Daddy had to work this weekend so we snuck in an extra project for the week on Saturday morning. We completed the "Me Project" from our ARTistic Pursuits They Way They See It Book. This also tied into the Unplugged Challenge theme of the week which was "People." We haven’t participated in so long and this made for a great way to jump back in.
The kids started by drawing pictures of themselves. Then I had them go through our fabric scraps and pick out some fabrics. They each picked out fabrics from their own favorite clothes I have made them. I cut them up for the kids and they used them to decorate their portraits.
As usual Fairy stuck pretty close to the project as assigned and dressed herself (note the crown). Like Mama, she likes to see results and is a bit of a perfectionist.
Bug on the other hand, who doesn’t have a clue where "the box" is (and if he did he would probably just turn it into a castle or something 😉 ), used his fabric as rug for his room and included images of some of his favorite things. He so works on his own adjenda. I’m not sure what the glitter glue was for… but I guess everything is better with some glitter.
Pixie, well as you will see I don’t have anything to show you for Pixie. She is my all about the process child and ended up cutting up her whole project into tiny bits, completely unfazed that she had nothing to hang on the fridge when she was done. 🙂
We have been reading a lot of Beatrix Potter these days… perfect spring time reading. Fairy especially likes to listen to the stories of the naughty bunnies. We used Peter Rabbit as our inspiration for a painting session last week.
I love painting with the kids. It amazes me what they see… Da’Vinicis everyone of them.
Bug’s Painting titled "Cabbage Garden."
I like how he used a bird’s eye view.
Fairy’s Painting titled "The Scarecrow."
There is something so haunting about the scarecrow face in the middle of the dark colors.
Pixie’s Painting finally titled "Leaves."
Her painting went through three distinct stages. The first was called "Bunny" and the page was all yellows. Then it was called "Squirrel" and was made up of brown and orange circles. Finally she settled on "Leaves." Each painting was completed directly on top of the others but both she and I know that there is a bunny and a squirrel behind all those leaves. 🙂 Amazing how a two year old’s painting can give you great insight into the Masters’ works.
This week we used a broad interpretation of the Unplugged Challenge theme FLAG… and went more Stars and Stripes as inspiration for these Star Ornaments. We had so much fun that even Gammy joined in and made her own. You can visit WeeFolkArt.com for her pattern.
Kids’ – Mom’s – Gammy’s
Kids’ Stars
For the kids’ version, I made up a quick star template with rounded corners (here is my pdf). Or large cookie cutters work well for making ornament templates. I cut out two piece of felt at the same time to make sure they completely matched. Then the kids went to town decorating the right sides with glitter glue and sequins.
Once dry, I blanket stitched the edges wrong sides together, leaving about a 1″ hole to stuff. The kids stuffed their own stars (I helped get it in the points) and then I finished the blanket stitch and added a loop of embroidery floss for hanging.
Mom’s Stars
For my version, I used the same template to cut out stars from red and white ticking fabric… using an extra 1/2″ seam allowance. I placed the pieces right sides together and pinned.
I cut out about a 7″ piece of grosgrain ribbon and folded it in half. I slid the loop side down in between the right sides of fabric and pinned it so that about 1/2″ of ribbon stuck out the end of one star point. I machine stitched around the whole star leaving a 1″ hole to stuff (I back stitched once over the ribbon). I made a snip from the edge of the fabric to the seam in the concave points of the star (so it would lay smooth when flipped). I flipped the star right side out and pushed out the points all the way.
Then the kids and I stuffed the star. Once stuffed, I hand stitched the opening closed.
Since we only recently joined in the Outdoor Hour Challenges we needed to choose a tree to use for our year long study. We choose a Wild Cherry Tree right outside my mom’s kitchen window. I think this will be a great tree to really display change in seasons… bright leaves in the fall, flowers in the spring, berries in the summer.
We gathered a bunch of leaves. It was very interesting to note the range in size and color. The kids, especially Fairy, thought the purple stems were very cool. Upon further reading I think I should note that Cherry Tree Leaves and Stems can be toxic, especially if wilted or damaged.
Another interesting observation was the texture on the bark. It has very distinct horizontal lines rather that vertical like all the other trees we have studied so far.
The best part about this tree… we can see it from the kitchen table. Although we love drawing outside, sitting at the table meant I was actually able to participate this time rather than just facilitating and documenting everyone else’s study. It has been a really long time since I sat and tried to draw anything… and of course I didn’t get a chance to finish it but what the heck, I thought I would share my entry this time instead of one of the kiddos.
