A Fall Celebration

Fall is my favorite season. After the long, dry and hot summer of Southern California, the fall is crisp and full of color. It's a quiet time for reflection after the bustling summer season in the studio where we have 18 spirited children creating and talking for full days. Fall is a time to exhale. Before that though my teachers and I thought it would be fun to have a celebration telling a story of the seasons.
We thought telling the story of Persephone and her mother, Demeter would be a wonderful way to celebrate the coming of fall and to show appreciation to our supportive families. If you do not know this Ancient Greek myth, please look it up. It's such great story of mother and daughter.

I take great pleasure in shadow puppets. The mysteriousness of the dark shadows allows for some great story telling and traditionally shadow plays are of folklore and myths. I also like how they are also slow with information. The lack of detail on the puppets allows the viewer to use their imagination to fill in the details. 

My own children, who are now eight and twelve, helped in making the puppets and performing the telling of Persephone's tale. My daughter created the upper world and my son created the underworld. Although the spider webs were my daughter's idea and add so much to the scenery. My children drew the sets individually on large pieces of card board and I cut them out. I the taped the upper world and underworld together. 

The kids waited anxiously but patiently for the show to start while the translucent scrim displayed the set stage for our story. 

Here is an image of Demeter and her reunification with her daughter, Persephone while Hade's empty throne sits below in the underworld.  

After the puppet show and some refreshment that included pomegranates from our tree, we offered a workshop for the kids to make their own shadow puppets. It's not so easy for kids to just create s a silhouette and not add detail of facial features and clothes. 

 And parents loved getting involved. I think the parents enjoyed it as much if not more than their children, which is one of the reasons why we do family workshops. Parents so enjoy the creative outlet but sometimes need the excuse of their children to be creative.

We had all kinds of puppets join the theatre and play in the shadows, alligators, turtles, super heros, cats and snakes.  Happy Fall to everyone. 

Salt Paintings

Our goal is to foster children's curiosity by discovering materials in a unique way. We sometimes combine those materials with themes so that not only are they exploring the art methods, but also using their imagination to do so.  Like with most of the projects, I do this one is layered with many steps to move through, exploring each material as they do.
Most children have used glue to bind two materials together and most children are familiar with salt for eating and most children have painted using liquid watercolor, but this project puts all three together with the idea of a labyrinth.

I read the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth from Greek Mythology  to the children. This gets  the thoughts flowing about the idea of labyrinths.

With the young kids, ages 5-6, we gave them glue to squeeze onto the paper while discussing with their peers about making a maze and how it might work.  They might not look like labyrinths but the ideas are there.  With the older kids, ages 7-10, I gave them pencils to draw out their labyrinth. Each took their time to draw and share ideas about the trap doors and dead ends. When finished I gave them glue bottles to draw with. 

After they felt satisfied with the glue drawings, I gave each child a cup of salt and asked them to sprinkle it all over the glue so that the glue sparkled.

The last step in this process is to add the watercolor using a pipette.  We really stressed how to be careful and just drip the color and watch it spread through the salt, creating these lines of colorful crystals.

The ooooohs and the wows of excited children exploring the materials is so delightful to hear. 

They dry overnight and after you shake off the excess salt the combination of glue salt and watercolor leave a crystallized masterpiece with thick and thin lines and degrees of darkness of color.

Celebration of The Moon

With the eclipse approaching in our corner of the world I thought it would be a nice idea to do a post on celebrating the moon. During our Potion Lab Summer Camp we created moon phase banner using the power of the sun.

We talked about the phases of the moon and a few ways to represent those phases. The phases of the moon is a wonderful way to discuss how we are all connected together. Even if the moon seems so incredible far away, it has an affect on how the oceans move here on earth. 

These are the two ingredients you will need to turn any piece of fabric into a sun print. The possibilities are so fantastic. This Solar Fast solution doesn't wash out so you could make t-shirts or pillows and so much more. It also comes in other colors.  I water the solution down with water 1:1 in a cup for the kids to paint on.

