My 3.5 year old daughter and I spent this snowy weekend making gifts for friends and family.  I had seen a few tutorials online about dyeing play-silks with kool-aid and wanted to check it out.  

It worked like a charm and was a great project to get my toddler involved.  To take advantage of the newly fallen snow, add some fun, and save my sink from any suspected staining we did our rinse cycle in the snow together.  It was a blast and they came out great!  

I got to thinking that this would be a fun activity for a special needs class or after school group.  You could really get up close and personal with color mixing!  Silk is a fairly expensive material so in most instances, small groups would work best.  

Look below for the tutorial.

I was sticking to winter themes and found so much success in this little ornament guy.  Kids were just so happy with how they turned out.  I gave kids the option to do any sphere they wanted but most (maybe all) chose ornaments.  We started by designing a frame to border our paper.  We traced the inside of masking tape (a GREAT, in a pinch, circle tracer) in an interesting composition that included overlap.  We added a horizon line, and some interesting details.  I wanted to keep the pictures simple so we worked mostly in sharpie and added just a touch of color with the shading of the ornaments.  The real lesson was in choosing a light source and shading the spheres appropriately with water soluble crayons.  The kids really enjoyed these and I think they turned out great.