Category Archives: art

art lessons

art, art, early education & play, Life in the US, outdoor play, play, Seattle, snow

Had Enough of Snow? These Peanuts Snow Sculptures will Make you Smile.

February 13, 2019 rightfromthestart Leave a comment

After almost a week of snow in the Seattle area, many have had enough of snow and can’t wait to get back to normality. Personally, snow makes me smile. I love having my kids home and playing in the snow, because we can try out some really cool projects. As Peanuts fans, on our first snow day this week, we built a snow sculpture of Snoopy lying on his kennel.

We used a brick mould to build the structure of the kennel and smoothed the sides to make the sloping roof. Then, sculpted snoopy lying down on top.

His nose and ears were painted with watercolour block paint and we painted his name on the entrance to the kennel.

Each day we have added a new Peanuts character.

Day 2 – Charlie Brown and Woodstock

The following night we had a lot of snowfall, so in the morning it was as if a Snoopy cartoon had come to life.

Thankfully the snow was soft and powdery so brushed off with little damage, other than some paint smudging and a slightly less defined Woodstock.

Day 3 – Lucy

Day 4 – Linus

This is my personal favourite. There had been some thawing overnight so there were a lot of pine needles in the snow; perfect for Linus’ hair.

For as long as the snow remains, we’re going to add a different character each day. I’ll be updating this post and my Instagram and Facebook page with pictures of the new additions. Who is your favourite Peanuts character?

active learning, art, early education & play, education, outdoor play, play, snow, water play

A Step by Step Guide to Making Ice Ornaments

February 8, 2019 rightfromthestart Leave a comment

It isn’t often we get a cold spell long enough to make ice ornaments, but with freezing temperatures set to last, we made a few batches to hang on our bushes. They look really beautiful, but also provide lots of opportunity to learn about ice, freezing and melting. A few years ago we made some and shared our learning story, as we watched them melt and freeze.

How to Make an Ice Ornament

You will need

Baking trays
Ribbon or string
Food colouring (optional)

Step 1.

Choose a baking /cup cake tray and fill each hole with cold water.

Step 2

Add a drop of food colouring – mix or leave to mix itself which can leave a marbled effect.

Step 3

Snip pieces of ribbon or string and submerge one end in the water, making sure the other end is free. You could loop the string but I prefer to leave it as it makes it easier to tie to larger branches. I usually do this part outside to avoid spilling when you move them to freeze.

Step 4

Leave outside overnight to freeze (or put the tray in your freezer).

Step 5

Hang on a bush or tree. If there is snow on the ground the food colouring will drip onto the snow as they melt. If there are prolonged freezing temperatures the ornaments will melt slightly and form icicles as they re-freeze.

I wasn’t sure how easily the hearts come out of the tins but they came out without any trouble. If they need a little help, bring them inside for a few minutes or run some warm water on the base of the tin. Alternatively, you could use a silicone mould.

The second batch also included owls and bears. We made half of the owls clear, to see how they would look without colour, but kept the colour in the bears, because my daughter thought they would look like gummy bears.

art, art and crafts, early education & play, snow

Wintery Art Project to Teach Value

December 31, 2018 rightfromthestart Leave a comment

Value in artist’s terms is the darkness or lightness of a colour It gives objects form on the page or in simple terms for young children, it makes a flat shape look 3D.

The goal of this art project for 2nd grade, was to show them how to shade a circle to make it look like a sphere. Since winter is upon us and the class have been reading a lot of books about snow, I chose a snowball.

Introduction

I showed an example drawing and asked them how I had made the circle stand out. They talked about the way I had placed it into the mittens and how I had shaded it. I explained that the darkest shading shoukd be opposite the light source and would gradually get lighter. If they left a spot without shading, it would show how the light was shining on it.

Step 1

Draw around your hand with fingers closed and thumb extended. Decorate using patterns and cut out.

Step 2

Draw the sun using shades of yellow, red and orange chalk pastel. Draw different coloured circles and blend to make a sun. Choose a round sun, a semi-circle or draw it in the corner of the paper.

Step 3

Place the mittens on the centre of the paper and place the snowball under the thumbs. Follow your finger in a diaganol line from the sun to the circle and shade the outer edge where your finger meets in a dark shade of blue. Continue, getting lighter with each layer and stop after four shades have been used.

