Mister Seahorse Watercolours

This weeks theme was SEAHORSES as who doesn't love them?  They are so amazing!  We used the book Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle as inspiration and then drew and painted seahorses.

This wonderful lesson was inspired from a lesson in the ecourse I did at Deep Space Sparkle.  I'm just in LOVE with my liquid watercolours.  They are so vibrant and the pictures always end up looking great.  I notice many people say to water them down yet I just use them as is as I like the colours really dark and bright.  I have used them watered down for backgrounds and when covering large areas.  The addition of salt is also a huge hit with the children, they just love sprinkling it on their pictures and the speckled effect it gives.

Materials:

• Watercolour Paper
• Liquid Watercolours
• Salt
• Oil Pastels
• Glitter
• Glue Sticks

How To:

I did a demonstration on how to draw a seahorse on the whiteboard.  The children then either followed this step by step or drew their own version of a seahorse using oil pastels. For two of my younger students who struggled to draw a seahorse (they did attempt one which was great!), I provided a template which they traced around.  The children then painted their seahorses with the liquid watercolours and added salt.  The final step was to add some lovely GLITTER to give them some sparkle.  The children loved this step.  We just used glue sticks as they are easy to use and then the children sprinkled glitter on top.

Here are the results:

Thursday was a holiday in Australia so we only had one class this week.  I will definitely do this class at some stage with my Thursday group as it was lots of fun.  So watch out for an update on this post...

Our artist / illustrator of the week is Eric Carle.  Visit his wonderful website for information on how he did the artwork for his books.

Cheers
Fiona

Swimming Pool Ball Painting & Feet Painting

Swimming / Wading Pool Ball Painting

My final post for this weeks lessons is all about COLLABORATION.  This week we worked together as a group for the whole lesson with no set seats and we all waited until everyone was finished on each activity before moving on to the next one.  I thought it was important to have collaborative activities early on so we could bond as a group and feel comfortable about sharing each others creative spaces.  Collaborative projects promote both the strength of the group and the strength of the individual.  I hope to do a Circle Painting with the group later this year.

Swimming Pool Ball Painting

Some of you may have done marble painting with your children at home or they may have done it at kinder.  Its loads of fun loading up some marbles with paint, putting them into a tray with paper in it and then tipping the tray so they roll around.  Click here for the Artful Parent post on it if you want to try it some time.

Swimming Ball painting is much the same thing yet on a much larger scale.  I haven't got around to getting The Artful Parent book (its had great reviews) however I did see Swimming Pool Painting as an activity header and dug through the Artful Parent Blog archives to find the post on it.

Materials:

• Some sort of wading pool (I used our old clam shell one that we got on hard rubbish yet any wading pool would do even a blow up one I expect.  The paint washes off easily so don't worry it won't be wrecked at the end of it).
• Tempura / Poster Paints (I used the ones left over from our Splatter Painting activity)
• Balls of various sizes (golf, ping pong, tennis, cricket etc)
• A large piece of paper

How To:

Tape your large piece of paper into the inside of the swimming pool.  Then get all the children to dip a ball into the paint (I had the same number of balls and paint pots as children, not necessary yet it helped as they all wanted their own balls).  Then they all gathered around the pool, dropped the balls into the swimming pool and then held edges of the swimming pool and tipped it from side to side.  The balls rolled around inside making pretty marks on the paper with the paint.  The group worked really well together as a team and it was lots of fun seeing the balls roll around and deciding as a group what colours we needed more of and deciding when to stop so it didn't end up as a muddy brown mess.

Here's the results:

Tuesday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Thursday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Feet Painting

Feet Painting was our last activity of this very busy outdoors class.  I included it as its a great fun sensory experience to feel paint oozing between your toes.  I bought a roll of brown paper put it down our driveway on top of drop sheets and then the children walked up and down the sheet after standing in a tray of paint.  On Thursday we added some individual prints as well as my children requested it.  The end results are a bit messy yet it was still fun.  I don't have any photos of the actual process - I think I was too paranoid about someone walking on our cream pavers to concentrate on photos too!

Feet Painting

Finally our artist of the week was Paul Cezzane - just because!

There will be a Sunnyside Art House Open Studio / Adults Get Arty Session THIS FRIDAY (26 April) from 9.15am. This is a great chance to get in touch with your creative side.  No artistic experience required just a desire to create! Address is 33 Sunnyside Grove, Bentleigh, Victoria, Australia.  All Welcome.  Gold Coin Donation.

