Tuesday's Tips for Summer Survival - Painted Nature

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.