Step 4

Blend with finger and cut out.

Step 5.

Glue the mittens and snowball onto the paper and add snowflakes.

The example used a chalk pastel background but I used blue paper for the class to make the snowflakes stand out more.

art, art, art and crafts

Art Project: Fused Glass Snowmen

November 21, 2018 rightfromthestart Leave a comment

We are very lucky to have the luxury of a kiln in our school, allowing us to complete clay and fused glass projects.

I wanted to make a gift for the children to take home at the end of term. As a multicultural school, some of the children don’t celebrate Christmas, so I chose a winter themed art lesson about snowmen.

Small groups of children worked on the fused glass snowmen while the rest of the class made pastel snowman drawings.

I pre-cut the white glass into 2 x 3 rectangles and cut black glass rods to make eyes and buttons.

Each child put their white piece on a paper plate labelled with their name and added pieces of scrap glass to create their snowman. They were then sprayed with hairspray to stop them moving around when I took them to the kiln.

When placing them in the kiln, I labelled them with a sticky note and took a photograph so I would know whose was whose when they came out. I removed the sticky notes before firing.

When they came out, we added a hook (stuck on with E6000 glue) and a ribbon for hanging.

active learning, art, art, art and crafts, early education & play, language & communication, outdoor play, play, science, sensory play

Try These Ideas for Summer Fun with Bubbles

August 8, 2018 rightfromthestart 1 Comment

We have had fun with bubble painting in previous summers, but usually use straws. To try something a little different, we made bubble blowers using plastic bottles and netting.

How to make a bubble blower

Cut the bottom off a plastic bottle
Tape on mesh or netting,
We used 3 different types to investigate how the bubbles would differ.

Christmas tree netting with large holes
Netting from a bag of oranges
Tulle
We made 3 with tulle, 1 layer, 2 layers and 3 layers

bubble blower with christmas tree netting

For the paint, we mixed bubble mixture with a table-spoon of powder paint.

We tested the blowers to see which one we liked the best.

The Christmas netting made three or 4 large bubbles.
The orange netting made lots of clear bubbles
The tulle made a foamy snake of bubbles and the more layers there were, the better the effect.

The best paint effects were made if we blew the bubbles away as soon as they hit the paper, otherwise they melted into a splodge and you couldn’t see the bubble shape.

We made another discovery. A plastic straw makes a perfect bubble wand.

I wonder what else we will discover about bubbles over the summer?

art, children, early education & play, education, imagination, learning environnments, play, reflection, Reggio Emilia, teaching, technology

Reflections on the Wonder of Learning Exibition (Reggio Children):What role does technology play in Reggio schools?

June 27, 2018 rightfromthestart 6 Comments

It is 13 years since I last visited the Reggio exhibition. Education and childhood have evolved dramatically in that time. I was interested to see how the schools of Reggio Emilia have adapted to meet the interests and fascinations of this new generation.

The projects and learning I observed 13 years ago embraced the physical world. Investigations were made through exploring physical objects and environments, through discussion and experimentation, using art, photography, written and spoken word. The documentation of more recent projects followed a similar pattern, except for one key difference. The schools of Reggio Emilio are now embracing technology as a tool for learning and artistic expression. This is not a piecemeal attempt to use technology to teach concepts, but rather a way of using new ways of investigating and deepening knowledge and curiosity, that were not possible before. They have fully embraced it as one of the hundred languages.

Take for example, investigations that occurred during the building of the Malaguzzi centre. The children were taken into the space. They ran and danced around the pillars, making patterns of movement. They were then invited to design their own pillars. Once the designs were completed, they were projected onto a large screen containing an image of the Malaguzzi centre. The children saw, that in the image of the Malaguzzi centre, some of the pillars looked smaller than the others. “Were they smaller?” they asked, “or did they just appear that way?” The children’s pillars all looked the same size when they were added to the image, so they used Photoshop to shrink some of the images and make a realistic picture. I have often seen images of how the Reggio schools use projectors to aid learning but the addition of computer technology added a whole new angle to the learning.

In another project, the children were fascinated by the sound their feet made on the metal stairs. They decided to give the gift of sound to the stairs. To achieve this, they tested ways to make different sounds by changing shoes and using a variety of movements. The sounds were then recorded.

