Art Time – Self Portrait Collage

M’s crazy eyes.  In real life, they normally
look in the same direction. ;)

I loved this post over at Red Ted Art’s Blog about creating self-portraits.  I knew we’d have to try this, and was intrigued to see how M’s self-portrayal would change when he really examined himself in a mirror.

We decided to do a collage, but I’d like to re-visit this idea using paint or pencils.

There aren’t a lot of pictures to share because I was very involved in this art project, reminding M to look at his face, see how each feature looked, and helping him think of how to present that in his collage.

Here’s what we started with:A variety of colored paper, pencil, scissors, glue, mirror.

M wanted to do the eyes first, and reminded me that we needed black and white paper too, which I thought was very observant.  So off I went to get the black and white paper.

M has hazel eyes, and chose green for his collage eyes.  We talked a bit about the “iris” and the “pupil” a bit as he cut.  I have to say I did draw some of the smaller shapes for M to cut out, per his request.  He used a hole punch for the pupils.

He loves the hole puncher, and used it to make teeth too. It was taking too much work on my part to convince him that his teeth aren’t little white circles. :)

I also thought it was interesting that he saw his hair as light brown.  We get remarks about his blonde hair all the time, but I think being inside so much during the winter did cause it to darken a tiny bit.  He finally decided to use brown and then cut tiny yellow hairs to add to it (like highlights, hee hee).

The finished self-portrait:He was really tickled with himself when he added what he called a “snowman nose” to his face.  Goofy kid.

Not half as adorable as the real thing, but he was pretty proud of it!

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Craft Time – Egg Carton Flower Garden

Say it fast – it sort of rhymes. :)

We still have this little art project, from almost a year ago, in our breezeway (the play dough is hard, but still holds!):It is one of my favorite things.  M noticed it a few days ago and wanted to make another one.

However, our lovely weather turned cold and rainy for about a week, and so we decided to put a twist on the activity and make our own flower garden.

Supplies:Old play dough (especially some that has been mixed together to form that lovely gray-brown), an egg carton, 12 craft sticks, 12 coffee filters, dot markers, a stapler, and… green paper, scissors, and pipecleaners all came in handy too.

Make large balls with the play dough and push them into the egg carton wells: 
Use your green dot marker (or whatever you wish) to paint some flower stems (craft sticks): 
At this point, M asked about leaves, so I got out the green paper and cut some leaves while he finished up the stems: 
Use the dot markers to decorate all 12 of your coffee filters: 
Staple the leaves to the stems: 
Assemble the flowers:We were going to staple the coffee filters to the stems, but they just flopped over, so we tried wrapping them on with pipecleaners, which worked much better.  Fold the coffee filter in quarters, then twist the bottom point a bit, and attach that part to the top of the stem.

Stick the stems in the play dough-filled egg carton, and fluff out all your coffee filters: 

Aren’t they sweet, all lined up in a row?

These were just what we needed on a gray and gloomy morning!

An egg carton, cut into smaller sections (say a square of 4 sections), would make a super-cute May basket to give away, wouldn’t it?  I wish we’d thought of this sooner, but it is still May!

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

and

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – May 13, 2011

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

  Mother’s Day 2011
This was taken at the end of the day – I look worn out and
M looks ready to go. :)  That is usually how it is around here! 
I normally wouldn’t post a picture of myself with glasses on (I so dislike how I look in them), but I have to be in SOME pictures on here!  It’s my blog! :)

~M is 4.5 years old~

Literacy

M continues to love poems and these sequencing cards are a great activity.  He can do these all on his own, as long as I separate them into groups for him (one paperclip of cards for each poem): 

His homemade puppet theater (a tension rod in a doorway with a blanket thrown over the top) has been seeing more action lately, and we made these great little stick puppets for The Three Bears.  This is a fun way of doing more story sequencing and mom and dad get a cute little show to watch. ;) 

And M wants to learn to read.  You can read more about that in this post.

 

Science – Dinosaurs!

M loves the little dinosaur fossil eggs you chisel apart in order to find the bones.  He’s done many, many of these over the winter and early spring.  You can find them at Michael’s as well as Dollar Tree. See the little hammer lying on the table?  That quickly got set aside, and M began using his “real”, big hammer.  This kid is all about action, not patience.

     This particular one is an Ankylosaurus.  For each dino he’s unearthed and put together, we’ve looked for a book to learn a bit more about it.  I can’t remember the names of the books, but there are a ton of dino books out there (on the odd chance you haven’t noticed)!

 

Fine Motor Skills, Practical Life, and Misc.

After seeing this post over at My Montessori Journey, I thought it would be fun to set something similar out for M.  I found simple step-by-step tutorials for drawing a bird and a dog (look towards the bottom of the web page for the dog), and made instruction cards for M.  He wasn’t as eager to do this as I imagined he would be, and that was fine.  I don’t want to inhibit his own imaginative drawings by making him think things have to be drawn in a certain way.  However, I did enjoy seeing how he was able to go from step to step in order.  Here are the cards (I had each set on a ring):
And here are M’s finished drawings: Are these not absolutely adorable?!  :)  He said, “look at my chicken!” – I think he surprised himself, haha.  I have to say I like his chicken better than the bird he was trying to draw. :)

 

M loves to watch me use my sewing machine.  It is an event, let me tell you.  He anticipates it, watches every move, tries to figure out exactly how it works, and begs for more when I’m finished.  Sometimes I think he’s going to break into applause.  Part of it is his inclination towards all things mechanical, but part of it is just a love of the idea that something new can be created.  So I set out a simple embroidery hoop, some muslin, and a little yarn for him.  He wanted to sew a picture, so we started with a smiley face.  He learned to backstitch in order to create a line of stitches (although not perfectly, as you can see!), and overall really enjoyed this.

