Wee Little Nature Cups

My three year old and I were cleaning out the long over due pots of winter greenery and found tiny little pine cones. He wanted to keep them, because he is interested in all things very tiny right now. Recently, I ran across a post on this wonderful blog about making these sweet little cups and I thought it might be fun to give it a try.

We modified the project because of lack of time but they could be easily embellished with tissue paper and glue, paint or marker!

We took an egg carton and cut out the cups, punched a couple holes and added a paper handle with brads. My little guy was more focused on filling them so we skipped the color tissue!

I have a feeling we will be making several of these for our nature walks!

Recycled Desk Art

My littlest one has started eating solid food and I have not had the time, like I did with my first child, to make all of her food yet. Therefore, we have these little containers available for endless possibilities at our house. They can not only act as a little garage and hold toy cars, be a "very special" snack container for big brother but they are perfect for creating "desk art".

I cut paper to fit in the inside of the lid and the little artist in our house created a wonderful work of art using glue, markers and one button (carefully chosen). Then we spread glue on the inside of the container and sprinkled glitter (the best part!). To complete it I helped him glue the top to the bottom so we were certain it would not come off!
I think this might be just one of many recycled spring break projects this week!

Postage Please!

Today students created postage stamps by looking at images of different bugs. We talked about how to begin drawing bugs and that they are made up of different lines and shapes. This seemed to ease the minds of many students that have never tried to draw bugs! We also discussed including USA and the price of the stamp on their artwork. They look like a wonderful collection of stamps!
If you want to create real postage stamps out of your artist's work here is a website that you can easily upload images to http://www.zazzle.com/stamps.
Enjoy Spring break!
See you in April for recycling projects!

Happy St.Patrick's Day!

With the excitement of Lucky the Leprechaun visiting the classrooms and the beautiful sunshine outside today I couldn't have asked for more creative enthusiasm!
Today I read the story Jack and the Leprechaun by Ivan Robertson to inspire the project. Although, there was plenty of inspiration in the room with Lucky leaving behind shamrocks, gold coins, and foot prints. Today students designed a house that they thought a leprechaun might live in. They began by drawing a tree to illustrate the scale of the house better to the viewer. We discussed how to show the texture of the tree and what a Leprechaun might have in his backyard - rainbows, shamrocks and pots of gold of course!
Next, imaginations went wild!

Wordless book for the imagination

Where is the Cake by Thé Tjong-Khing is a wordless book with illustrations begging for a story! The pictures allow for very imaginative discussion especially with a young one. There is so much activity happening in the illustrations that the story can change each time you look at it! It is a wonderful way to demonstrate the power of story telling through art.

From Scraps to Cities!

We have started to look at landscapes this week. Today we began by talking about cities. We looked at some of Paul Klee's work including Castle and Sun. We discussed the endless possibilities of what could be happening in the painting as well as the use of many geometric shapes. Students used scraps that we have been collecting all year to create their cityscape. They turned out amazing! Each city has it's own creative story. Be sure to ask your artist what is happening in their scene.


Tunnels and sky scrapers

This student found heart scraps from a Valentine's day project and turned them into birds!

A busy city with bridges and tunnels and buildings


One student saw his city with more dimension. Maybe a future pop-up artist or architect?!

Spring Has Sprung!

Spring is here!.... at least in the halls at school! Today we looked at more of Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful floral paintings. Students used view finders to "zoom" in on one of the live flowers from the bouquet on their tables. They used pencil to draw an over sized bloom on their page and included texture to their image by taking an even closer look at the actual flower. Next, they carefully and slowly painted these wonderful spring blooms!
Can't you smell the fresh spring air?!