The kids cut out shapes of the moon phases from paper to place onto the sun printed fabric. I cut a sheet into rectangular small banner sizes.  You just paint the solution onto the fabric and place the shapes you like onto the fabric. We did tape the fabric onto a piece of cardboard to make it easier to carry outside. Once the sun hits the painted fabric it starts to turn blue. We counted to 20 then brought them inside.

Place 2 capfuls of the solar was into a tub of water to wash away the chemicals. Then rinse ad hang to dry. A few of my kids wanted to experiment with the  shades of color so they would paint on some solution them paint on some water in order to make some parts faded.

Lastly we cut slits into the tops of the fabric and passed a stick through the slits to create a way to hang the banners on the wall. It's such a beautiful project to celebrate celebrate the moon. 

Tiny Cameras

Relevant joyful learning is what we strive for where children can make their own choices all the  while learning new techniques and furthering old old ones through practice. We practice by cutting, and glueing and drawing and stacking. This week at our summer camp the theme was Teeny Tiny Things. It's a theme that sparks the grand imagination of even the smallest of our artists. It's a way for their small hands to work their magic to create little art projects.

 

I so enjoy offering materials that are well known as an everyday objects. By altering those seemingly mundane materials into art objects kids learn about the possibilities of transformation.

I gave the children match boxes, buttons, beads and tiny pieces of paper for this project. All the kids needed was some paint mixed with glue to turn those boxes into a little cameras.

 We talked about he kinds of things they would like to take pictures of sisters, brothers, moms and dads, their cats, or maybe flowers or a forest. The children used the small pieces of paper to make drawings to be their photographs like little polaroid cameras.

Summer Fruit Garland

A fruit salad is one of favorite snacks for a summertime refreshment, a mixture of fruits cut and mixed together with all those pastel greens, purples, oranges and yellows.  It tastes delicious and the colors are most pleasing. This made me think of making a fruit salad garland for a window display at the Purple Twig studio for summer.  

By making fruit prints then stringing them with some beads we made this festive garland. One of the things I like about this project is that is has a quite a few layers.  First we spent some time printing the fruit in many different colors. The different colors created a new fruit. By using yellow on an orange it had the qualities of a lemon, if printed green, it then reminded us of a lime. 

 You could use so many fruits, peaches,  plums, even bananas or strawberries to give a variance in size on the finished  banner. This is just the fruit we had around at the time this project came to me: apples, oranges and plums. We used tempera paint and found that brushing it on the fruit using a foam brush worked best.

When the prints were dry we cut out the fruits, cutting very closely to the outside line of the fruit to give the shape definition.

After making 2 holes using a hole-punch, we passed a string through the paper fruits sometimes adding beads in between.

They turned out so sunny and warm. I think they are going to make a lovely summer decoration for the studio.

Building Sculptures

These sculptures were made in our Toddler Class  but this is a great project for ages 2-6.  

I usually get my wood scraps from a furniture maker. She has so much extra wood and is happy to donate it to the studio for the kids to explore. I did invest in a chop saw and cut all the wood into even smaller pieces for the kids, but you can also get scraps from lumber stores.
I also offered the children puzzle pieces, buttons, beads and colored rice (which I dye myself. If you would like the recipe please email me at info@purpletwig.com and I will send it to you)

I gave each child 4 or 5 pieces of wood and some glue. I used the regular school glue instead of the washable kind for this project so everything really stuck. The children stacked the wood how they liked, sometimes a child might put a large piece on top of a thin piece and witnessed it become unstable and fall. We talked about how to create a strong structure by putting the thicker pieces on the bottom and smaller on the top. 

Then came the puzzle pieces to add. Then the buttons were next sometimes organizing them by color or shape and sometimes the larger buttons would drip down the sculpture along with the glue.

Then I gave them beads and lastly I offered them the colored rice to sprinkle.

The result are these individual colorful sculptures full of texture.  This would be a wonderful project for a birthday celebration or for a nice afternoon one on one with your child.