Shortly after I started following Jackie, her photography exploded; not in a baking soda and vinegar kind of way, but her photos went from good to outstanding. Want to see what I mean? Check out my favorite piece from Happy Hooligans below and then spend a moment or two to watch the carousel of her posts and you, too, will be taken in by the beauty behind these well-thought and engaging early childhood activities.

~Val

ABOUT JACKIE: Jackie is the mother of two teenage boys, and a Home Daycare Provider to an amazing bunch of little people she lovingly refers to as the Hooligans.

For the past 16 years, she has dedicated herself to providing her daycare children with the classic childhood experiences she remembers enjoying herself: simple, but creative play ideas, easy and affordable arts and crafts, and lots of time spent exploring and discovering in the great outdoors.

Jackie’s passions include kids, photography, and dreaming up crafts and activities to keep the hooligans learning and exploring through good, old-fashioned play.

Follow Jackie on Facebook, RSS and Pinterest.

ART WITH MELTED CRAYONS BY HAPPY HOOLIGANS

This project provided me with a opportunity to introduce a little culture into our day.  I showed the hooligans the painting on the front of the puzzle box, and we talked about Van Gogh, and examined the scene, the colours and the style of painting, and we listened to Don McLean’s version of the song “Starry Night” a couple of times.  Then we got busy…

Each hooligan was given a piece of cardboard (cereal box) covered with aluminum foil, and I filled a paint pallet with 4 shades of blue paint, and a shot each of yellow, black, purple and white.

Some covered their canvases completely with paint, while some made only a few strokes.  There’s no right or wrong way to do this.  Allow your little one to decide when he or she is satisfied with their work.

We left our paintings to dry overnight, and we transformed them with the finishing touch today.  You won’t believe how easy this was!

You’re going to put your broken crayons to good use here, and grate them up!

Older children will be able to grate their crayons themselves, but the hooligans gave it a try, and it wasn’t an easy task, so to avoid having to deal with shredded knuckles and fingertips, we agreed that I would do the grating.  I made piles of blue, purple, yellow, white and black crayon shavings for each of them.  

Sprinkle your crayon shavings all over your painting, leaving some space around the edges so they don’t run off the cardboard as they melt.  At this point, ours looked something like this:

Now just pop your painting in the oven for 5 minutes at 200 degrees.  You can place it on a baking sheet or directly on the oven rack.

When you take your painting out of the oven, be sure to keep it level because your wax will be very hot and runny for a minute or two.

Watching the wax cool was really neat.  Initially, the colours are still kind of pooling and running together, but within seconds, they start to firm up and harden.

When ours were completely cool they looked like this!

Aren’t they gorgeous?

Take care not to bend your painting or your wax will crack.  If this happens, don’t worry, you can just pop it back into the oven and melt it again.

I finished ours off by punching a couple of holes in the top of each painting, and adding a dark blue piece of yarn so the hooligans can hang their masterpieces at home.

These are definitely something you and your child will want to display proudly!

We know you want MORE Happy Hooligans, so here is a collection of our favorite posts from Jackie.

Click any of the images to head straight to the post!

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The post {Blogger in Focus} Jackie Currie of Happy Hooligans first appeared on BonBon Break.

Fall is around the corner and while the weather certainly is not reflecting that where I am, it is time to break out the fall themed art projects. You know what I mean. You’ve got your pumpkins, your scarecrows, your leaves and apple trees, the good ole cornucopia, etc. I figured it would be fun to mix up the fine motor skills involved so my daughter could work on cutting and pasting as well as using paper punches.

Are you looking for some fall art projects that don’t require much set up? Try these fun Cut-Punch-Paste ideas that sneak in lots of fine motor work in the process!

ABOUT LAURA: Laura is a Chicago stay-at-home mom to a 3-year-old and 1-year-old. She loves coming up with crafts and activities to keep them occupied, happy, and learning! Laura blogs at Lalymom.

Follow Laura on Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Google+

CONTINUE READING IN THE PLAYROOM

The post Fall Themed Fine Motor Art Projects by Lalymom first appeared on BonBon Break.