Spring Session 2011- Week Ten

Fathers' Day Goodness

I love our Dad's! Or in some cases Grandpas, uncles, brothers, and husbands. I always feel bad since Mother's Day typically falls during the school year we tend to dedicate a project to them, and poor Dad's day has fallen after school is out so the poor guy gets left in the dust. Well, not this year we are moving and shaking the schedule around so we can create some special tokens of our appreciation for our Father's. Dad's sometimes get the short end of the stick, and I want them to know that we are thinking of them, and trying to honor them this week. It wasn't easy coming up with a good project for Dad this week. I didn't want to give them a generic gift, or anything too girlie. Something useful is always good, and adding a personal touch to it should make it a hit. We decided this week to make our Father's a special card, and keychain with personalized flare on it. We started with hand painting something special on the back of a small, cool laminate sample. Then moving onto drawing with permanent markers onto shrink film. Finally, a nice card. Here are our creations:

Winter Session Week Nine

Saint Patrick's Day- Mosaic Shamrocks and Rainbow/Shamrock Cuffs

There was a old woman who lived in a shoe.
She thought it'd be nice to paint it blue.
A giant by mistake,
the shoe did he take.
Now the old woman is going boohoo. Written by Kathie Stokes

Yes, who knew I could write such eloquent limericks. The day is upon us to celebrate the color green, little mysterious people, gold coins, rainbows, shamrocks, pinching others, and for those who are old enough green beer? If you haven't guessed already, and I am assuming you have since I have some smart cookies who read this, yes in fact, St. Patrick's Day arrived. So, for the glorious occasion we made collage, mosaic shamrocks, and rainbow shamrock cuffs. We also talked about limericks, and the kids wrote a few themselves. We kicked it off with the story of how St. Patrick's Day came to be.

Starting with the collage-mosaic shamrocks we had the children use some cardstock, and trace a large shamrock onto the paper. Then using yellow and green tissue paper they painted matte medium onto the paper and laid down the tissue paper, and then painted over it to seal it. The matte medium dries clear and gives the appearance of stained glass in a way. After it dried they then cut out the shamrock and we punched a hole on top and strung a ribbon through so they could hang it in a window.










Here's a shot of our powerful rainbow/shamrock cuffs. When you want to become one with the leprechauns you wear these, and it helps you find those elusive gold coins, yippee! We prepared the ribbon beforehand. The kids used a template to trace and cut out their felt shamrock, and thread it onto their new fangled cuff!

Fall 2010 Week Two Wayne Thiebaud and Flipbooks

This week we took a look at the artist Wayne Thiebaud. He is a contemporary artist that had a love for food. Though he did traditional landscapes and portraiture he was fascinated with food particularly sweet treats. My kind of artist! He worked in pastels and oil paints mostly. Using his interest in painting and sweet treats we had the children draw their own ice cream cone. We had the children use oil pastels for this project due to its inherent nature of texture and blending capabilities. Oil pastels are a cross between oil paints, and crayons, though they blend so much better. I personally really enjoy using oil pastels because they draw like butter. You also don't have to press as hard to get beautiful intense color. When you blend and draw over other colors they mesh and move around on the page to create more natural color, shadows, and/or highlights. I think the ice cream treats the kids drew look amazing. Since, many weren't use to coloring over color it took a little coaxing to get them to understand how oil pastels can work that way. I love the way they turned out.

Our second project for the day were flipbooks. Growing up I remember being amazed by this concept that is the basis for movies and animation today. Flipping through these books and watching the pictures move and do funny things. We tried to break it down by using rubber stamps, and having one stationary object and one object that moves on each page. A simple enough concept, but challenging to do. The kids had a fun time stamping, and some stamps even moved way off the the page onto shirts and hands. The most difficult part was keeping the stationary object stationary on each page. The moving object was a much easier task for the children. Even though the stationary object may not have been perfect the small movements page to page make it interesting. I have to apologize to parents for any books that may have came apart at home. I had to replace new staples in the stapler we used and I think that they were an inferior staple. Who would have thought staples came in good, better, and best grades. If the book loses some pages you can re-attach the book back together with a home stapler if needed.