 

 

May Day meant a little flower crown for the statue of Mary in our garden.  I used some leftover flowers from a lei, cut a crown shape out, and let M staple the flowers on.  He LOVES the stapler (totally supervised, don’t worry!). 

 Ok, I guess the garden needs a little work.

It’s a little big.

We read two beautifully written and illustrated books about Mary:

 

 

Art

Here’s a look at M’s Art Box for spring (which has recently changed into an Art Cart – more on that later).  It was full of things to make flowers and butterflies: 

Here’s a bit of his artwork: 

 
And, my favorite, a ribbon and flower collage on contact paper for Mother’s Day. :) 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

 

Preschool Art (and sensory) Project – making Soap Clay

I have had this little project in mind for ages.  I first heard about it from MaryAnn Kohl (are you surprised, really?  You know we are her biggest fans).

We bought 2 bars of Ivory soap, and M used our cheese grater to shred the soap.  As much fun as playing and molding with the soap was, I think grating it up was M’s very favorite part.  He loves using a new tool!  Believe me, I would not let him do this at a much younger age, and I was right beside him the entire time, making sure those little knuckles didn’t get grated too.  I’m happy to say not a drop of blood was shed in this activity. :)  That’s always a good thing, don’t you think?

watching the soap flakes pile up in the middle of the grater

We ended up with about 2 cups of soap flakes.

M poured in a tiny bit of water at a time…

And stirred, until it began to form into a ball:

Then the fun of grabbing a glob of it in his hands and squishing it all up began:I had to get in on this action too!  The smell, the feel - it was a great sensory experience.   

We tried using a play dough mold to make some dinosaur-shaped soap, which would have been so cool!  Except there was no way to pop it out of the mold without completely destroying it.  Maybe if we had left it in to dry a bit, but neither of us had the patience for that.  This was a hard plastic mold.  I really think a silicone candy mold or even cookie cutters would have worked much better.

So, M ended up adding some food coloring (blue, because that’s all we had, ha ha), and rolled it into some bath crayons.  They really work well, and he could hardly wait to take his next bath. ;) 

We will definitely do this again.  It would be a fun project for Mother’s Day – maybe add some dried flowers or oatmeal?  And use a flower-shaped cookie cutter as a mold.  The food coloring from the tub crayons does not seem to leave any stains, so a bit of color in the soap is apparently ok, which opens up a lot of fun possibilities, doesn’t it? ;)

Definitely a successful sensory activity, and not a bad art project either!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Pretty Patterns for Mother’s Day

Wow, can you believe Mother’s Day is just a few days away? 

Over the weekend we made some cute flower magnets for M’s grandmothers. 

This craft was inspired one Sunday morning at IHOP (International House of Pancakes – yum, yum, yum!).  On the walls, there were framed papers, with egg-shapes cut from them, and patterned paper underneath, making pretty Easter eggs. 

With quick help from photo-shop, here’s an idea of what they looked like:Anyway, I really loved these, and tucked the idea into that little craft area of my brain.  When I saw a pack of pretty spring-themed scrapbooking paper at Target for 50 cents, I knew just what we would do with it.

However, it all turned out differently than the plan in my mind.  Doing the cut-out presented more of a challenge for M than I expected, and it looked more like a card than a piece of artwork.  We will probably do something along those lines sometime, but for now we modified the plans as follows…

Supplies: White cardstock, colored cardstock (we used yellow), marker, something to make a large circle and a small circle (lids), simple cardstock flower template, foam sheets or scraps, scissors, glue on a saucer, small paint roller, patterned paper cut into squares or small rectangles.  There was no measuring for this – I just snipped a few strips of paper into pieces.  If you want to make these into magnets, you’ll need magnets too.  I usually have a roll of magnetic tape from Walmart on hand.

Pour some glue onto your saucer, water it down a tiny bit, then use the roller to cover your white cardstock with a thin layer of glue:

Then, begin covering the cardstock with pieces of patterned papers; some will need to overlap in order to completely cover the paper:
                        look at those sweet baby hands!

 

Once your cardstock is covered, roll another layer of glue on top: 

While that’s drying, draw one large circle for each flower you are making on your colored cardstock, and cut them out: (M has 4 pairs of scissors, but couldn’t find any of them, and was allowed to use my sharp ones under close supervision.)

Draw small circles on foam (M picked pink) and cut them out too: 

Once your paper-covered cardstock is dry, use a template, or freehand draw two simple flowers: 

Cut them out. You will need the sharp scissors for this:

Dot some glue in the center of a large circle:

Pop on a cut out flower, dot it with glue in the center:

And stick on a foam circle:

We trimmed the yellow circles a little bit, and put magnets on the back, and now we have pretty magnets for Grandma’s and Nama’s refrigerators. :)     I love the variety of textures used on these (see the glitter and glossy spots?)!  Using fabric scraps instead of scrapbooking paper could add even more texture!

 

Some other ideas for Mother’s Day…

Paper plate and tissue paper flower suncatchers:

Foam mosaic flowers (or any shape mama likes): M made these for Easter when he was 2 years old (pre-blog).  I cut the cross and flower out, gave him scissors and strips of foam to cut the tiles, and he glued them on.  I still love these.  I put a little magnet on the back and they’ve been on our fridge ever since.  It would be fun to revisit this project now that he’s twice as old. :)  I think these would be perfect for Mother’s Day too!  And super-easy for just about any child to do.

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)