Rainbow Sun Catcher

At an educational store last fall, I located these strange colored discs. What are they for? Bingo? I have no idea. But I knew that I could make something fun with them.

A friend of mine who scrapbooks suggested using a very small hole punch to make holes in the discs... It worked perfectly. At first I made jewelry with them. They felt very "disco"!

Then, I decided to make a sun catcher! I used jump rings to connect the discs in a random order. The curtain of color is attached to eye screws in a squared off piece of balsa wood.

In the morning, we can even look at projected circles of color on the wall as we eat our breakfast!

My son likes to take it out of the window and lay the sun catcher curtain over his face to look out through the colors!

I told my son that I had made it just for him. "Not his sister?" Nope, this one is just for you! "Mommy, how did you make me this rainbow?"

It makes me smile that when my son walks into a room with me, he doesn't ask, "Mommy, what are you doing?"... instead he asks, "Mommy, what are you making?"

Why, I've made you a rainbow!

Rainbow Experiments and Color Mixing with a Three-Year-Old

A Story Told in Pictures:

Tutorial: Place Mats to Teach Place Setting to a Toddler in the Montessori Tradition

I've been wanting to teach my newly-three-year-old how to set the table for some time. Although I sew and could make the place mats myself, I found some place mats I've had FOREVER (and not used in over 10 years); they were just "begging" to be re-purposed! I've also recently discovered the joys of freezer paper stencils. What a great technique to create the outlines of a plate, cup, and utensils to guide the child in learning the placement of these items!

How can you make a set for your toddler and empower his/her independant spirit? It is so easy!

First, I made a template of 2 forks, a knife, and 2 spoons. I printed out the high-contrast template, placed the freezer paper over the template (shiny side facing down), and traced the utensils onto freezer paper. I traced around the actual plate and cup to create the circular stencils for those objects. I then cut the designs out - five sets of them for my five place mats. In the end, I decided we really weren't fancy enough to require 2 spoons and 2 forks at our meals!

I ironed the freezer paper stencils (shiny side down) to my place mat, checked that the edges were adequately "sealed", and the place mat was ready to paint!

Finally, I painted the silhouettes of the place setting, using a foam brush and fabric paint purchased at Michaels. I used navy blue to match the blue place mats.

After the paint was dry, I removed the stencils by simply peeling them off the surface of the fabric place mats! (The freezer paper does not leave a residue on the fabric.)

TA DA!!! My three-year-old sets the table for himself & our family!