Unofficial Homeschool Art Class: Bubble Drawings

I did this project with my friend's kids while I was babysitting them last night.  I was inspired by this blog post I found via Pinterest.

Top: Elijah (age 9), Lula (age 5), Laurel (age 3)
Bottom: Carlie (age 7), Liam (age 8), Kira (age 32)

The blog post said they did it with oil pastels.  I decided we'd try to experiment with different mediums and see which one worked best.  We tried crayons, chalk, and the oil pastels... and I see why the original blogger chose oil pastels, because those ended up working the best.

I've kind of decided I'm not going to be doing an official homeschool art class this year.  I want a bit of a break.  But I'm also giving myself the choice to change my mind later.  Who knows, I may get the itch later in the year.  So if I do end up doing art class at all, I definitely will be using this project in a lesson.  It's a good way to teach about reflection and transparency.  And we'd use nice black cardstock instead of the black gel-pen notebook paper!

Homeschool Art Class: Shaving Cream Marbled Paper

This was the project I did withe the K-1st grade kids at homeschooler art class today...

Shaving Cream & Food Coloring Marbled Paper

This project was one of those projects that I have read about for years in various kid-craft books and craft blogs, but I've never actually done it... so I decided to do a test run last night before trying to bungle through the project for the first time with the kids there.

The tutorial said you can use liquid watercolors or food coloring.  I used liquid water colors first.  I used a small baking tray to keep things tidy...sprayed some shaving cream on...smoothed out the top as well as I could...and dripped some liquid watercolors on top...then swirled the colors with a chopstick (sorry, forgot to take a picture of the "swirly" colors before printing) 

Lay a piece of paper on top, pressing down lightly to be sure the color takes...then carefully peel the paper off.  Then take a flat-edged piece of cardboard or plastic (I used cardboard, but I's suggest plastic for easier cleanup) and scrape off the excess shaving cream to reveal the design!

I was curious how using food coloring would differ from the liquid watercolors, so I used those next..

I found the colors are much more vibrant when using the food coloring.  (I may have watered down the watercolors too much though)
I got an interesting effect with the watercolors that we left over on the shaving cream, since I used the same shaving cream instead of cleaning off the tray and using clean stuff.  I think it added a cool dimension.

 Watercolors on top, Food Coloring on the bottom.  I had a lot of fun doing these!

The kids were very excited to do this project!

I had them use the food coloring, since it provided more vibrant colors.  They were very good about carefully dropping the food coloring and not wasting it (I told them they could use 4 drops of each color...although I probably could have had them use only 2 or 3).  And they were also very good about waiting their turn to use the next color. 

The kids took note that the yellow food coloring looks orange/red when it first comes out of the dropper and I tried explaining the concept of "concentrated" color, but I think the concept went over their heads.  Plus, I'm not sure I explained it very well.  But they ended up understanding that it was yellow once the drop spread a bit into the shaving cream and they swirled it around.

The designs turned out very nicely, and the mothers were all impressed when I took the kids all home!  The older siblings want to do the project at their next class!  The project doesn't take long, so I can have them do at least one print before or after we do the project I have planned.  (I'll have to get more shaving cream though.  We ran out today!)

It occurred to me today that I have seen this kind of thing done before at the Lilac Festival this past summer, but using water and special ink/paint instead of the shaving cream and food coloring, and printing the design onto silk scarves instead of paper.

After doing 2 more shaving cream prints and some free-draw time, the kids worked on a coloring page until the end of class.

 I found this printable coloring page via Pinterest earlier this week, which is SO perfect, since I have a couple perfectionists in both the "little" kids and "big" kids classes that get frustrated when they don't get things "just right".  And I am always telling the kids that "it's okay to make mistakes".  (If you couldn't tell, it is one of the perfectionists whose page I took a picture of!)

Art Lesson with Little Kids: Color Mixing Chart Placemat

Today in art class, I did a project for little kids to teach them about mixing paint colors...their own Color Mixing Chart!

We've been working with paint lately and I thought it would be a good thing to cover (besides that it's a standard art requirement for homeschooling). So last night, I used a circle stencil and drew a blank chart onto pieces of 11x17 construction paper. (I have a bunch of this paper that I was given by a teacher friend I used to work with when I was a one-on-one aide for a kindergarten girl with autism)

To cut down on my costs, I only bought the primary colors of tempera paint. So whenever we're working with paint, I usually get asked "what colors make...~insert secondary color here~". Now, I can just ask them, "What does your chart say?"

