Monday, June 8, 2009

Tuesday's Tips for Summer Survival - Painted Nature

Life In The Car Pool Lane

Tuesday's Tips for Summer Survival (TTSS) is a weekly carnival to help mamas survive the long summer days. The goal is to share kid-friendly tips so we can end up on the other side of this summer with what little sanity we had when we started.
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Painted Nature:

This weekend we were camping with my parents. As usual, my mom brought along an activity to keep the boys entertained. Paints, brushes and little boxes with handles was all it took for the boys to have their own portable treasure chests which were in time filled with a feather, bark, flowers, rocks, a dreidel and a guitar pick (all treasures found at the camp site).

Once they were done painting their boxes, the boys moved on to some readily available and bountiful objects...rocks.

They both spent quite a bit of time painting rock after rock. And once we got home, they layered on markers and stickers over the paint. Throw on some googly eyes and you've got a pet rock. Logan named his Rocky. (Unfortunately, I didn't get a pic of Rocky before he went to bed with Logan.)

(For cheap and easy smocks, buy t-shirts in a size or two too big.)

Here are a couple of other ideas with paint and found nature:
Paint on a leaf or flower and "stamp" it on to a piece of paper.
Paint some bark or an acorn or pinecone.

I will definitely be pulling out the paints again for the boys this summer and encouraging them to paint on some nature. I was surprised at how much time they spent painting the rocks.


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Here's how you can participate in TTSS (and please do):
Grab the code for my button (over there on the left) and write your own post about a kid-friendly idea that might help a mama keep her sanity this summer. (Feel free to include the obligatory cute kid photo!)

Then come back here and add your link to the widget built by my wonderful and geeky talented husband. (Pays to be married to a geek!) Simply add your new (or even an old) post's link to the form below.

Then, most importantly, visit the other blogs that have linked and leave comments, hopefully encouraging them to give us more good ideas next week.

18 comments:

  1. I love painting rocks :)your boys are SO cute!

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  2. That will definitely keep kids busy for a while!

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  3. I can't participate yet. Our summer vacation doesn't start until tomorrow! THEN WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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  4. Your Mom is fabulous! They could paint rocks all day long and you could use them to decorate a flower bed or something. Love this idea. What kind of paint did they use?

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  5. That was a great idea! Painting little things like that is so therapuetic! Great pics! Camping is a great idea too! We love to camp in our backyard...you know...we go really rustic! LOL!

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  6. I want to camp! My boys have treasure boxes that the painted and they love them! But I do have to look in them every now and then to make sure nothing is being kept as a 'pet'
    Great ideas! Thanks!

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  7. How fun. My kids would totally love that. I soooo meant to do a linky post but I got too busy watching LOST Season 1 Episodes 16-20 and The Amazing Race, Season 2. My life is tv, or DVD that is.

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  8. Oh how fun! We have some great painted rocks from summers gone by:)

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  9. My kids love painting and I LOVE the idea of outside painting. It's a win-win! Thanks for the idea.

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  10. You always come up with great ideas for your kids. What a great mom you make.

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  11. oh crud, i linked the blog and not the activities! hopefully readers will scroll down, yikes!

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  12. Hello,
    I have been reading this blog since many days and I did not see any negative point in it. Each of these feather creations is painstakingly hand painted in fine detail and numbered and show very fine. The effect is that of tiny murals merged with the feathers. I found many companies online that giveaway best quality stuff in this regard. The unique nature of each feather carries over into the painting for a truly one-of-a-kind creation.

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    1. Hi,
      I am thinking about the idea of camp. We are the family who has many treasure box which the painted & we have a lot of interest in them. But we have to check them time to time and then to make sure not even a single thing is being kept as a 'pet. Sometimes a person may suffer from side-effects. To avoid this, it is necessary to consult the doctor about plastische chirurgie (a German word used for plastic surgery) in detail so that you can get no loss.

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  13. Wonderful idea, I will share it on my site.

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  14. Obviously a lot of fun, gotta try this with my children.

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  15. And who's gonna wash these t-shirts arfterwards?

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  16. So where can you buy all this stuff?

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Yeah! I love comments! Feel free to leave me one (or two or three).
But remember what your mama said..."If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Thanks!