Create your very own kid-friendly centerpiece

Hi again. It's Holly, with another installment of "Entertaining your wee ones with simple art projects".

Now that spring has sprung, your little ones will be toddling around outside. And if they are anything like my kids, they will be collecting things: leaves, rocks, worms, and PINE CONES! Have your kids happily collect these nature treasures (well, maybe not the worms or anything else that's living). Ella collected an entire basket of pine cones from our yard the other day. She affectionately refers to them as acorns. We have tried to convince her they really are pine cones. But she is having none of it. They are ACORNS to her and that's the story she's sticking with.

She brought them in and very diligently cleaned each one in the bathroom sink. A process that much to my dismay took two days. When I asked her what the heck she was going to do with all those "acorns", she looked at me like "Duh, Mom." and said, "An art project."

I asked her what her art project was going to be and she just said "Glitter". Oh-kay. Where does she get this stuff?! So we waited until Saturday (when Andrew was in charge! Ha!) and we had the bright idea to paint the pine cones and then sprinkle glitter on them while they were still wet.




We waited for them to dry, all the while, I'm thinking hmmm...what to do with some painted sparkly pine cones...er, um, I mean acorns. So I got the bright idea to display them! I put them in our centerpiece on the dining room table. And I think it turned out great! (This represents only about 1/10 of the pine cones she gathered. Not sure if we'll be painting/glitterizing all of them--or if a new art project is on the horizon.)



What you need:
Found nature objects
Paint (we used washable Crayola "Kids' Paint"--found in the Crayola aisle at Target)
Paintbrush
Glitter

You could do this at home with your kids! Since I know pine cones may be hard to come by for many of you faithful readers out there in California, you could find leaves or small rocks around your yard and do the same thing with them.

Happy Crafting!