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.
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.
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.
Normally art around here is basically free play. We get out the paints, play dough or crayons with little to no direction. But today I decided we were going to make more of lesson out it. So with aprons on, paper in front of them, I read the story “Mouse Paint” by Ellen Walsh. I then placed out red, blue and yellow paint. We each painted “mice” in the primary colors… and then mixed the paints to produce the secondary colored ‘puddles’ from the book.
I think all the kids enjoyed having a more structured art assignment and I am going to try and incorporate more lessons in art (or maybe more to the point… more art in lessons). Not all the time though. I still think they need plenty of free time with art, but maybe once a week I will have a destination in mind when we start.
I think it is fun to see the difference in the art produced from the kids at very different stages (spread over 3.5 years). My example is the one on top, then ‘A’, ‘L’ and ‘B’s.