We didn’t get a chance to paint on pumpkins this week… instead we made these pretty cool jack-o-lantern paintings to set on the mantle.
First we outlined our pumpkins, their faces and a few other spooky things like bats with a black crayon. Then we painted over the entire page with water color paints.
The kids were pretty excited with how they turned out.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was Smooth. The first thing that came to mind was finger paints. I decided to do something different though and we made our own bath tub finger paints. We ended up with very slippery, smooth kiddos ;). You know the old expression… Smooth as a baby’s bottom!
I googled bath tub paints and ended up combining a few directions to accommodate what we had in the house. No shaving cream and I wasn’t about to use up our California Baby shampoo (although if we do this again in the future I will definitely use a tear-free clear shampoo instead of the dish soap – we got some bubbles in the eyes!).
Ingredients:
1 cup mild clear dish washing soap or baby shampoo
5 TBSP cornstarch
food coloring
Directions:
Mix slowly mix in corn starch to dish washing soap until you get the right finger paint texture. It should be thick enough to not be drippy. Divide into separate containers (you can use ice cub tray for small amounts of lots of colors). Add food coloring to get desired colors.
Before we cleaned up we took some prints of the kids work. I think the tile pattern looks pretty cool. The food coloring cleaned up with no problems… my grout looks better than before. We used some store bought bath crayons before and they left color in the grout. Please note: This does produce a lot of bubbles when you start cleaning it up.
At the end of the week, the kids always do an illustration and narration in their journals (they dictate, I write). I thought I would share their entries from today on Johnny Appleseed.
Johnny Appleseed and a Friend Picking Apples
Johnny Appleseed planted apple seeds. He talked to his friends along the way. Then he gave his friends apple trees. He talked to them long, long ago. He carried his bible and his bag of apple seeds. He did not carry a knife or gun because he liked all the animals. The animals were nice to him.
Fairy
He picked up apples and seeds. He walked around and planted apples. He was a nice stranger.
For Week Three our focus was on tractors/farm machines and the book Rusty, Trusty Tractor. To go along with this theme, our art project was Tracks in the Mud.
It was a beautiful day so we rolled out a large sheet of paper on the drive way, filled a baking pan with WASHABLE brown paint and then dipped a variety of items into the paint to make mud tracks on the page (you could easily do a scaled down version at the kitchen table but I do think it is important for big, messy art sometimes). This is one of those projects that is all about the PROCESS not the PRODUCT.
It was so much fun. By the end, the kids had gotten so into it… they were literally IN it and left their own tracks in the mud.
This week’s Unplugged Theme was Soft. When I was picking up a few art supplies last week I ran across some magic sponge kits. I remember thinking that they were fun as a child. I choose the farm kit to tie in with our harvest activities we are doing for school.
The kids had fun watching the magic unfold, as the sponges came to life in the bowl of warm water. They were squealing and trying to guess what each one was before it opened all the way and I believe there were some sponge races going on…. “Look, look, mine’s opening first!”
After all the sponges were freed from the capsules, we dipped them in finger paint to make farm animal prints. The images turned out fuzzy at best but it was a fun and easy activity.
Unplugged Guests, I know I’m supposed to be linking directly to the post, not my home page but I am in the middle of moving my blog from free hosting to self hosting and I am having a few issues. One is that the domain name is masked due to the transfer. For now, you can use my Unplugged Category link on the side and I have made it where you no longer need a wordpress account to comment.
The Unplugged theme ROUGH… pretty much summed up our week! The kids battled a fever bug, each down for 2 days pretty much meaning that there was very little sleep on my end from Sunday to Friday. Then of course there was the whole first haircut debacle.
We did manage to work in our project, Sand Paper Art and an update to the Stone Project.
We simply colored very hard with big crayons on fine grit sandpaper. The more wax you get down the better. Then we put the sheets on a cookiesheet and put it in the oven (set to 200) for a few seconds to melt the wax (it does not take long at all or you could hover a hot iron over the surface). Cool it with another cookie sheet or pan on top to stop it from curling. It makes a nice smooth/rough comparison sheet. NOTE: If you want to try it… We did this project about a year ago and used crushed crayon bits sprinkled on the page instead of just coloring and that did produce a more dramatic smooth/rough texture change for comparison.
After that, it happened to be the day to clean out and change the grit in the rock tumbler. Which made a nice tie in. The kids had fun getting a chance to see all their pretty rocks again. Still 2 more weeks to go though until they are done.