Cheers

Fiona

Swimming Pool Ball Painting & Feet Painting

Swimming / Wadding Pool Ball Painting

My final post for this weeks lessons is all about COLLABORATION.  This week we worked together as a group for the whole lesson with no set seats and we all waited until everyone was finished on each activity before moving on to the next one.  I thought it was important to have collaborative activities early on so we could bond as a group and feel comfortable about sharing each others creative spaces.  Collaborative projects promote both the strength of the group and the strength of the individual.  I hope to do a Circle Painting with the group later this year.

Swimming Pool Ball Painting

Some of you may have done marble painting with your children at home or they may have done it at kinder.  Its loads of fun loading up some marbles with paint, putting them into a tray with paper in it and then tipping the tray so they roll around.  Click here for the Artful Parent post on it if you want to try it some time.

Swimming Ball painting is much the same thing yet on a much larger scale.  I haven't got around to getting The Artful Parent book (its had great reviews) however I did see Swimming Pool Painting as an activity header and dug through the Artful Parent Blog archives to find the post on it.

Materials:

• Some sort of wadding pool (I used our old clam shell one that we got on hard rubbish yet any wadding pool would do even a blow up one I expect.  The paint washes off easily so don't worry it won't be wrecked at the end of it).
• Tempera / Poster Paints (I used the ones left over from our Splatter Painting activity)
• Balls of various sizes (golf, ping pong, tennis, cricket etc)
• A large piece of paper

How To:

Tape your large piece of paper into the inside of the swimming pool.  Then get all the children to dip a ball into the paint (I had the same number of balls and paint pots as children, not necessary yet it helped as they all wanted their own balls).  Then they all gathered around the pool, dropped the balls into the swimming pool and then held edges of the swimming pool and tipped it from side to side.  The balls rolled around inside making pretty marks on the paper with the paint.  The group worked really well together as a team and it was lots of fun seeing the balls roll around and deciding as a group what colours we needed more of and deciding when to stop so it didn't end up as a muddy brown mess.

Here's the results:

Tuesday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Thursday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Feet Painting

Feet Painting was our last activity of this very busy outdoors class.  I included it as its a great fun sensory experience to feel paint oozing between your toes.  I bought a roll of brown paper put it down our driveway on top of drop sheets and then the children walked up and down the sheet after standing in a tray of paint.  On Thursday we added some individual prints as well as my children requested it.  The end results are a bit messy yet it was still fun.  I don't have any photos of the actual process - I think I was too paranoid about someone walking on our cream pavers to concentrate on photos too!

Feet Painting

Finally our artist of the week was Paul Cezzane - just because!

There will be a Sunnyside Art House Open Studio / Adults Get Arty Session THIS FRIDAY (26 April) from 9.15am. This is a great chance to get in touch with your creative side.  No artistic experience required just a desire to create! Address is 33 Sunnyside Grove, Bentleigh, Victoria, Australia.  All Welcome.  Gold Coin Donation.

Cheers

Fiona

Bubble Painting

I've read about bubble painting on a few other blogs and have been curious to try it.  Its such a simple concept really yet for the children the process is so much fun.  We had bubbles going everywhere with lots of BIG bubbles and lots of LITTLE bubbles.  The sound of all the bubble blowing in the studio was wonderful - music to my ears.

Materials:

• Watercolour Paper
• Bubble Paint Mixture in containers in lots of different colours (poster/tempura paint, water and dish soap mixed together in approx equal amounts.  I just mixed and tested it till it seemed about right)
• Straws (put a hole in the top to prevent the kids sucking the paint rather than blowing)

How To:

Ask the children to blow bubbles with the straws by inserting them into the paint containers.  It is important that they blow rather than suck!  I still freaked out a few times when kids said they swallowed some (I did use non toxic paint yet surely it can't be good for them.  They also seemed to manage to suck even with the holes in the straws).  I thought that type of thing would only happen with toddlers doing this rather than 5-12 yr old kids yet there you go.... 

Once they have a nice amount of bubbles above their container place the paper on top to get a bubble print.  We found that sometimes it worked really well by holding the paper on top of the container and then blowing the bubbles.  We had different colour containers placed around the table and the kids moved around the table taking their straws and paper with them to each colour. It was a fun process orientated session.

The results were pretty good too!

Watch out for my final post on this weeks lessons

• Swimming Pool Ball Painting and Feet Painting

Cheers

Fiona

Splatter Painting like Jackson Pollock

Welcome to Term Two! 

The themes for this weeks class was PROCESS ART and COLLABORATION.