The children decided how they might be able to annotate the individual sounds and used the symbols to create a sequenced map of sound. The children drew a picture of the steps and scanned it into the computer. Using music software, they added individual sounds to each stair to create their desired sequence.

I love the way these projects can take an idea further than they ever could before. In the past the discussion and investigation would have been similar, representation in art would also have been used, but it would not have been possible to make a working model.

Many educators would uphold the Reggio approach as an example of why technology isn’t necessary in early education. Yet, when it is used as one of the hundred languages, it enriches the learning experience without reducing creativity, curiosity or discussion.

It makes me feel sad that schools are often encouraged and expected to use technology more in the classroom, but I rarely see it used in a creative or enriching way. I mostly see teachers using screens to impart knowledge or show examples. I have never seen teachers use music software to investigate the science of sound, use photoshop to create art projects or see it in any way as a tool for the children. It has certainly made me contemplate how we might ‘play’ with technology at home too.

The Wonders of Learning is in Boston until November 2018. Then it will move to Maddison WI.

art, art, art and crafts, early education & play, play, Seattle, teaching

Art Project Inspired by Chihuly’s Macchia

March 26, 2018 rightfromthestart 2 Comments

Dale Chihuly is a local glass artist. His works have been exhibited around the world and can be seen locally at the Chihuly Glass Garden and Museum adjacent to the Space Needle in Seattle or at the Museum of Glass and Chihuly Bridge of Glass in Tacoma.

My daughter did a science project for her first grade class last week, where she showed how colours could be separated using a coffee filter and water. The class were fascinated, so I had an idea to incorporate their interests into our next art project.

One of Chihuly’s famous series are Macchia. These look a little like glass bowls, similar in shape to a coffee filter and are made by experimenting with different colour combinations. I showed the children pictures of Macchia and a short video showing how they are made.

Macchia means spots. I asked the children to decorate a coffee filter using washable markers, adding a variety of colours and including spots in their design. I showed them some examples from home, some had white spaces and some had the whole filter filled with colour.

When the designs were finished the children placed them on an upside down plastic cup and secured them with a rubber band.

They were then sprayed with spray starch. We protected the floor with paper and sprayed each one from a distance so the starch would create a fine mist and the filters wouldn’t get too wet.

This is quite a quick project but the children were keen to make more. Most children made two or three in a 45 minute lesson.

The designs were left overnight to dry.

The finished designs were mounted onto black card. These were joined to make a collaborative display but I chose to put each bowl on an individual piece of card so they could take them home.

The finished display.

art, books, early education & play

Art Lesson: Eric Carle Inspired Textured Collage (1st Grade)

March 8, 2018 rightfromthestart 4 Comments

Our Eric Carle inspired under the sea collages with 2nd grade last year, were such a success, I decided to take them a step further.

Eric Carle creates his collages using tissue paper he has painted and printed to create interesting patterns and textures. This was a two-part lesson. In the first lesson we created the tissue paper designs and in the following lesson made Eric Carle inspired collages.

Lesson 1

Materials

Tissue paper
Acrylic paint
Paintbrushes
Objects to print with – pine cones, corks, q-tips, toy cars, plastic duck feet, textured balls, sponges, bubble wrap.

I showed the children a slide show from the Eric Carle website showing how Eric Carle paints his tissue paper.

We looked at examples of the different patterns and textures Eric Carle uses in his books. I showed them how to create different patterns and textures on tissue paper by using different brush strokes and printing with a variety of materials.

The children created their own. Some children were a little confused and painted pictures onto the tissue paper. Perhaps this would have been avoided if I didn’t provide paintbrushes.

Each child created at least one patterned sheet.

Lesson 2

Materials

Painted tissue paper
Plain tissue paper
Glue sticks
Drawing paper
A pencil
Scissors

I showed the children a slideshow of Eric Carle creating a collage of the hungry caterpillar.

Each child had a piece of plain paper. They were asked to draw a simple outline drawing big enough to fill the page. I drew some examples – a butterfly, a caterpillar and a mountain scene and an example of a picture that wouldn’t work with lots of small things and details.

