Yellow Belts

Today in art group the littles did do a dot pieces with collaged feathers, puff balls and sequins to dip in glue. The bigs did self portraits based on the art of Mondrian. Unfortunately I did not take more pictures.

The girls also tested for their yellow belts!

Art Group Day 2- Collages

Today I drove up for Young Women's camp. I get to spend the next few days with these fun girls. Before I left we had art group. The littles did glueless collages with tissue paper and contact paper. The bigs did collages based on the work of Eric Carle. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the bigs.

Little Buddy

Her current life goal is to be a rock star.

 These are just a few pictures of my little buddy and her daytime adventures.  She is always working on something or dressing up in a new outfit.  She is never idle for long and it is so fun to have her at home with me during the day.  I love her spunky little personality and her creative mind.

She can still fit into the Halloween costume she wore as a one year old.

A tape collage house for her doll.

Paper Collage

The girls have been very interested in cutting construction paper up and making different shapes.  Most of the time I think it just makes a big mess but I really liked this little collage creation I found on their desk. It is one of Red Fish's creations.

Hearts In The Window

Heart suncatchers posted in our window made from tissue paper and contact paper.  I'm pretty sure that glueless collages never get old.  We just finished up our second roll of contact paper and I think we might need to purchase some more.  I don't think they have outgrown this fun.

Good Mom Day/Bad Mom Day

The last couple of days have not gone at all as planned.  Yesterday I planned to get several things done and didn't manage most of them.  Instead I spent hours reading to the kids (until I lost my voice) did glue-less collages with New Fish and Thing 1 after swimming lessons and picked Red Fish up from kindergarten.  Red Fish was dying to ride her new bike and Thing 1 really loves our old tricycle so we planned to be outside for a half hour before lunch.  That half hour turned into three hours with a picnic, bike rides, bubbles, painting, tag, friends and sunshine for three hours. I'm a sucker for nice weather and happy kids. It nearly killed us to go inside and take care of a few things. Everyone was happy for piano practicing, reading etc.  It was a good Mom day.

Today has not gone as planned either.  I couldn't go to a friends event that I was looking forward to.  I got a ton of design work done even though I have a terrible cold and can't talk but when I picked Red Fish up from school she burst into tears in the car.  I got my days mixed up and missed the assembly that was today (not tomorrow like I was thinking.)  She won a prize in an art competition for the school and gets to move on to the district level.  I am so proud of her I could burst.  I'm also devastated that I missed it. I wanted to be there so badly.  She is so excited that she won.  One of my friends got pictures for me so I will have to post those later. You would think I would know that tomorrow is the 13th since it is my birthday.  Can't even remember my own birthday.  Don't ask me how old I am.  I can't remember.  Bad Mom day.

You Want To Look Like Me

Red Fish's first kindergarten assignment was to make a paper doll representing herself.  I am in love with what she came up with.  I love the accessories the most. She used beads, buttons, paper, glitter glue, fabric, pipe cleaners, googly eyes and markers.  This assignment was right up her alley as she has been making and decorating paper dolls all summer long.

Art Group Day 3- Stained Glass

 For art group this week we studied pictures of stained glass windows and talked about how artists use light.  Then we made suncatchers out of contact paper.  We used pieces of tissue paper in different shapes as our colored glass and then used colored masking tape as the metal framework.  I had precut squares and circles and sheets of tissue paper available.  This was the first time in four years that we have had art group inside someone's house.  Good thing it was a nice clean project!

Art Group Day 1- Yellow Umbrella Paintings

We kicked art group off this year with Yellow Umbrella paintings like we did two years ago. 

 I can't remember where I saw this project idea originally because I have since seen it several places but I believe it originated with Julie Liddle, art therapist and art teacher, who runs Art in Hand in Washington, DC.  We looked at the beautiful Yellow Umbrella book by Dong Il Sheen & Jae-Soo Liu.  It has a CD of music that goes along with the pictures instead of words.  We discussed the mood of each picture and what the kids could hear happening in the music.  We talked about layering the paint and adding shadows.  We talked about the contrast between the umbrellas and the background and the kids helped me mix up the background paint.  We painted backgrounds in muted pastels and then added tissue paper circles as the umbrellas.

Unfortunately it was ridiculously windy and even taping our paper down didn't seem to help.  If anyone has any brilliant ideas of how to properly hold and art class in the wind, please let me know your secrets.  It would be awesome if I could get a stack of masonite boards for them to tape their pieces to.  If anyone wants to cut up boards for me, I will let you.

m is for magnets, metal and music

Today we talked about the letter "m" for metal and magnets.  Our nursery rhyme was "Do You Know The Muffin Man?" We read a little bit about magnets in Usbourne's Childrens Encycolpedia and then I set out ice cube trays of random objects.  The kids used magnets to pick out which items were magnetic.  They LOVED all of the magnet acitivities.  They had so much fun playing with everything today.

Our experiment trays

 Our sensory bin today was full of pinto beans and objects like spoons, clothes pins, bobby pins, bolts, washers, paper clips, jewelry etc.  The kids would hold onto their magnets and swirl their hands around in the bin until the magnet was covered with metal objects. 

Playing in the sensory bin

 We did letter recognition by cutting out the letter M with scissors.  Then they used our metal (shredded aluminum foil- too bad it isn't magnetic) and covered it with glitter glue. 

 I have been planning too many activities for the past month or so and music time has gotten short changed, much to Buddy B's dismay.  So today we spent a good 45 minutes doing musical activities.  We paraded through the house with instruments, danced with streamers, played musical games with the parachute and sang our hearts out. 

 We did math by putting magnetic numbers on the fridge.  I would put one up and they would have to put up the number that comes before and after it.

Then we got out our magnetic dolls and the kids spent a good long time acting out their future wedding (to eachother of course) with the dolls.  It was hilarious.  They kept changing outfits on the dolls in case they went to their honeymoon on skis or in the ocean.  It was pretty funny to listen in on their story.

d is for diversity

 This week was "d" for diversity and our nursery rhyme was "Hickory Dickory Dock."  We started off our day with a new batch of homemade playdough (purple with red sand) and then made letters with the dough.  We read Peter Spier's "People" and looked at pictures of people from all over the world.  We did a lot of games involving rhyming, opposites and putting numbers in order.

 We made some awesome collages with magazine pieces.

My kids change back into their jammies even after going to school.  Crazy kids.

 When Red Fish got home the girls spent the afternoon drawing people of every color and shape.

Red Fish

New Fish

Rainbows and Butterflies

Two of our butterflies completed their metamorphosis this weekend. I have been a little worried that they were dead because the whole process took much longer than expected.  Two of the caterpillars died,  One is stilling kicking but won't form a chrysalis.  It has been really great for the kids to watch the whole process.  The bugs get checked on quite frequently.

 

In honor of rainbow week we did some paintings with the primary colors and did more color mixing.  Unfortunately I ran out of yellow liquid watercolor and my regular watercolor didn't quite stand up to the other liquid versions so their paintings turned out mostly red, blue and purple.  The girls couldn't have cared less.  We turned some of the texas snowflake paintings into butterflies with pipe cleaners.  In our insect discussions I have taught the girls that all insects have six legs. Disturbingly, our butterflies only appear to have four legs.  Either the butterflies are hiding a pair or I am grossly misinformed on biology.  The girls keep asking why I said the butterflies would have six legs.  I'm going to have to investigate on google.  We made our paper versions with six legs.

New Fish

Red Fish

 We also made tape collages because kids just love using tape.