Popsicle Stick Patterns

Recently I was wandering the isles of a little dollar store trying to find pom poms. I found some, which was great! I also happened to come across giant popsicle sticks, in rainbow colours.

I decided to buy them, not knowing what to use them for. After hours of thinking and not coming up with anything I thought Grace would find fun, yet reasonably challenging. Eventually (at 3am in the morning while needing to pee) I thought of the perfect little activity.

One that can be done over and over, inside, and no mess. Sounds good, right?

If you would like to make some for your little one too I will explain how I did it, although it is pretty simple. 

-First, I found some colourful paper, the only stuff I had that had the closest colours was some thin card, so  I used that. 

-I had little popsicle sticks also, so I traced lots onto all the different coloured card and cut them out. I did about 5 or  6 for each colour. These are to represent the large popsicle sticks. 

-I then used some plain white photocopy paper and cut it into 4 pieces, use as many as you like. 

-Think of some patterns and glue them on using the little pieces of coloured paper. These will be templates for your child to follow to make his/her patterns with the large popsicle sticks. 

My child decided to follow a couple of the patterns and then just made her own, bigger and better ones. She likes using alllllll the popsicle sticks, something to think about if I were to re-do this little activity. 

Here are some of the patterns I used: 

COLORFUL EXPLOSIONS

Today I decided to get Grace in the kitchen to take advantage of it being clean for once, even though you can see a little pile of dishes accumulating in the sink.

Something quick and easy to setup with not toooooo much mess? Baking soda reactions will do.

I'm sick. She's sick. It's cold outside,  but the sun has been shining for days now. Brrrrr.

I was surprised Grace had as much fun as she did. She has been in a bit of a grump lately, probably from being so blocked up. Poor girl.

I let Grace pick 2 colors to start off with. PINK and BLUE. The blue was a surprise to me, pink, I expected right off the bat.

She was very good at helping me measure out the baking soda, I gave that job to her thinking it be best for me to in charge of the food colourings and very full vinegar bottle.

YELLOW and GREEN were the next choices.  We finally got them to fizzzz up too.  Grace got a little scared, so let me do the next one.

We were running out of colors at this point, so BLACK and RED it was.

Lastly, Grace begged for PURPLE. A good time to attempt to teach her  a bit of color mixing,  don't you think? She seemed to understand quite well, even though it turned out to be a very dark purple.

She was such a good helper, cleaning the bench after each colour. She got very curious about what was inside the bottle though hehe! I know you aren't supposed to reward children, but for being such a good girl which is quite rare the past few weeks, she got a bowl of burger rings, her favourite chippies at the moment (I think because it is the only thing I give her, without taking a bite first, yuuck!) 

Window Painting

I have realized my addiction to Pinterest has gone on too long and I need to start spending more time with my baby girl.

I love talking with her, every day she comes up with something totally random and I am always blown away with how much her speech has developed. 

After some new custody issues with her father, I really need to make the most of the time I have with her (I still see her 6 days a week).

So all my hours spent on Pinterest have finally come in handy. I have a list, half a page long almost, of things I want to make with Grace. Mostly crafty things, and a few learning things. 

She knows all her colours, I am pretty sure she knows the basic shapes (and parallelogram, woohoo!). Also a few numbers she can recognize

So first on the list was something simple, because we went shopping today for a few supplies which need to be prepped while she is at her daddy's house for the night. 

I should not have waited so long to do this for Grace, she would have been 100x more excited if I had done this about a year ago! She had fun anyway, and it kept her occupied for probably..... 20 minutes....

What I used:

-Large ziplock bag.

-Packing tape (or duct tape, although packing tape is clear which looks nicer)

-Paint (I used kids finger paint, it has the weirdest texture, but was all I had on hand)

-A child, but I won't judge if you set this up for yourself! I had a blast too!

First I opened up the ziplock bag as wide as I could, keeping it flat on my counter. With each colour bottle I just squirted in about a tablespoon amount of paint then sealed it well. 

Grab your tape and cut off about the length of your ziplock bag, attach to the bag at the top, then the window. Secure on all four sides, double checking the side with the ziplock opening. This is a mess-free activity, it would be a bit of a disaster if the bag were to start leaking! Uh-oh!

This kept my girl occupied for about 5 minutes then she ran off to do something else. I jumped back up on the couch to rest my aching feet for a few minutes and before I knew it she was back to play with it again! 

 It is now 9pm and it is still stuck to my window, I would like to see how long it will last until it goes yucky. But I'm sure it will depend on what kind of paint you use. We will be making our own paint for the first time tomorrow which I'm sure will act very differently to the stuff I used today. 

Stay tuned for the other activities I will be doing with my girl over the next few weeks! (: