Weaving Paintings

I led drop-in art at the OKCMOA this weekend and we had a great time exploring warm and cool colors with watercolors and weaving.

First I gave each student two pieces of watercolor paper. I explained warm colors and cool colors and we looked at examples on the board. Now we get started painting.

We used our yellow, red and orange watercolors to completely cover our first piece of paper.




Then we filled our second sheet of paper with cool colors. Our paint was blue, purple and green.





We used salt and paper towels to add fun effects to our papers while they were wet.

We used a hairdryer to speed up the drying process and then worked on cutting our papers to prepare them for weaving.

Looking at your paper vertical, or portrait style, bring the bottom of the paper to the top making one fold. We made our cuts from the folded end almost to the top of the paper. You do not want to cut all the way through the paper.



You can make straight cuts, wavy cuts, zig-zag, etc.

Now we cut the second sheet of painted paper into strips. You want the strips to be as long as your loom paper so looking at your paper vertically make horizontal cuts creating strips for weaving.



With our paper vertical we weave our strips of paper going over and under our loom paper. The second strip will go opposite of what you did the first time. If your first strip began on the top, your second will start on bottom. As you move along the paper will take on a checkerboard effect.



To finish we mounted our papers horizontal on construction paper that was a little bit bigger than our weavings creating a mat for our piece. I laid out a lot of colors so the kids could see how putting their piece on different colors could really change the overall look of their piece. This was so much fun, here are some of our finished creations!

You will need:
-Student grade watercolor paper
-Watercolors
-Brushes and washout bowls
-Scissors
-Gluesticks
-Salt and textured paper towels (optional)
-Hairdryer for speed dry (optional)

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