This week only: buy arTree subscription for only $4.99!
Visit Plum District and discover amazing deals, including arTree printable art magazine for kids (5-12)! This week only, get 12 issues of arTree for $4.99! That is over 20 artists, 50 art projects and 30 activities for you and your child.
Walk through Monet’s garden, make your self-portrait with Picasso and follow your dreams with Marc Chagall. There is a lot to be found!
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Little Artists explored texture this week. We have learned about Claes Oldenburg and his funny sculptures. From fuzzy Popsicle to the ice cream cone on top of a building (he is always a super easy sell to the kids, no matter how old they are).
Then we explored different textures and created a mixed media collage of a burger. Kids loved to cut and glue all the different materials onto their super-tall burger! I pre-cut the pieces to make it easier for the kids. We had papers with punched holes for cheese, green plastic bags for lettuce, red streamer for ketchup, foil for fish… a lot of stuff for everybody!
After that we started working on one more project: cake candle holder. I love engaging kids with clay. It is very different that play dough and I believe it is important for them to be able to explore that difference. They pinched it, rolled it, squeezed it and when it resembled a shape they wanted, they added small details with a stick and stuck a candle in the middle. When the creations dry in a couple of days, they will paint it.
If you would like to learn more about Oldenburg, clay cakes, paper food and much more food-related fun – check out October’s issue of arTree.
Today, in our art docent program – we have celebrated 100th day of school with Kindergarteners! And what better way to do it than to take them all for a burger? Especially since they make it themselves and then can proudly hang it on the wall.
We talked about Claes Oldenburg and his Store (gallery where everything was for sale, even the register). We have followed October issue of arTree and discussed how he created ordinary objects in a fun new way: dropped ice cream on top of a building, huge soft fabric cake, fuzzy Popsicles, plastic fries… and a BLT that you have to build every time you want to move it.
And then we went on creating our burgers. It is a great texture exercise as well! We used paper, streamers, foil, foam, plastic bags, cardboard and more. Don’t they all look delicious?
This week the preschoolers and I have visited Africa… and Egypt!
We have looked at pyramids and some real Egyptian artifacts from SAM museum! Then we made our sarcophagus collage with colored papers and gems (as you can imagine they all loved the gems!). I also brought my hieroglyph stamps and some self-hardening clay and we made beautiful plaques with them (and again, some gems!).
And what lesson about Egypt would be complete without mummies? Since these kids are 3-5 years old, I decided to do something age-appropriate… we got a lot of plush toys and a lot of toilet paper and wrapped them all up! We had dog mummies, bear mummies, baby mummies, pink unicorn mummies… it was pretty spooky – and the biggest hit of the day!
In the last two weeks I have started working on (and teaching based on) new curriculum for the preschoolers: art around the world (and through time). So far we have visited two continents – America and Africa.
We have visited Plains Indians, learned about pictogram and played a matching game. We have also decorated a teepee we would love to live in and created a headband with real feathers. Kids had a blast and all but one did not take their headband off… at all. They also loved listetning to native American flute and talking about customs and traditions.
Halloween is getting closer so it was a time for the monster-making workshop! It was a lot of fun! We created so many monsters that I cannot even list them all here… we use purple watercolors and straws to create purple people eaters, eyes, noses and mouths from magazines to create collages of you spooky monsters, we made monster puppets and cookies.
We also played some games. We carried big, fat spiders on the spoons, we threw flies into the (masking tape) spider web and we used balloons and static electricity to make our tissue-paper ghosts fly! We danced and snacked, listened to a story… and all of that in hour and a half. I would just like to know if the kids were as tired as me! Probably not!
Alexander Calder invented more than mobiles – he invented nose monsters!
We made those with the Little Artists as well and they loved them! We Just took a paper rectangle (with a little hole in the middle) and drew eyes and mouth. There was no need to draw the nose because that was going to be their real one! I even brought a mirror for them to see how spooky or funny they looked.
Now we are ready for Halloween!
Today my Little Artists and I talked about colors in motion. We talked about the mobiles they had above their cribs… and that Alexander Calder was the first person who made them, almost a hundred years ago. Why? He loved sculpture but thought that it missed something–movement. So, he tried to find a way to make his sculptures move.
Then we discussed the most important thing when making a mobile: balance.
What is a balance? It’s the way of spreading your weight equally so that you do not fall.
Why is important? If the sculpture was not balanced right, it would drop to one side and would not move much. It needs to be just right so that it moved in the air.
We also balanced ourselves – on our feet, on masking tape on the floor and on bumpy dots.
After that it was time to make a balancing sculpture. We drew pictures on our colorful circles and then folded them in in half. I helped them attach the pipe cleaners inside, made a hole on the top and attached a string. The kids tried to balance it on their finger and then went on to add the fun part: play dough. They worked hard to balance their sculptures so that they did not lean too much to one side. Surprisingly easy for everybody (even the 3-year-olds). It was wonderful!
October issue of arTree magazine is here! And it will make you really hungry!
We will explore food and sculpture with Claes Oldenburg. There will be huge donuts and tiny clay fish, paper hamburgers and clay ones. We will conduct science experiments and play with our food. There is something for everybody, and then some. Plus, this issue has 20% more pages and art projects!
You can buy just this one issue and give it a try. If you enjoy it and want to subscribe, let us know and we will offer a discounted rate $8 instead of $9.99).
Yesterday was my first Little Artists class with a group of 3-5 year-olds. We talked about color and Henri Matisse. We looked how different artists used colors, talked about our favorite ones, played color scavenger hunt, read books… and created a fish.
Each child started by drawing a fish on a colored paper. Then they cut out whatever shapes they wanted out of as many colored papers as they wanted to… and glued them onto the fish. Once they were done, they added the eye and cut it out. What do you think?
There are more ideas for Matisse, color and fish on our Pinterest board.
