Oatmeal Art

I recently joined the Pinterest community

and have been enjoying all the inspiring ideas

of STUFF to do with Taylor Lee!

I will try to post at least a lil' pic of a few of them

especially those that are great successes.

But this is not that kind of post!

This is a post where I'm posting MY idea

and then I'll pin it and let others see it!

Yippee!

Taylor loved this activity.

In fact, she sort of "inspired" it herself

by saying she wanted to play with glue...

and all we had in the pantry that would be easy to glue

was a boxful of Instant Oatmeal - Natural Flavor

(so I adapted a long-adored craft of salt coloring to oatmeal!)

Materials:

craft glue (Elmer's would also work)

Oatmeal

chalk

dixie cups

paper plate

spoon (not pictured)

Step-by-Step:

Pour about 1/4 of a packet onto a paper plate

Using one color of chalk,

jam the chalk down onto the oatmeal,

slightly grinding the big flakes

and leaving behind lots of chalk dust

Pour the lightly colored oats into one dixie cup.

Repeat with different colors

Taylor chose green, pink and blue.

For a toddler activity

the adult can draw an item using the glue

(be careful not to do "too much"

as if it dries even just a little

the oats won't stick to it)

Then put spoonfuls of one color onto the wet glue.

Then the adult can fold the paper a little,

letting the colored oats

roll around a little over the sides of the glue.

Then I poured the oats of that color back into the dixie cup

and let Taylor choose the next color.

Sometimes Taylor found it more fun to put the spoon down

and then pour it from the cup onto the remaining glue.

When the flower was done

she asked for a piggy.

We repeated the process

She was VERY proud of her piggy!

When we had completed the other two glue activities

Taylor asked if she could add oats

to a watercolor painting she did yesterday.

It was still sitting on the porch where it had dried,

so she got excited to put oats on the lion's "hair"...

The texture looked VERY cool and added a lot to her painting!

And clean-up?

A total breeze!

No wonder my folks had a dust-buster when I was a kid!

Taylor always looks forward to cleaning time

because she gets to use this!