The classes were very busy with numerous activities happening outside.  Thankfully Tuesday was a glorious Autumn day, unfortunately Thursday was rainy and cold.  The weather made the classes quite different yet they both had lots of wonderful moments and it was great to give the children one last class incorporating some play in back garden before we move indoors for winter.  Its amazing how rain sometimes doesn't dampen things for kids yet actually makes things more exciting as they could not only get messy yet wet as well!

I will separate this weeks classes into a few posts so this post doesn't go on forever (I once said I was going to make them shorter, they are definitely getting longer.....).

Today's post is about Process Art and Splatter/Drip Painting.

I'm a big fan of Process Art, that is art where the end product is not the principal focus.  Process art is about enjoying the creative journey or process of making art rather than having a planned outcome.  Process Art is particularly important for children as as it allows them to explore, feel free to invent, create and find new ways to do things.  Mary Ann Kohl is one of the world's leading experts on Process Art and has written many childrens art books. In her article Art vs Craft she states "when children create art, they are exploring, discovering, and thinking. Art encourages a child's originality and unique expression with an unknown outcome. Crafts, on the other hand, involve the child's reproducing an adult's idea, while following directions to make a specific "thing" - a known outcome. Art is creative and free, with only some very basic techniques to guide the experience; the process is heavily valued, and the finished product is not the main goal; It is the creative process that holds the most value".

Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter.  He was our artist of the week a few months ago.  His style is sometimes referred to as action painting as he was so active when splattering and dripping paint onto his enormous paintings. I love this video by MoMA of his painting technique.  I would have shown the children yet we didn't have time.  Splatter painting is a great way to experience process art.

Materials:

• Canvas paper or canvas board (the paper needs to be thick to absorb all the paint that is added.  I changed to canvas boards for the second class as the canvas paper blew away in the wind, even when we tried taping it down).
• Watered down paints (I used tempura and poster paint yet any paint would work)
• Lots of different sized paintbrushes, splatter trays and pipettes

How To:

You can see from the photo I set up with a large sheet of plastic on the lawn and then put the paints at either end.   We all wore old clothes so we didn't need to worry about the paint going everywhere. Then just let them go to it - splatter, drip and flick paint at their canvas.  Lots of fun!

We hung up our canvas paper on Tuesday to dry and it started to look more like a drip painting...pretty though.  The children said it looked like a rainbow.

Here are some of the Thursday class canvas boards.  The paint is still wet so they won't dry nearly as vibrant.

Coming up.....

Posts on our other class activities this week

Bubble Painting

Feet Painting

Swimming pool ball Painting 

Cheers Fiona

Creative Holidays

I love school holidays its so nice not rushing in the morning to get to school and not having to make school lunches!  The kids and I usually do lots of craft during school holidays.  This is what we have been doing lately......

We were away in New Zealand for the first 10 days of the holidays and even though we were busy catching up with friends and family, bathing in hot pools, playing at the beach, kayaking, walking, playing Lego and reading books we managed to fit in some ART.  We decorated boiled eggs with our friends in Auckland. We painted with watercolours on watercolour paper (we took a travel set and notebook with us), we drew pictures on the beach with sticks, we sketched in our notebooks with pencils and we played drawing games (eg when one person draws half a picture and then you swap).

The kids seem to be drawing all the time at the moment and are truly inspired.  I purchased them notebooks prior to going away and they loved having these.  It has even inspired me to purchase one for each child in my class.  I added our own Sunnyside Art House cover and will tie on a pencil with a ribbon.  Hopefully this will inspire the children to continue drawing at home after class.

When we got home Autumn had finally set in so we collected Autumn leaves and preserved them (by painting them with Mod Podge).  Then we hung them up on a window with blu tack, don't they look pretty with the sun shining through! 

The kids made kites and things out of pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks whilst I cleaned the studio.  Poppy had a friend over and they made a lovely collage with buttons, ribbons, sequins and stickers.  I love seeing what they come up with when left entirely to their own devices. 

We baked Gingerbread men and decorated them with edible markers.  The kids are actually quite proud of these creations and are finding them difficult to eat or give away.

We made some more window art by cutting out plastic dividers and cellophane and stuck them to our window with a mixture of dish soap and water.

We all had a play with some clay and made a jug (me), a bowl (Poppy) and a car (Leo).  I played around with an owl design I want to try with the class.

The week before the holidays we also did a few Easter theme crafts.

Poppy and I made a yarn egg.  I was going to do this with class yet decided it would be too hard for the younger kids.

I made a paint chips Easter egg banner (testing an idea..)

Poppy and Leo also decorated our blackboard wall under the stairs with an Easter theme.

Did you do anything fun and creative over the holidays?  Feel free to comment below.

Cheers
Fiona