I'm planning on either putting clear contact paper over them or taking them to Office Max to get them laminated so the kids can use them as their placemats. I've been using those blank pieces of paper as their placemats in an attempt to protect the table a bit, but un-laminated, they soak in water, paint, glue, or whatever else the kids are working with and I always end up throwing the paper away. When I laminate them, the various mediums can simply be wiped off and the placemat can be reused!

Art Lesson with Older Kids: Toilet Paper Tube Owls & Cats

The little kids had so much fun with the Toilet Paper Tube Owls/Cats that I decided to do the project with the older kids too...

Make It Monday: Toilet Paper Tube Owls & Cats

I've fallen behind in posting pictures of the kids' art classes, so I thought I'd make this a Make-It-Monday post...

I originally found this project for making owls out of toilet paper tubes via Pinterest (oh, how I love Pinterest!). The original project is for owls, but I thought the general shape would work for making cats as well, so I had this kids make one of each if they wanted to.

(this first owl & cat were my examples that I made)

• Bend the opposite sides at the top of the tube to shape 2 pointy ears (the original instructions call for you to tape the top, but if you pinch the cardboard "ears", you don't need to...plus masking tape doesn't take the paint well)
• Paint the tube (I use this part to teach the kids about color-mixing with the paint)
• While you wait for the paint to dry, cut out eyes and beak/nose, and draw pupils onto the eyes. (I cut the eyes out with my Cricut before class, but the kids cut out the beaks/noses themselves)
• When the paint is dry, glue on the eyes & beak/nose

This is how the table looked when the kids were done.

Art Lesson with Older Kids: Felt Finger Puppets

This is one of the few store-bought ready-made kits I've done with the kids. I thought it would be a good introduction to sewing for the kids (who frequently ask me to teach them "how to make Nubbins"!)

The 2 main issues with this problem with this project were... #1: that the kids had issues with learning how to make a knot in the thread...and #2: White glue is extremely frustrating for kids to work with when working with felt (white glue only really works with paper). The glue kept soaking into the felt and the kids were getting frustrated because they kept pressing on the pieces or picking the whole thing up, and felt pieces and/or googly eyes would come off. But ultimately they learned that the project needed to be left alone to dry and I think they really did enjoy it, despite their glue-frustration.

Art Lesson with Older Kids: ATCs and Monkeys

This week, inspired by my own impromptu art session after last week's class, I introduced the older kids to the idea of making their own Artist Trading Cards (aka: ATCs). I've known about ATCs for a few years now, and have recently been surprised how people are just recently discovering the ATC phenomenon. When I was picking up one of the kids for class and told his mom what we were doing today, she said she was excited I was doing ATCs because she'd just read about them and thought it was an awesome idea...and a friend of mine on Facebook just discovered it too. Is there something "new" out there about ATCs for kids or something? I've just kind of figured maybe the only reason I knew about them already was because I'm such an art geek!

I'm still all about watercolors and rubber stamps. They are both such good art mediums for kids when they are so used to just being allowed to use crayons and/or markers. Kids love to paint...I think mostly because paint isn't a common medium they are allowed to use...because paint is messy. Eventually we will get to one of my favorite mediums, acrylic paint... but I'm not confident enough yet to brave those waters with more than one young child. (because paint is messy!) The thing about acrylic is that if you spill, drip, spatter, dribble, drobble, or otherwise get it on something other than your paper/canvas, it does not wash out. Maybe I'll test the waters with tempera paint...since they're washable. Although as an artist, I'm kind of a snob about tempera paint. I don't like it. It doesn't have the same opacity of acrylic. But I digress...

Watercolor is fine for now. No one has complained yet!

I'm always amazed at just how quiet and focused they all get when it's time to do the drawing worksheet.
This week's worksheet was how to draw a monkey.

Ava, the lone girl of the group, always loves to dress up her drawings when she's finished the basic figure. She's all about princesses and dresses and fashion. And she'll give most of her drawings personalities and stories. I didn't get to hear the story about these dressed-up monkeys today.

My "Art Class Rules" on the wall, along with some of my own drawings. (please disregard my awful, awful, outdated wallpaper!)

I actually had Eli for the day today. His mom had an appointment that she would not be back from before art class, so I offered to have her drop him off before her appointment and have him hang out with me for the day so he would not have to miss art (and she would have one less kid to worry about!) This kid really loves art. Almost every Sunday at church, he asks me if we are having art this week. Before class today, he sat down on his own (between Lego building sessions) and decided to copy the monkey drawing I had by the Art Class Rules. I think he did a pretty good job for sight-drawing with no step-by-step instructions!