Sunnyside Art House: Hearts, Hearts and more Hearts.....

I just couldn't resist with Valentines day this Thursday - today's theme is HEARTS...

For those who also love hearts go to 366 Hearts where a woman has set herself the challenge of creating a heart a day for 366 days. I loved looking through them and finding inspiration. My husband and I usually ignore Valentines Day thinking its commercial rubbish yet I find myself tonight (after being surrounded by hearts all art lesson) reflecting on all those wonderful people I love and that make me happy. That said my husband still won't be getting any cards or presents - we don't want him dying of shock.....

Colourful Heart Fruit skewers for afternoon tea

Heart Gingerbreads before decorating

Heart Gingerbread after decoration with edible writing pens

We started the lesson with our heart inspired afternoon tea (see above pictures). I chose this time to discuss that art comes in many forms and not all art is done in the classroom. You can create art in the kitchen, in the garden, in the playroom, anywhere really.... We then decorated our afternoon tea cookies using edible markers. The children all saved one to take home which I packaged up for them.

Wax resist Warm and Cool Hearts

Our first activity today was..... you guessed it a Heart painting! The inspiration for these came from a Pin on Pinterest click here. Children were given a piece of A3 watercolour paper and were asked to draw a big heart with black oil pastel. I checked with them all first to see if they knew how to draw a heart. We had one 5 year old boy who didn't know and even though we did practice a few times we decided to get him to draw a circle instead. They were then instructed to draw anything they wanted in or around the heart with white and black oil pastels. We did a quick check in on what we learnt last week about primary and secondary colours and then introduced the concept of warm and cool colours. The liquid watercolours were brought out in WARM colours and the children painted the inside of their hearts. Finally we brought out the liquid watercolours in COOL colours and they painted the surrounding paper. I asked them to try and fill the whole page. I have to say I'm really pleased with the results they are beautiful and vibrant and ohh so loving.....

Our second activity used one of my favourite mediums at the moment Salt Dough. We have used this for numerous projects at our house over the past few months. Salt Dough is great for children who are a bit too old for play dough and want to keep their creations. It can be coloured, painted and decoration added. It has the advantage over clay in that its less messy and you don't need a kiln to fire it. We love it! The basic recipe is:

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup fine table salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2/3 cups water

Mix salt and flour in bowl. Add oil and water. Mix with wooden spoon until combined. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead to make a smooth ball.

Once your little artists have made their creations let it air dry or bake in an oven at 100 degrees for around 2 hours (or until hard). Any left overs can be refrigerated for later use.

We tried a little experiment and painted our salt dough ornaments whilst wet with the left over watercolours from the first activity. Usually I wait until they are dry and paint then, yet this way we finished the whole activity in one lesson. I always seal it once dry with Modge Podge although I imagine PVC glue or varnish would work just as well.

The children created lots of things including the pictures of the hearts below. These were created using different techniques I've seen on the Internet over the past few months. I'm guilty of not remembering where all the ideas came from yet most are from one of my favourite blogs The Artful Parent.

I must say children never cease to amaze me by their creativity. These were all done by 5 & 7 year olds! These still need to be baked, varnished and string added.