Happy First Day of Summer! We’re doing a few simple activities this week to celebrate the Summer Solstice. The girls made neat mixed media sunshines yesterday – gluing, painting, salt-sprinkling, and cutting fun! Here’s a look at the process:

Make a mixed media sunshine:

• Glue assorted items to a chipboard or cardboard circle (something sturdy!) – buttons, felt shapes, wood pieces, textured paper, beads, foam stickers, etc.
• Let dry completely – we used a little sun power and they dried in no time!
• For the rays, paint a piece of watercolor paper with yellow and orange watercolors. While wet, sprinkle with salt. Let dry, then shake and brush off the salt.
• When your circle is dry, paint over the entire thing with yellow acrylic craft paint. We did two coats, with some drying time in between. Some of the darker things weren’t perfectly covered, but good enough for us!
• Design and cut-out your rays. Attach them to the back of your dry yellow-painted circle (we used glue dots).
• Hang and enjoy!

We’ve also had our sunny songs playlist on constant repeat:

• Walking on Sunshine – Katrina & the Waves
• Soak Up the Sun – Sheryl Crow
• Sunny Old Sun – Dan Zanes
• I’m Just Like the Sun – Laurie Berkner
• Dance in the Sun – Milkshake
• Say Hello to the Sun – Cathy Heller
• Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles
• On the Sunny Side of the Street – Steve Tyrell
• You Are My Sunshine – Elizabeth Mitchell

We’ve been sipping fresh lemonade and nibbling on sun cookies. My girls think it is a major treat to have candy corn outside of Halloween!

I would love to do a giant sun weaving project with the girls – you should definitely head over to Twig and Toadstool and check it out! I can’t seem to find much yarn or fabric around the house in yellows or oranges, so maybe we’ll need a trip to the craft store to check out the clearance rack.

Tonight, we’ll sit outside and watch the sunset. Here’s to a beautiful, fun-filled summer!

Are you doing anything special to kick-off summer this week?

Use some of the wild energy a windy day brings and try some of these kid-friendly kite and wind-themed activities:

Make a paper kite :: maya*made

Create a brown paper grocery bag kite :: Rhythm of the Home

Write a Kite Tail acrostic poem :: WritingFix

Decorate your house with little origami kites :: Craft Jr.

Try some preschool kite activities :: Preschool Express

Make Rice Krispies kites for dessert :: Rice Krispies

Watch a video of the story Spot’s Windy Day :: WatchKnow

Print and make a Roto-Copter – a paper toy that spins like a helicopter :: Exploratorium

Make a tin can windsock :: Under the Table and Dreaming

Create a paper plate wind spinner :: Education.com

Print and play with a Twirly Bug :: Crayola

Make your own wind vane :: Education.com

What are your favorite ways to play on a windy day?

My girls get so excited when we have a “puffy-cloud” day, because those are the best days for finding cool shapes in the clouds. One of our favorite cloud stories is It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw. This book is simple, but engaging and was always a favorite in my classroom.

When my own girls were around 2 and 3 years old, they loved reading this book repeatedly and joining in with the predictable text:

Sometimes it looked like a Tree. But it wasn’t a Tree.

Sometimes it looked like an Ice Cream Cone. But it wasn’t an Ice Cream Cone.

After enjoying It Looked Like Spilt Milk and finding some cloud shapes of your own up in the sky, continue exploring clouds with some simple art materials:

Paint with a “cloud” by clipping 1 or 2 cotton balls in a clothespin and then dipping in white paint.

Dip cotton balls in glue and stick them on paper. Try stretching the cotton balls, too – it’s fun!

Make blot-art clouds. Fold your paper in half. Open the paper up and put some white paint on the fold or anywhere you like. Re-fold the paper and rub, rub, rub to spread the paint. Open your paper and see what your cloud looks like!

Tear white paper into all different shapes and sizes (excellent finger work, by the way). Glue your pieces into cloud shapes on your paper.

Maybe you should reward all your hard work with a snack of whipped cream clouds? Yum!

Happy cloud-watching and creating!

{Edited and updated from a post at Blissfully Domestic, February 2009}