Our Sunny Day Project!

We shall scare the clouds away! It's time for spring!

Eva's favorite thing in the world is art projects. Give her some crayons, paints, markers, scissors, paper, glue, whatever and she'll be happy for literally HOURS. Lately she and I have been making fun pictures of the cut and glue together varietal. The other day we decided to make Nolan a "sunny day" because our weather was so rotten. Eva wisely said, "Oh well if we can't have sun, let's just make our own sunny day!" I like how the kid thinks. So I got to thinking about it and after we finished the one we made for Nolan I asked if she wanted to make a BIG sunny day this weekend since it was supposed to snow. Eva carefully considered this for about three seconds and said, "Sure! Let's make our big sunny day on the inside! It'll scare the snow away!!!"

In reality, the most work that goes into this is you cutting out all the stuff that your kid gets to glue on to the picture. But I maybe spent an hour doing that. We got a big HUGE piece of construction paper (you could do poster board or butcher paper too) at Walmart, and that was about 75 cents. I cut out the sun, sun rays, grass, leaves, flower stems, different flowers, some butterflies, some bunnies and baby chicks, and we got to work. Since Eva loves to cut stuff outI just gave her a few sheets with shapes drawn on for her to practice cutting, since thats one of the things her teacher did ask for her to work on when we had our parent-teacher conference two weeks ago.

You could do this project in stages. You COULD use paint and paint things like the sky and the ground, then let that dry while you cut things out to glue on. Maybe we'll do that with the next one of these we do. This project is also a good way to introduce some basic science concepts to your kids (why flowers have stems and leaves, why the sun is in the sky, why there is grass, etc) if they are feeling in a curious mood. Anytime that we make these little art projects, I don't really worry about if things look perfect, I just want to introduce her to the idea of how things go together and how to stay focused on finishing something you create.

The next one of these we are going to do is going to have trees, birds, some different animals, etc. I also want to do a farm scene one and one with water, fish, etc. Eva LOVES that we made a big "Sunny Day" and is excited to hang it in her room. I'm also using these to talk to her about her big summer projects which are going to be helping plant and grow a butterfly garden, tending her own strawberry plant, and having her very own pet fish. She's had pet fish before . . . that we took care of. I want to give her some cool projects of her own to carve out time with her where she gets attention but is also being productive, especially once Owen gets here.

Funny thing is, once we put this Sunny Day together, wouldn't you know that the sun started shining again? She shrieked happily and said, "It worked mama! Our sunny day made it sunny outside! I LOVE IT! I love you!" Totally validating right? Maybe this bad boy IS enough to make the sun come out and stay? What do you think?