Pigtails and Painting

Ms. Julia's hair is finally long enough for pigtails and I couldn't resist. She usually won't keep anything in her hair (barrettes, headbands, etc...) but I got her to keep these in by distracting her with some Dora while putting them in. Of course like any mom, I snapped a bunch of photos...

Julia was so excited to wear her coat today...I was bummed myself since it signals the end of summer and the beginning of the cool/cold weather

Since the weather was so cool and windy which is not very conducive to playing with a toddler outside, I had to come up with something fun for Julia to do besides watch Dora and play with her other toys. So, I rigged up a homemade easel using a dinner table chair, some garbage bags and blue Solo cups. I put a garbage bag over the chair and on the floor and then cut the bottoms off the Solo cups and those were used to hold the different colored paints. A larger, non-trimmed Solo cup served as the brush holder. I duck tapped the cup bottoms to the garbage bag-covered chair and also duck tapped clothes pins to the chair. This made for a paper holder and an easy way to change out the paper once Ms. Picasso was finished and wanted another blank canvas. It was a lot of fun and Julia loved it. She wore her play apron and that served as a great paint catcher so it wouldn't get on her clothes (I should have worn my own apron since she threw a paint-loaded brush at me about 3/4 of the way into her creativity session!)

The set-up before the artist began her creativity

Concentrating on her next brush stroke