Fire in the Sky

If you are just hanging out today and want a last minute/easy project as a pre-show to real fireworks tonight, then grab your glitter, construction paper and some paint. The idea came from one of the preschool or kindergarten "The Mailbox: Yearbook." (I can't remember which years it was.) I love checking them out at the library and maxing out my renewals so that I have time to jot down all the great ideas from the teachers that submit ideas to them.

The original idea suggests an adult dropping 3 colors of paint in the middle of a sheet of black paper and then the child smearing it to look like fireworks. My kids just wanted to do it all on their own, so we used Q-tips and they painted with those.

While the paint is still wet sprinkle with glitter.

Some fireworks are really glittery. His description is that he had to show the booms.

When I saw that I had run out a blue paint I was bummed and then I thought - sure, red, white and blue is patriotic, but fireworks shows are just plain colorful!

Ta-da, your own fireworks display!

 Activities for summer #67

The Mailbox 1997-1998 Yearbook Preschool
The Mailbox Yearbook 2007-2008: Kindergarten-Grade 1
The Mailbox 2005-2006 Yearbook (Kindergarten-Grade 1, 2005-2006)
The Mailbox Preschool 2001 - 2002 Yearbook (The Mailbox Yearbook, 2001-2002)

Flags

My girls have been making flags for a good week in honor of our up coming holiday, out Independence Day, the 4th of July. I saw this on a blog and thought it was such a cute idea. So we added to our flag collection with this cutie.


All you need is white poster board, red & blue paint & your children's hands & feet. On ours there are 3 different hand & feet prints from my 3 little ones.

Windsocks

 This is an activity that we did for the 4th of July, but can be used any day. These windsocks can be made with any mix of colors. Because ours were for Independence day, we stuck with red, white & blue.
Supplies needed: construction paper, ribbon or yarn, scissors, glue or tape. A few additional optional supplies include a paper punch, stickers, and markers/crayons.
Choose the color of paper to be used for the main tube of the windsock. If your child wants to decorate the wind sock with stickers or markers/crayons, this is a good time to do that while you do some cutting. Choose the colors for the tails and cut them into strips lengthwise. Once the decorating is done, flip the paper over and either add glue dots down along the long side of the paper for the child to place the tail strips on or else tape them down.
If you used glue you will need to let the strips dry before moving on.
The next step is to roll the paper into a tube and secure it with tape or glue. I would suggest tape for this part. Then attach some yarn or ribbon with just tape or else loop through some paper punched holes. We punched 3 holes evenly space around the top. Wrapping paper ribbon was run through each hole, knotted and also tied to a long piece to hang it all up by. Yarn would work better than that ribbon. One everything is tied or taped tightly, your windsock is ready to blow in the breeze. These were particularly festive to look at and the imperfections were great!

Idea was inspired by Parents Magazine and altered by the supplies I had on hand.