Mardi Gras- Jumping Jacks & Splatter Friends
Break out the crowns, beads, gawdy costumes, and king cakes Fat Tuesday is here!! So our projects for this inspiration is all based on the craziness, colorfulness, dancing, and myths that surround Mardi Gras.
Our first projects is what we like to call Splatter Friends. We had the kids pick two colors of paint and they applied it to the paper by blowing the paint around on the paper with a straw. This created a random, mysterious, organic shape. After the paint dried we had the children draw with a black marker or pen using the shape created by the paint some sort of animal, creature, fairy or monster. I love these sort of projects because it allows the kids to be super imaginative, and push their creativity. Not to mention so completely abstract which is so cool.
Jumping Jacks/PantinsI love these crazy characters. They can dance like nobody's business. These fun toys are called jumping jacks, in French it's a pantin. I was originally trying to find a different type of toy, but still the same idea of self created movement. These characters reminded me of the fanciful nature of Mardi Gras. The kids picked out the pantin they wanted to create and cut out all of the parts. We them had them put together all of the joints with brads, and then we helped them tie all of the strings to make their jumping jack go crazy. These are super fun, and with the basic structure anyone could create there own jumping jacks. I suggested to some kids that they may want to create their own at home, and a robot could be a natural pantin.
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