Kandinsky Circles

It was a rainy day today so the preschoolers and toddlers all made some Kandinski style circles for art. I love the colors they used and the choices they made. My only instructions were the circles couldn't match the color they were touching and the bottom color beneath each new piece had to show all the way around. This helped stay truer to the style of the Kandinsky circles, and ensured some contrast. Not a processed based art activity, but still a valuable one and so fun.

My Kindergarten students will explore these later this year in watercolor along with dozens of other fun artists. The kids really enjoyed doing them. 

It's easy to tie in math concepts to this particular art activity because the kids have to decide which circles are bigger and smaller, sort them according to size, and place them in a grid pattern. The older kids did the grid, though we really didn't worry about that too much on this project, and the toddlers did a scaled down version so we didn't need to worry about the grid there either.   

Fun!

Stamping with Sea Creatures

We have this fun stamp set with realistic sea creatures. The kids colored in their ocean, then stamped in their inhabitants. The shark, whale and seals are always popular when we play with this. 

Painting

I find mini muffin tins to come in handy for soooo many arts and crafts projects. When children begin painting it's important to teach the basics of how to care for their materials. One of those is to help them learn the habit of using one brush for each color, or a new brush when switching colors. If they are taught this, you will have so much less waste and they learn the value of taking care of their art supplies. 

When they are older, they can learn to rinse and dry their brush properly between colors so they don't have to use several brushes, and even how to use a pallet with just a smear of each color to do as they please. But little ones don't quite have the dexterity to manage holding a pallet and painting at the same time, so for now they learn it this way. 

Using just the primary colors, plus the white and black on their own, we made all of these shades and colors! Color mixing is one of my FAVORITE art activities.

Little ones, and even big ones don't always remember to use a new brush for each color, and colors can get mixed and muddy, rendering them unusable for future use. 

I like to dole out small dollops of paint into the muffin tins so if any of the colors do get too muddy it's not the whole paint container that gets wasted. 

Plus it's a little easier for little ones to see and reach all the colors when using the tin. 

If the colors don't get too badly mixed up, I can even stick the tin in a gallon size zip lock and keep it ready for the next time.

For very young toddlers who are not ready to hold a brush or who haven't developed the desire to hold one yet, I like to just squirt some paint onto their paper and let them smush it around and hand or finger paint. Littlest ones shouldn't get left out of art experiences just because they aren't ready to hold a brush! It's a great sensory experience they shouldn't miss out on and a fabulously enriching activity that supports their development.

When we paint, we always have lots and lots of paintbrushes on hand. You really can not have too many brushes! 

Ice Paintings

Yesterday we made ice paint with water and food colors, froze them in popsicle trays and used canvases to create!  

The kids helped mix the colors and fill the containers, then carry the trays to the freezer. 

Art Time

For New Year's we are making confetti art projects. I love glitter and confetti!

A little paint (for snow), glue and shiny confetti (party) makes a fun art activity.

And of course the clean-up is fun when, too, when you have helpers like these!

Turkey Art

What sweet turkey hands! 

Sorry for the poor picture quality. Alex took the good camera to his dads last weekend and forgot it! So we have to use the old one for now. :-(

The turkey is a funny bird,

It's head goes BOBBLE, BOBBLE

And all he knows is just one word,

And that is GOBBLE, GOBBLE!

Making Watercolors

Next week we're working on an art project that uses watercolors,

so I've been testing ways to make larger batches.

I think the individual watercolor cases are fun for small or abstract art, but with a whole page needing to be filled in I knew those weren't going to do the job.

I know you can buy watercolor tablets to mix in water, kind of like those dye tablets you get when you do Easter eggs. I'm not sure how other people make watercolors, but since I like trying to use what I have on hand before buying something new, I took out my tempera paints and just added water.

I used our dollar store muffin tins to hold the paints. They were perfect for this!

If you've worked with tempera paints before, you know that you always have some that are a little runny, and some that are a little thick. I have experienced this with the cheap and the higher end brands alike. So I found that I couldn't add a standard unit of measured water to each tin cup, as the paints themselves weren't consistent to begin with. This is really a trial and error effort. Every color needed a different amount of water and mixing. I just had to keep at each of them until they 'felt' right to me. Someone else might like them more watery or thicker than me, though.

I liked the end result and did a test painting from a project listed on Art Projects for Kids to see how the colors worked. I think the kids will be able to use these really well when we do our project next week.  

Happy Solstice!

Happy Suns to Greet Visitors!

"If We Destroy Our Roots, We Cannot Grow"

Inspired by F. Hundertwasser, the Austrian artist:

The kids used colored pencils to create these. Wavy lines were the order of the day.

These were quite a bit of work because everything was first sketched using pencils, then outlined with colored pencils, then the pencil marks were erased, then everything was shaded and colored in. 

They needed a total of three breaks (one was a dance break) before they were able to get through it all! But I'm glad they finished them and now don't they look lovely!?    

Plus, we went online to learn more about the artist and the kids had a lot to say about his other works. They liked his colors and shapes, and loved his quote about lines:

"The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity."

Thank you Kathy Barbro from Art Projects for Kids for this fun art project!