So - Paintless Painting & Lazy Days

Sooooooo....some days we don't think too much about homeschooling at all...and that's one of the perks to it, if we all just need some time to be, we can do just that!

The other day we had a day like that...but Bear decided he wanted to paint.
He's quite fond of painting but Mom not so much!
I've discovered that it takes me an age to layer the whole house in newspaper, undress the kids as much as possible, organise the paints in spill proof containers etc etc etc.
Then Bear takes about 2 seconds to mix all the paint into brown sludge, pour it over the paper/newspaper/himself/his little sister, and while I'm trying to stem the brown mud slide that's fast approaching my carpet/tiles/shoes, he declares he's all done and races off to try climb on the couch...covered in still wet paint of course... while I desperately scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Come back and get clean first!"
And then he tantrums.
And then I clean up for an hour.

So hopefully now you'll have gained some understanding into my reluctance :)

You'll imagine my delight when I was wandering through the Crazy Store the other day and happened to spot one of these "paintless" paint books! You know the ones where you just use water and the "paint" magically appears? Well I'd forgotten all about them until I saw it and when I did I promptly snapped it up and put it aside for a rainy day (which we've had plenty of lately)

So it was with great delight that I presented it to Bear and showed him the "magic" painting he could do!

As you can see below he took it all quite seriously, and spent loads of time dousing the pages with water (a word of caution, it's best to limit the water available), but he was very proud of the results!

Ok, so I know it's not as artistic as normal painting, but seriously he not really at the "artistic" phase yet, unless you call brown sludge art. Plus take into consideration the ease and lack of mess, and you just have to admit it's a winner!

After that it was time to chill and browse through some books. We recently got a new book from Letterland which has proved to be a great hit!

And while some of us enjoyed the literature, others cooked up tasty rocks