Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving! I had a wonderful time at the OKCMOA's Tiny Tuesday program this month sharing my fun turkey project with children ages 2-5.

Each child began with a piece of orange tag board. Then they went through the assembly line to get all the pieces.







I pre-cut the turkey body, heads and feathers. The idea with the turkey was to match the color of our turkey paper with the color of our embellishments. For example, kids glued yellow pom poms, real feathers, buttons and jewels on the yellow paper feather.

First we glued our turkey bodies on our paper.



Then we glued our feather and legs and began to add our embellishments. Then they could add crayon to really customize their turkeys.

Even my boys got to come with me since they were out of school. They were great helpers!



Everyone had a lot of fun with this color matching turkey adventure! Here are some of our finished pieces. Happy Thanksgiving!

You will need:
-card stock in variety of colors
-scissors
-glue
-feathers, beans, beads, pom poms, jewels, sequins, buttons and more.
-glue stick
-elmer's glue
-crayons

Feedback Fridays

Well, here it is. The first installation of Feedback Fridays. The idea was to call out my two favorite projects I saw during the week along with the site that sent me the most traffic. That is a bit tricky because it does not mean that they featured me or anything like that. They might just link to me-however, it still gets you come my way, so thank you! I think it's good for everyone, don't you? We're all connected here in blogosphere and I am all for supporting each other.

So.

The site that sent me the most traffic this week is

drumroll...

The Artful Parent. Thanks Jean! :)

I saw a lot of great projects this week and my favorite two are below.

This beautiful Starry Night Collage. Spectacular!

Find it at Art with Mrs. Smith

The second project I fell in love with was...

Autumn Paintings! Glorious!
Find this project at MN Art Gal

I hope you will go give these project some love. I love them and am sure you will too!

Have a creative weekend!

Falling Leaves

Fall into fall with this fun project for toddlers. This morning I had a great group of kids at the OKCMOA ages 15 months-3years. We gathered around and talked about changing leaves. We looked at autumn trees in a book and read a story. We learned leaves come in many colors and shapes. In the gallery our magic color was red.



Each workstation was set up with white paper and tree trunks. I pre-cut the trunks. They are simple...big Y's. Each little student used a glue stick to apply their trees.



For a fun way to give our leaves different shapes we used foam stamps. These are the sticker kind and I put them on the end of a glue stick to make it easy for little hands to stamp. If I had though of it earlier I would have cut small wood blocks. Oh well, another day!






I gave the kids one color at a time. First we used green. stamp, stamp, stamp!



Then yellow, orange, red and brown. Some of us even got our hands involved! Great fun today. Happy fall!

For this project you will need:
-white paper
-brown construction paper
-scissors
-foam shapes with sticker back
-glue sticks
-object for foam stickers (ie, glue stick, block, corks)

Fabulous Frescoes

To paint fresco means to paint on fresh, moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water. I changed it up a bit for many reasons. The biggest reason I found is that little kids will push a paintbrush right through wet plaster. So, we painted on mostly dry plaster with tempera paints. They turned out great!

There are many brands of plaster. I got a big bucket at Michael's. Check the ratio. Mine was about 2 cups plaster to one cup water. Mix, mix, mix! I poured the plaster into these red plastic solo plates that I found at walmart. They were pretty deep and in a nice shape. Give them a few taps to remove air bubbles.

You can see this painted fresco in the plate here.



This plate also made it easy for the fresco to pop out of when completely dry. It begins to harden right away setting up pretty good in 15 minutes and hard in 30 minutes depending on several factors. I would say leave them in molds for at least 4 hours to be completely hard.

We were trying to focus on Venice using the new exhibition as inspiration, but sometimes we just want to paint what we want! :) Here are some of our wonderful creations made at Drop in Art by children of all ages.

You will need:
-plaster of paris, water, measuring cup, disposable mixing bowls and disposable mixing utensils.
-solo plates
-paintbrushes
-tempera paints

This one is popped out of mold:

Thank you!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank my readers! I just hit 200 followers and am pretty excited about that. I check traffic about once a week and always find it interesting to see where you come from. Near and far, I thank you.

I also like to see how you found me and most of the time it is from another site. Sometimes you Google stuff like, "Russian architecture project" or "child monet". Either way I am happy you are here!

There are many sites that send you here. There are a few that always stand out. I'd like to thank every single one. Thank you! However, there are a few I'd like to call out by name.

The Crafty Crow- I have been featured on the Crafty Crow many times and I thank Cassi for finding my projects and her readers for coming here.

The Artful Parent - I love this site and how she documents the work of her children. She is an inspiration to parents and reinforces why art is so important in the life of a child. Thank you Jean for the recent link to my Handprint Spiders!

MaryAnn F. Kohl- Wow. The Mother of all art projects. I started seeing a lot of traffic from her publishers site. I have read all of her books and if you are a parent these should be in your library for go to ideas! Such an honor, thank you. thank you. thank you. Here is the link to her blog also.

I thank other bloggers for linking me. I try to do the same. If you noticed I have not linked you, comment to me so I can be sure to add you. We are a community! Together we are a springboard for ideas, feedback and sometimes a pat on the back.

I get a lot of readers sent my way from these fab art bloggers.

That Artist Woman. Thanks Gail!

Deep Space Sparkle. Thanks Patty! I love your new blog design!

MaryMaking. Thanks Mary!

Briar Grove Elementary Art Page. Thanks Katie!

I'm going to try a new feature called Feedback Friday. I am going to post my favorite thing I saw on another blog for the week as well as feature what blog or site sent me the most traffic. I will start this Friday. (I hope.) :)

Have a creative week everyone! Thanks for your support!

Warm Colors

The weather is changing and so are the leaves. This project is geared for children ages 2-5. This is part of the OKCMOA's new program called Tiny Tuesdays. This day we painted. I supplied the children with a warm color paint palette. We used red, yellow and orange. No rules, just fun!



Sometimes I like to give kids different items to paint with. This day we used feathers, brushes, sponges and q-tips.



With our sleeves rolled up and aprons on they were ready to use their tools and hands too!



I set up a glitter station for those that wanted to add some sparkle when they were finished. Happy, busy kids!





You will need:
-heavy paper. We used tagboard
-variety of brushes and tools: brushes, q-tips, sponges, feathers and more.
-paint. I use Crayola washable tempera
-glitter optional