Summer suncatcher

We’re in full-on heat mode at our house, and now that the first day of summer has come and gone, it’s time to create something lovely to decorate the sun-filled windows. The wee tot loves to paint, and I figured we could combine her love of paint with an interesting medium – glue!

I don’t know about you, but I used to love giving my hands a thin coat of glue and then peeling it off, feeling the oddness of the pull and then inspecting the revealing skin-like section of molded glue. I also observed many a bored-in-art-history class high schooler doing the same during class lectures. Why not create a fun peely-glue based suncatcher?

All you need to create this sunny project are some basic materials, such as glue, a pie tin, some veggie oil, toothpicks, glitter and water paints and brushes.

Simply coat the pie pan with a thin coating of veg oil and then load that pan up with glue. I encouraged my wee tot to squeeze and squeeze that glue bottle helping to hone her fine-motor skills. I figure we squashed about 1/4 cup of glue in our 8-inch pie pan. If your child feels like experimenting with more glue, go for it! Mod Podge would work great for this project, too.

Now it’s time to get creative. Invite your child to sprinkle glitter, splatter water paint, or paint right onto that wet glue. She can really take her time and think about color combinations or design. We used the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) to explore what colors they would create when mixed together.

Offer your child a toothpick and invite her to draw her toothpick all around and about that glue filled tin. She can create swirling lines, looping circles, or straight lines blending and moving about her colors and glitter.

Here’s the hard part – the whole shebang has to hang out overnight to dry. You can speedy-up the process by placing your glue filled pie pan in the sun and checking back in an hour or so.

Once the glue becomes somewhat transparent, your child can carefully peel the glue suncatcher away from the pan. If it is still sticking, let it dry for a bit longer.

Now she can pop a hole in the top of the suncatcher and hang in a window watching how it glints and glows in the sun!

*We also made mini-sun catchers using a muffin tin. FUN.