, red maple leaves off the ground. They were the perfect size for a paper plate suncatcher project. 

Crepe Paper Rainbow Collage

We're stuck in this funny place: winter but not really winter at the same time. Very little snow outside but enough so that we can not go out without snow pants. Too cold to really spend the day out there, but nice enough to feel like we have to get outside for something. Everything is brown, white, and gray. So this week we've decided we need to add some color to our world which has included some fun rainbow play.

Last year around this time we made St. Patrick's Day Windsocks using crepe paper streamers, and as we still have the crepe paper, we put it to use again.

For this project we not only used the crepe paper, but another favorite material: contact paper. We've used contact paper to create a rainbow before too, in an original Sticky Rainbow Collage project. For this collage we used a similar process, although we knew we wanted it to hang the finished product in the window. 

Dandelion Sun Catcher

A few weeks ago we shared our Dandelion Soup play invitation, which was a great way to use some of the dandelions in our yard. Of course, after the dandelions turned to seed, we couldn't use them in quite the same way. Instead, we created a couple of these Dandelion Sun Catchers.

Several times now we've made paper plate sun catchers from nature as inspired by these nature collage paper plate sun catchers from Hands On: As We Grow. 

Halloween Sticky Collage

It's October, which means it's that time of year where our family is pretty excited to be getting ready for Halloween! It's definitely a top family holiday. 

Halloween Sticky Collage

This year we were excited to participate in the Halloween Read + Play blog hop. Over 25 bloggers each picked a favorite halloween book and have paired it with a fun activity or project, there are some great ideas in this series!

For our project we chose the book Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming. The story is filled with fabulous rhymes, a catchy rhythm, and helps the reader imagine they're on the street trick-or-treating for the evening. 

After we read the book, we created our own halloween street using the "sticky collage" approach. We call it a sticky collage because the base is contact paper, which allows little hands to stick the items to the collage without needing glue. We've enjoyed several other types of sticky collage before. 

Sticky Rainbow Collage

This is definitely the time of year when we need a little color in our world. It feels like it will be forever until spring arrives. As we were in search of a little color, and I was feeling inspired by all the St. Patrick's Day rainbows I see popping up online, I decided to set up a Sticky Rainbow Collage.

In January we discovered the fun of sticky collages, and now we've tried both a used wrapping paper collage and an arctic collage. But this was the first time I've drawn on lines for our work.

Arctic Sticky Collage

A few weeks ago we had a lot of fun with our Used Wrapping Paper Sticky Collage which we spontaneously put together. When a family member gave us a box of old National Geographic magazines I thought it would be fun to try a "themed" collage. As several of the magazines had polar animals, it seemed like it would be a good idea to try an arctic theme.

Used Wrapping Paper Sticky Collage

So after two great weeks of vacation we were ready to head back into routine today, except we wound up with a rainy "snow day." Most of the day we were happily entertained with books, board and card games, a special lunch, and an Eric Carle movie on Netflix. That was until late afternoon when we were still stuck inside and needed something new to entertain us.

Over the holidays I had saved some used wrapping paper for future projects.  I'd seen sticky paper collages online before and decided we'd combine the two.

The materials are simple: a large sheet of contact paper (we used a sheet of solid white contact paper as it was what we had,) and used wrapping materials. I cut up small squares of paper and strips of used ribbon. I also put out different scissors and shape punches. Big Brother was interested before I could even take a material picture.

Big Brother helped me peel apart the contact paper and we used tape to attach it to the wall sticky side out. Now the fun began. Big Brother cut up pieces of paper and strips of ribbon and stuck them onto the wall. Little Brother got interested too. 

In fact, Little Brother thought it was great fun!

In the end, Little Brother thought it was more fun to remove things from the collage so we created him his own collage with removable pieces so he could leave Big Brother's work alone. 

Both kiddos were entertained by the project, although Big Brother obviously stuck with it longer. He even came back to it a couple of times, so we're leaving the materials out over night for more play tomorrow. 

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