How to Make 4th of July Firework T-Shirts

Today is our first official homeschooling day.  I planned several weeks worth of fun learning games and let the boys choose from a few today.  We decided to make 4th of July t-shirts and have some fun with candy math.

Our first activity was a science/math lesson involving M &M's.  Not surprisingly they loved it!  Once I could get them to stop fighting over the different packages of M &M's and listen to what I was saying they estimated, sorted, counted, added, compared sizes and shapes, and of course ended by eating them all!

After Math we went on to read another few chapter in Harry Potter, Evan's attention didn't last much beyond eating the M & M's so I let him wander outside to play in the sand with his trucks and finish building his own rock quarry.

After a few chapters in our book Alec and Ian played a few rounds of Hangman to work on our spelling.

We ended the day with a fun art project; we made our own 4th of July firework t- shirts.  

It was pretty easy, but messy so I definitely recommend doing this activity outside.   

We took red and blue fabric paint; watered each one down a bit and put them into spray bottles.

We sprayed circular- type bursts onto white t-shirts (front & back if you'd like) and then let dry.  Be sure to put some cardboard inside the shirt to keep the paint from seeping through while you're working. 

Once the sprayed bursts were dry we went back in using leftover paint and a small paintbrush and drew in the firework lines.

I'd like to say I'm creative enough that I came up w/ this idea by myself, but that's just not true.  I found a book in one of our many bookcases called Year Round Crafts for Kids that this was listed in and I thought with 4th of July right around the corner this was perfect! 

You can tell which 2 fireworks I demonstrated with on this t- shirt but Evan did a great job!

Ian wanted a lot of color on his