Art Club: Salt dough and Sharpie Doodle Shirts

For our second Art Club we started with making sharpie dyed shirts. This is such a super fun technique! And so great for kids (and adults!) of all ages.

This was a practice/example shirt I made.

Seriously, I could sit around doodling on shirts or my socks or pillowcases or...well, just about anything....all day. Really. Give me a few snacks. Pop in a fun movie like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or, my latest favorite, Austenland. And hand over the sharpie. Yep. I'd be set for a doodling marathon.

You can check out my tutorial for this project here. The only difference is that while some of the kids used cups, others drew free hand. I loved seeing what they came up with!

Next we got busy with salt dough. Oh! This stuff makes me feel a bit nostalgic. My mom made this for us all the time. In fact, I don't think she ever bought store bought play dough. But she was always mixing up a batch of this stuff for my friends and I. 

Have I mentioned how awesome my mom is? Yep. She really is. 

Salt Dough 

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 water

Mix it all together. Voila! You've got salt dough. Tough stuff, right?

For Art Club I made a giant batch of this stuff. I think I used about 8 cups of flour, 4 cups of salt and 4 cups of water.

I got out a bunch of rubbers stamps, play dough tools, rolling pins, toothpicks and other random things we found around the the house and let the kids go wild with them. 

I lined cookie sheets with wax paper and the kids put their projects on them to dry when they were finished. 

We had a few minutes left at the end so first we played a few drawing games. The blind drawing game is definitely a favorite. 

And then we broke out the pipe cleaners again.

This Art Club thing is so fun!

Invitation to Play: Straw Rocket Races

Now this was fun. 

I mean, of course rockets are fun. Duh. But I had no idea just how much fun the kids would have with this project. I mean, I think they would've made rockets all day if possible.

I set everything up for this Invitation to Play on the table and told the kids when they were done with their chores and stuff (they each have a list of things they need to do each day) then they could come make straw rockets. 

Later, after their dad surprised them by coming home with his horse to give them and some friends rides in an empty field nearby, the kids got busy. 

And their friends joined in on the fun!

Everyone made their rockets and then they lined up in our living room. I said "Ready, set....blow!" Sam was the first winner. 

Then they all scurried off to make improvements to their rockets or make new ones. I gave them a certain amount of time to work and then we had another race. Over and over again. It was so great! 

There was a lot of laughter. And cheering. And busy hands being creative. 

Which is lovely. 

Straw Rockets

Straws

Tape 

Crayons

Paper rectangles (wide enough to wrap around the straw and as long as you want) 

Color the paper rectangles. Form into a tube. Tape together. Fold down the top and tape. Slip your straw rocket onto your straw and blow! 

Try experimenting. The kids cut slits in the bottom of their rockets. They tried using two straws. They attached a small paper airplane to a tube. See what you can come up with! 

Sam is a little red in the face since he was chopping weeds
right before the big races.