Art Tiles

The other day at church they had the great idea for the kids to draw on tiles with Sharpies...and the grown ups wrote inspiring words on ours :-)  They were regular old bathroom/floor tiles you can find for a few cents at the hardware store. And any permanent marker would work!

The girls' awesome tiles

I discovered that the Sharpie wiped off easily with fingers, so when we got home we sprayed them with clear spray paint to keep the colors/designs in place.

I had a few other tiles the girls had made at the paint-your-own-pottery place, so I glued them above my closet door for decoration. You could also put them into a frame for a wall hanging :-)

Nature Journals

We were inspired today by a Homemade Simple blog post and a cool children's book about Jane Goodall ("Me...Jane" by Patrick McDonnell). We took a few bucks to the dollar store yesterday for notebooks, pens, tape, butterfly nets, and a cheapo pair of binoculars.

We put everything into a bag with a picnic lunch, water bottles, sunscreen, and our trusty bird field guide and we were good to go!

It was a little toasty but we stayed in the shade. The girls had a blast collecting samples, drawing pictures, and observing all the cool stuff - from the big to the small. They collected everything into their notebooks, which they can build upon in the future! It was a blast!!

Sadie's lizard

Anna's samples

Writing practice