Recycled Gardens

What better way to greet Spring than with a beautiful garden? Look close at the papers and you will see we used cardboard food boxes, straws and lids to create a fun flower filled garden.





We started by talking about what we might find in a garden. Ground, flowers, fences, bugs and more. Then we took a look at our supplies. The children were excited to find cheerios and spongebob boxes. They were surprised we were using these instead of paper.



I admit, I am a craft supply hoarder. I save all our bright colored food boxes. I just fold them up and put them in a file. I also save lids. The straws are actually new, I didn't recycle used straws! I just thought it was a fun element to include.

Now the kids get busy. They created beautiful and thoughtful works!





You will need:
-Cardboard food boxes
-Blue construction paper
-Glue sticks and Elmer's glue
-Scissors
-Straws and lids

Some of the work we created:

A Pair of Socks

I was invited by Polly over at Helping Little Hands to participate in a read along she is doing on her blog.

I chose to create a project based on the book, A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy and illustrated by Lois Ehlert.
We could have approached this by coloring or painting but I chose to use collage like Ehlert. This is a great book for learning about shapes and matching. It is great for opening dialogue and discussion between parent and child. We focused on how to make something look the same by using color and pattern.

My boys had fun with this. First we cut socks. The boys each cut four of the same color. I had them make two pairs so we could make a game of it.

We learned how to make two shapes the same. We could use two pieces of paper stacked together and cut once creating two shapes at the same time. We also discovered you can cut out one shape then trace that shape and cut out a second or third and so on. My seven year old preferred cutting once using stacked paper while my five year old preferred the tracing method.



Now we glue our shapes on our socks. The easy way to get toes and heels is to trace the rounded part of our sock on the color of paper we want and cut it out.



Hanging edges? No problem. Just trim them up!



Here are the socks my five year old made.



Here are the socks my seven year old made. He thought his were very tricky because they were so similar.



Here is the last page of the book.



And here are all of our socks! We played several games of matching as we all took turns mixing them up. Thank you Polly! This was fun!



You will need:
-Cardstock
-Scissors
-Gluestick

Get Green

Little Lassies and Laddies ages 15-36 months gathered around with me at the OKCMOA this weekend to experiment with the color green. We talked about the color green and I gave a little demo on how to make it by mixing blue and yellow paint on a paper plate.

We went through the gallery and found green stripes, circles and squares. In the classroom we used different methods to duplicate some of the same ideas.

Each child started with yellow and blue tempera paint on a paper plate. They used a paintbrush to mix their own shade of green. They applied this color to their papers with the brush. As they began to use up their color I gave everyone a bit of a dark kelly green and white. Now we mix more green.



We used circle sponges, shamrock stamps and detergent lids to stamp our papers. I love to let kids experiment with different items when painting. To finish we added a bit of Leprechaun gold! Here are some of our creations!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

You will need:
-Watercolor paper
-Tempera paints (blue, yellow, green and white)
-Paintbrush
-Sponge
-Detergent Lid
-Shamrock stamps (I made mine using foam stickers)
-Gold Glitter

Chihuly

I shared this project with children at the OKCMOA for Drop-in Art this weekend and our creations turned out wonderful! We focused on Chihuly: The Collection. The Collection is part of the permanent collection at the OKCMOA. It includes 18 glass installations, several paintings and of course the ever beautiful 55 foot glass tower. With all that inspiration we got started!



I had a last minute change of plans and it's so nice when it works out. I had planned to use string to hang these but my demo wasn't working out so I used wood paint sticks to hold it all together instead.

Here is what we did. Each child gets 5 clear plastic cups. We used acrylic paints to decorate the INSIDE of each cup. Tempera paints do not work very well because they bead up and don't seem to give the best coverage. Craft paints work excellent. You do not need artist grade paint. Just make sure it is a thin layer of paint. Now let your cups dry.







Next we used scissors to cut our cups. We made different cuts but the two most popular were to cut slits around the cup all the way to the bottom of the cup (giving a floral effect when fanned out) and to make spiral cuts.







Next we attach our cups to a paint stick using hot glue. We attached them in all sorts of ways. Remember how we painted the inside of our cups? This gives us that shiny glass look on the outside we are going for and is not as easily rubbed off when handled. When gluing we made sure our shiny sides are up. Here are some of our creations!

You will need:
-5 clear plastic cups for each child (I used Solo)
-Acrylic paint
-Brushes
-Scissors
-Hot glue
-Paint sticks