Art Every Day

I was inspired today by two things.  First a blog entry that someone posted on facebook made me fall in love with the process of children doing artwork every day- the way it makes them think and inspires them and gives them confidence and creativity.  We don't have tons of fancy art supplies at our house- we rely heavily on crayons, stickers, and washable paint.  But this post made me excited about expanding our repertoire to pastels, collage, and more. The second thing was that on my way to pick up the kiddos I was listening to a story on NPR about creativity and how our brains are able to develop and practice creativity and how we learn and problem-solve best when we participate in a wide range of activities on a regular basis.

So when we entered the phase of the evening when I attempt to cook dinner while Zoe screams and Jonathan whines, I decided to break out the crayons and some stickers.  And within moments our kitchen floor looked like this.

Not ideal for cooking, but dodging errant crayons is way better than dealing with whining.  And by dinner time he was actually so into his art that I had to pry him away from his masterpiece- success!

So tonight after bedtime, I was still feeling inspired that in order to foster creativity in my own brain, I should also engage in art on a more regular basis.  I was too tired to go upstairs to drag out my 'real' paints, so I opened up the box of crayons and spent a few minutes filling up a page.

I don't know if I was inspired to a star pattern because I am currently teaching our astrophysics unit at work, or because I am just feeling a bit more spiny and sharp lately, or because we've been reading and talking about dinosaurs and their spikes and horns quite a bit around here lately.  But it was a great way to relax and though I don't think I'll pin mine to the refrigerator, I might break out crayons a little more often just for me!

Animal Prints

Last weekend, Jonathan was set on being noisy- banging, yelling, crashing.  LOUD.  I'm all for letting little boys run and jump and yell and be noisy messy little guys.  The problem was that little sister and sick papa were asleep.  Solution?  Coral him in the kitchen with a really fun project.  This took about 10 minutes to set-up including the time I spent rooting around in our disaster of a craft cabinet looking for the washable paint.

I cut open and laid flat a bulk diaper box, poured a mixture of paint into a shallow pan to make our "mud", and then collected some animals and cars from our toy bins.

I showed Jonathan how to dip the animal feet into the mud and demonstrated how to walk them down the cardboard to make foot-prints once and then he was all in.

We had fun looking at the animal feet first, guessing what the foot-prints would look like.  I think making the prediction first helped Jonathan pay more attention to the tracks he was making as he played.  Our favorite was the stegasaurus because he made 4 clear footprints AND a tail print.

But they were all pretty fun.  The project served its function and kept him happily occupied for about 40 minutes!

The paint was almost entirely contained to the cardboard and when we were done I just dumped all of the animals into a sink of soapy water to soak until a more opportune time to wash them. (And by then most of the paint had already rinsed off).

little portfolios

One of my favorite things about my life at the moment are the days that Jonathan brings home his artwork from preschool.  They display it all month in their classroom and then, one day, they take it down and he comes home wit his art folder jammed into his pint-sized backpack- over flowing with construction paper, glitter, googly-eyes, and pom-poms.

I love these days because when we get home, Jonathan is SO excited to show me his projects.

He takes each one out of his folder like it is an old friend and usually with an exclamation "My penguin!!"

I ask him about what is in the picture and how he made it, and I love these tiny little insights into his classroom and thoughts.  For example a lot of their January art featured cozy images adorned with batting.  Our conversation was something like:
Jonathan:  This wool makes it cozy and warm because a sheepy got stuck here
Me: The sheepy got stuck there?
Jonathan: Yes, because I glued him to the page.

I love that his classroom is a place where they do fun art projects and are creative and that his teacher integrates their reading books with their art and their songs and their play.  (In January they were all about going on a bear hunt, so we have lots of bear art- including a set of bear ears- and they built a bear cave out of a box that they would take turns hiding in and sneaking up on when they were hunting the bear). I love that he gets that at school, because honestly as much as I know how important art and messiness is, I just don't have the patience or creativity manage art projects between work and dinner on the average night.

bear sleeping in his cave

After he shows me his art, he usually decides where each one should go- a large pile on the sofa, some on the kitchen floor, some on the table.

And while the mess of that eventually drives me crazy, I love stumbling upon these little treasures for the rest of the evening.

butterflies

Our latest painting project has been to make butterflies! I picked up some small sized plain white coffee filters at the store a few weeks ago and broke them out on one of the recent days when it has been too hot to play outside for long.

I decided to limit our paint to some bright warm colors, instead of allowing blue and red and orange to all mix together into a big brown mess, and Jonathan didn't complain too much that his paint tray had only red, yellow and orange. He dove right in with the brushes, his hands, and finally just outright wadding up the coffee filters and dipping them in the paint. The tricky part was laying them out flat again to dry (a few ripped too badly to be used in the final product)

When they were dry, I folded them with accordion folds and had Jonathan help me put two each along with a bit of green ribbon into the mouths of small sized IKEA chip clips. And voila! Butterflies! Jonathan had a blast running around the house with them making them fly along behind him.

When he tired of that game, I used some push pins to secure them to the ceiling. So now these beauties are hanging in our sunroom! I love it. I am actually thinking of making something similar for a "mobile" of sorts for above the baby's crib.

christmas tree

Jonathan loves art at school and always talks about his paintings and coloring projects with great pride. So, partially inspired by a blog by a super creative mom, I decided to brave the world of paint and a 1 year old. I changed him into an old set of clothes that I never liked anyway, covered the dining room table with an old outdoor tablecloth and set to dipping little hands in green paint.

Jonathan LOVED it. I tried to be cool and laid back, but really I was on pins and needles the entire time he was banging his little hands around in the paint. I stayed calm on the outside until he started turning around and putting his hands on the chair. And then I only let out a little yelp of panic, and quickly wiped up the mess. I still need to work on some logistical details (tips on smocks anyone?) but at was doable and I think we will be doing more painting at home.

I spent some time last night cutting out tiny hand prints (40 in all)

and gluing them to a background

So today we had more craft-time decorating the Christmas Tree! I'm not sure I Jonathan recognized that the tree was made from his hand-prints or not. But he enjoyed the stickers and shiny bows nonetheless. And I had fun too!