Tuesday, February 24, 2009

FHE Painting Activity

Russ had an idea to let the kids paint pictures for Family Home Evening last night. Told Molly about it on Sunday so she kept asking and asking me all day Monday when he was going to get home because she was so excited about it. When Russ did get home, he took Molly and Lys and ran to the craft store to buy more paint and some canvases for them to paint on.

I do find it funny how much more willing the kids are to help clean up when there is something they really want to do. Russ told them they had to help clear off the table and cover it with newspaper before anyone could paint. I think it was cleared in record time. They completely covered the table with newspaper and taped it down so it couldn't slide. And then decided that it would be a good thing to put the leaf in the table to make it bigger. No, they didn't cover the spots on the table that were left exposed after adding the leaf. Yes, some paint did get on those spots, but cleaned off easily enough. The newspaper actually made it so it wasn't bad to clean up. Quite fast, actually.

Obviously, Dylan didn't get to paint. He sat in a chair and chewed on his shirt as you can see in this picture.

The kids had a blast painting. Don't think we're going to do it again for a long time though. Even though they finished in time to go to bed, Russ didn't finish his. When it was an hour past bedtime, I finally had family prayer without him so the kids could go to bed. And since he was last to finish, I let him clean it all up. :)

Here are a few pictures from it. This is Molly working on her painting. She knew what she wanted to paint as soon as Russ told her about painting.
Lys working on hers. Russ was helping her a little. He squirted a bunch of paint on his canvas and mixed it around and the kids really liked that so she had him squirt some on hers.
Russ blending his colors together.
Emma (and a little bit of me) stopping to pose for the picture.
Jimmy working on his. Looks so serious, doesn't he?
Jimmy got tired of watching Dylan chew on his shirt so gave him this big toy to play with.
Lyssa posing with her finished painting. Russ let them put some glow in the dark paint on them, so they had a good time last night with the lights off. The paintings are hung up in their rooms.
Molly with her finished painting.
Emma with hers.
This was mine. I don't like the feet. Couldn't decide how to do them so just left them like they are. Really don't like the feet. Ah, well.
Jimmy's finished painting. I wanted to get him posing with it this morning but he left for school too quickly.
Russ' finished painting. He loves paisleys and decided to paint some.
So there you have it. The painting activity was fun and surprisingly not too messy.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That is a really good idea! I'm glad the kids had fun! They are pretty good little artists, but that's a given cause look at their parents :)

Monica said...

I just love you painting! I think that the feet look fine. Your family is very talented as artists too. What a fun idea to add glow in the dark paint too. I'm so glad that the kids had such a great time and I am going to have to try and be brave and try this with my nephew.

Kem said...

What fun. It looks like they had a blast. Thanks for your help with the dinner idea NPD rocks..