Cotton Ball Painting

A couple weeks ago I strained a muscle in my back, and boy was life hard at work!!! I haven't been as active with the kids as I usually have been, and over all everything is simpler and less involved on my part. Not necessarily a bad thing though, maybe I can let them do their own thing a little more even now that my back is better.

This day I just gave them a bowl with different colored paint, and cotton balls to paint with. I've been trying to introduce new ways to make art, and cotton balls is the texture I choose to go with for this activity.

 Isn't that texture just so pretty and fun? Can't make that with a paint brush. 

Vivien still preferred fingers over the cotton balls, but the projects turned out beautifully. I'm now debating whether or not to cut them into a specific shape - we are after all learning what a square is this week - or leave them as is. what do you think???

Mess Free Art

So I had tons of extra page protectors laying around and decided to have a mess free art project! You have no clue how happy those 3 words make me! I cut out flower shapes for each child. 

Then had them pick out 2 colors they wanted.

Taped the top closed, and let the kids smush the paint around! 

Addison asked for a brush to help her do the smushing.

 So did Vivien. 

At this point I noticed page protectors are not very flexible, and this would've worked a little better with a large ziploc bag. 

I hung them up to dry, but because I used acylic paint I ran across a problem removing the flowers...

Ya...not so pretty, but that wasn't going to ruin my mess free fun. I just traced a smaller flower on the back, and cut it out!

I think they came out cute! 

Massive posting is going to happen today!

In an effort to win a give away at one of my favorite blogs,delicateCONSTRUCTION I am going to post all the projects we've done at school recently today! I have a few art projects and things I haven't posted just yet, and was planning on spacing out over the week, but when I was going to link op my Indoor Water Play post I saw she has a fun giveaway, and you put in entries by linking up activities so I am going to be doing excessive amount of blogging today, and probably not have much else to do for the rest of the week. Oh well to post numero uno!

This was just  ashort and sweet activity I did. At school I was left with only 2 of my kids earlier than usual and decided since I needed to sit down [I strained a muscle in my back the other week, not FUN] to just give the 2 of them some paper paint and glitter to go crazy with. I let them use their fingers and then cut the finished product into a heart, because this was right before mother's day. They had a blast painting the paper, my table, and themselves HAHA and I enjoyed being able to sit down in an adult sized chair for 10 minutes. The floor was absolutely covered in glitter afterwards, and it made a real pretty pile when I swept up afterwards. I think it turned into a real cute and personal little gift.



I did not get pictures of this because it was such a hectic Friday, but I thought I would tell you about the mother's day cards we made. I just started them out with some construction paper and a marker. I don't often give them markers so it was a treat for them! Literally a treat, I looked at one child and her mouth was green! AHHH, I washed it out and switched her to crayons. Continuing, I then took their cards, made phrases in Elmer's glue lie, I Love Mom, or Happy Mom's Day, then let the child dump glitter over it. They looked so pretty, BUT my favorite part was I took a pen, and one at a time helped each child write their name. I guided their hand and said the letters we were writing then told them what it said. They liked looking at their names, and the little wobbly hand writing was soo adorable. I know I know they're too young to actually learn to write, and they couldn't repeat that coordination on their own, but I received a card for teacher's appreciation week where a mom had done the same thing [helping her girl write her name] and I'm telling you my heart melted!!! Well here's the first of a few posts happening this Monday!

Until...a few minutes from now!

Rainbow Collage + freestyle clouds

I got this idea from The Imagination Tree. Great blog with tons of inspiring posts. I love how she emphasizes the importance of play in her blog, and her kids are beyond adorable! You should check out her posts about Discovery Boxes and Treasure Baskets, those are my favorites.

Moving on, I got the idea to do a Rainbow Collage from their, and I wanted to share my results.

Remember this messy looking rainbow painting from my post The Sad Life of a Poor College Student.

Well there WAS  purpose for that sad looking thing, and it was this rainbow collage! It's a pretty self-explanatory project; basically I painted it - cut it out - spread some glue out on one color at a time - gave my kids a variety of objects of that color to place on the rainbow. I did this over 4 days, 2 colors of the rainbow each day + one more day for the clouds. I skipped indigo...eekk! 

You can see a few misplaced colors, not a big deal, I am actually surprised it came out as correct as it is! This is all due to Talen. During her turn if she noticed any misplaced colors from one of the other children she had to fix it! Haha it made me laugh, and I was very proud of her color recognition. I used foam stickers [their favorite] sparkle balls, paint chips, feathers, & pipe cleaners. Lots of texture and fun in this project.

We also made clouds to go underneath our rainbow. I was going to have a coffee filter covered in cotton balls with a little glitter sprinkled over for this project. Sounds pretty right? Well my plans changed the night before when I read this post about Art Placement at Art 4 Little Hands. Another great blog, and inspiring post. Unfortunately letting go of control is not my strong point! You're supposed to leave some art supplies out when kids aren't paying attention and let them come to it on their own time, and do with it whatsoever they chose. Well I cheated a little bit. I had my kids sit at the table and handed them these art supplies.

Some gluey coffee filters

And a coffee filter with a few cotton balls, white pipe cleaners, and silver glitter.

Sensing a theme? AHH I'm a terrible art teacher, this is hardly giving them free reign over their creation process. It was a baby step though, a very small first step, but progress from my usual reign of control. I also gave them paintbrushes so they could have something else to utilize if they wanted. Here is what I got...

 Bre dipped her paintbrush in the glue and painted her hand with it, not how I had intended BUT this was not about my wants, but hers and a gluey hand is what she wanted =] 

Then dipped her hand in the glitter. This is Bre's final product. It sure looks pretty.

 After decorating her hand, she decided to add a couple cotton balls and pipe cleaner to her coffee filter.

This might have been with the help of Talen though...

Here is Talen's work in progress. She went at it like she was a cloud making professional!

Here is her finished product. She finished before everyone else, so decided to lend her cloud making talents to help her friends. No kidding, I guess she thought because I wasn't taking control, she should. She went around the table 'helping' them put their clouds together.

I saw alot of smearing the glue around with the paintbrush before adding anything, I guess they learned that technique from me.

 I LOVED Emery's idea to dip her brush in the glitter, then put it on the paper.

 Unfortunately this process is time consuming and after a while when she saw her friends finishing, she decided the dump method would suffice.

Pretty, no? 

Linking up to...

Raindrops

...keep falling on my head, but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red. Cryin's not for me 'cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin' because I'm free nothin's worryin' me.


I did this real simple project with my kids at work to demonstrate raindrops. We used a medicine dropper to drip watered down blue paint onto white paper. Boring I know, but I was really interested in introducing them to the dropper and teaching them how to operate it. We always use brushes or sponge stamps to do painting, but you can paint with tons of items: trucks, q-tips, nature, feet, etc. I wanted my kids to experience making art with a non-traditional art supply. They wanted to dip the dropper in the paint, then rub it onto the paper like a brush, but after a couple of times of helping them squeeze water in then squeeze it out over the paper they got the hang of it. Well, most of them got it... I was surprised my two oldest were determined to 'paint' with the droppers, even after showing them the dripping method, while my younger kids picked it up quickly. Oh well, it was a fun new experience for them, easy to prepare, and interesting to see their reactions. Plus I thought it was great fine motor practice for pinching, and releasing. Here are some pictures I took =]

 

 

 Linking up to some AMAZING linky parties this week, starting with...