MAMA Children’s Activity Post; “I Love Ewe Ma-Maa”

With Mother’s Day coming up I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try out some new mark-making tools and create some lovely cards for all of those special MAMA’s out there!

Equipment;

For the painting bit;

– Activity mat/old towels for floor or table.
– Old painting clothes or aprons.
– Paper plates.
– Clothes pegs.
– Cotton wool balls (& Pom-poms).
– White paint (water based, non-toxic).
– Coloured card.
– Pencil.

For the decorating bit;

– Scissors.
– Pens – permanent markers/felt tips.
– Black, craft foam sheets.
– Ribbon/bows.
– Stick on goggly eyes.
– Double sided sticky tape (could use PVA glue if preferred).

Step 1: Preparation.

Compared to other MAMA activities this one does not need that much preparation so it is a quick one to do if you don’t have too much spare time. I put the activity mat on table (could use floor), clipped the cotton wool balls onto the pegs and then put the paper plates/paint tubes and card on the table and we were ready to go.

Step 2: Cotton wool sheep painting time!

So my son had an area to aim for with the white paint we drew around our hands on the card with pencil and I made it look like a sheep by adding a head so he understood what we were trying to make. You could just draw a circle but we always like to practice drawing round hands!

I then let my son squeeze the white paint onto the paper plates and showed him how to dip the cotton wool ball/peg combo into it and make splodges onto the handprints. He then copied and I just pulled the card away when enough was on there. Whilst doing this my son noticed some of his Pom-poms in the painting box so we tried using these to make the splodges too – they worked really nicely and actually made a cleaner circle mark than the cotton wool balls. So I’d advise using some Pom-poms too!

Step 3: Experimentation time!

As white paint isn’t exactly very exciting for little ones who are used to lots of colour, I got out some other colour paints for my son to squeeze and paint with – once we’d made the nice white sheep cards first!

Step 4: Tidy tidy tidy up!

Compared to other MAMA activities this was not as messy however as we have always had a bath after our MAMA activities we had one anyway! There was also not as much to tidy as the cotton wool and Pom-poms were not really reusable so all that was needed was a wipe down of the activity mat!

Step 5: Creating the sheep!

If there are any visible pencil marks then rub these out.

Draw a sheep head and two legs onto the black craft foam and cut them out. Stick two goggly eyes onto the head. I then put double sided sticky tape (my new best friend!) on the backs of the head, legs and a bow and my son stuck them onto the white paint splodges (with a bit of guidance).

Next use a felt tip/permanent marker pen
to write “I Love Ewe Ma-Maa” or “I Love Ewe Grand-Maa” onto the cards……and there you go, you have some cute, funny mother’s day cards!!

Don’t forget to share any MAMA creations you make on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and keep an eye out for another Mother’s Day Card idea coming soon. http://www.megaawesomemessyart.com