The children drew their picture and used their printed tissue to fill in the picture like Eric Carle. We added plain coloured tissue paper and tissue paper squares and circles. To finish the children drew in details with marker.

This was a wonderfully calm and focused lesson. The children really found the collage work therapeutic.

The finished products

In a play based setting I would spend a week focusing on only creating the tissue paper. The tissue paper designs would be used the following week to explore collage and would remain as a permanent resource to explore the techniques further. I would read lots of Eric Carle books and display examples of his pictures around the setting.

If you want to have a whole project about Eric Carle you might be interested in some of the other things we have tried.

art, early education & play, imagination, language & communication, play, sesame street

How to Make Jim Henson Inspired Hand Puppets

January 30, 2018 rightfromthestart 1 Comment

Following our visit to the Jim Henson exhibition and the girls fascination with puppet play, they wanted to try making hand puppets.

When they were younger we watched this inspirational video from the 1960’s, where Jim Henson talks about making muppets.

We made a few puppets from old tights with foam pieces for the mouth. The girls didn’t like the foam mouths as it restricted their fingers.

This time, they are a little older and have their own ideas (always better than mine) for making puppets.

The first puppet was made with a sock. We used a sock from an aeroplane wash kit. They followed the steps on the video and I helped them with ideas.

How to make a Sock Puppet

Cut an oval of cardboard and fold it.

2. Place the cardboard inside the sock and secure with an elastic band to make a mouth.

3. Add eyes. We used adhesive Velcro strips to join on our eyes and nose.

4. Add a nose. We used a pompom.

5. Add hair. Use wool, string or fur. This was also joined on with Velcro but you could also stitch it on.

Step 6: Add a tongue. We made a paper tongue and glued it on but you could also use felt or fabric.

My daughter named her Izzy. I think she is an amazing addition to our puppet collection.

Here she is in action.

How to Make a Puppet from an Envelope

The Jim Henson video also inspired them to make a puppet from an envelope.

1. Fold the envelope into a beak shape and decorate it.

2. Glue the envelope head onto a sock. We used double sided pads used for sticking pictures to the wall.

3. Wrap material around the sock .

4. If desired add clothes and make hands using sticks and cardboard. American Girl doll, or build a bear clothes work well.

They decided this one should be called Pierre.

Here is Pierre in action.

art, art, art and crafts, early education & play, education, teaching

Square 1 Art Lesson: Lions Inspired by LeRoy Neiman(1st Grade)

January 26, 2018 rightfromthestart 2 Comments

Each year, at school we have a Square 1 Art Fundraiser. Last years theme was water. My Kindergarten and 2nd Grade classes painted themselves under umbrellas in the rain . The previous year 1st grade created oil pastel monsters. This year the theme is ‘Be Wild and Wonder’.

LeRoy Neiman’s lions encapsulate both aspects of the theme perfectly and are bright and bold so fit the criteria for square 1 art projects.

Step 1.

Draw the outline of the lion’s face.

We made sure, the face was a good size and talked about different shapes for the face. This shape was similar to LeRoy Neiman’s lion and makes the lion appear as if it is looking sideways.

Step 2.

Draw the lions eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

We tried out different shaped eyes and noses. Once the children were happy with their drawings, they outlined them in black sharpie.

Step 3.

Paint the Mane. I showed them how to make sweeping brushstrokes, starting at the edge of the face and moving outwards. I encouraged them to use lots of bright colours and to try not to mix them too much.

Some used straight lines

Others chose curved lines

And some let the lines move in different directions.

Step 4.

Paint the face. We looked at Neiman’s use of colour – how he used light colours on the nose and chin and darker colours in the shadows. Again, I encouraged them to keep the colours distinct to make a patchwork effect.

Step 5.

Once the paint is dry, outline the features again in sharpie (this helps it to show up when the art work is reproduced by Square 1) and paint a watercolour wash for the background.

This child didn’t want to outline the lion’s face, preferring to let the face and mane merge into one another.

Some chose heart shaped faces

square one art inspired by leroy neiman lions

Some filled the whole page with patchwork colour

Some added ears

and some preferred lions without ears.

I love how individual they all are. Bright, bold and full of personality – perfect for a square one art project. I can’t wait to see how they look once their are printed onto keepsakes.