Arts Collective After School

Once a month the school yard at Mt Washington Elementary turns into an arts collective. Timmy Ringsmuth has created an incredible after school program in this tucked away neighborhood where children get to a chance to experience screen printing and working with circuit blocks, making books and more. This month I was honored to be asked to create a project for 100 children for this innovative after school program. 

I love the challenge of coming up with a new project for this many children of a variety of ages. I also love the chance to take a project out of the studio to see so many kids really attack the materials with such enthusiasm and concentration. I needed to bring a project that needed little direction from me to create, a project that used techniques they already knew and had command of. That way they were sure to be successful in illustrating their ideas with the materials given. I offered the kids wooden pieces and magazine images to build a conceptual city. Most of the images I brought were of cities, medieval and modern, natural images from lily ponds to forests to animals. Oh and some underwater images as well. 

Since this age already knows how to cut and glue and just needed a little guidance with the sanding of the wood to make it smooth, they could be left to their own devices and discuss amongst themselves what they were building. This kind of independence to create is so importance for problem solving and creative thinking. 

Both the variety of shapes of wood, as well as the variety of the images, created an environment where  kids could explore their own ideas of building and layering concepts onto an otherwise inert material. They built tall cities, short small cities, urban cities, doughnut cities, seaside cities, desert cities, forest cities, castle cities and so much more.  

Valentine Garland

Sensory play and fine motor skills were the main themes for this toddler Valentine garland. I like creating projects for kids that are ongoing, meaning that we may create a painting or in this case marbleized paper one week, then make something from that painting. 

We created marbleized paper using the shaving cream method, a perfect sensory project for our toddler class.  I gave each student a tray of shaving cream, a cup of watercolor paint, a pipette and a chop stick to stir the paint into the shaving cream.

They added a few colors of paint using the pipette. The pipette isn't all that easy to use. It can take a few turns before they begin to understand the cause and effect actions of squeezing the bulb to get the ink into the tube and squeezing the tube to get the ink out of the tube.
They then use the chopstick to swirl and mix the colors together.

As the children drip and swirl, the parents are ready with paper to swoop in and take a print off the tray. The children and parents gently pat the paper onto the tray lift and set aside to dry before we wipe off the dried shaving cream.

The following week the paper was ready for cutting into hearts, which the parents did while the kids were joining some warm up drawing and hole punching, which some of the kids tried and succeeded in accomplishing.

Then the sewing began, having the kids choose their own color of yarn and a plastic needle. They moved the needle and yarn in and out of the holes in the hearts to create the garland.

Happy Valentines Day!!

Message Acorns

It's time to make Valentines!!! I absolutely adore the idea of creating a small token of love and friendship to give to people, one that has no other function except to say "I think you are pretty neat and let's go walking together through life even if it's for a little bit".

It's not easy to come up with an original Valentine project. Hearts dominate and don't get me wrong, I love a heart, but I have just never known what to do with those paper doily heart shapes. My daughter and I decided to go with a natural theme this year. Combined with the utter cuteness of these little "Message Acorns" we could not stop cooing while making them.

 

We decided to do our own needle felting but you could always buy little puff balls.  It like the rustiness of real wool combined with the natural acorn cap. If you can find those real wool pom pom balls you are in luck.  I then scoured the streets of Los Angeles looking for an oak tree with acorns. I found two on the same street and loaded up my pockets. I wished I would have brought a bag but I just didn't think that far ahead. 

We started with the felting little acorn nubs to fit each cap, thus Ada made different sizes. They really didn't take that long, about 5 minutes each. She got better at it the more she made.

She discovered that after needle felting for a few minutes if she wet her hands and rubbed the wool into a ball things went faster. I am so proud when I see my children adopt those problem solving skills that are needed while creating something. They are sometimes reluctant to making things, having done it with me since they were about 18 months. The novelty has worn off, but they have learned quite about about experimenting and problem solving in all those years of making. 

We then paired acorn caps to the felted pom poms the best we could.

A touch of hot glue inside the acorn cap did the trick.

Then came the messages. We discussed the words to express love, we even looked up synonyms for friendship but none of the words appealed to Ada more than the more straight forward expressions.

Love

Friendship

Valentine

and 

Best friend 

for those special few.

We used red bakers twine for the hanging loops. Regular yarn would have been a struggle to get through the delicate small holes that I created using a safety pin, so bakers twine was perfect. We then hot glued the end of the strings to the top of the acorns to finish.

Happy Valentine Making!!!

Paper Maché Animals

I saw these adorable paper mache animals on the Poppet Creative instagram feed and I fell in love with the little creations. When I showed the image to our kids in our Winter Camp they were all very excited to try and make one, so we came up with what we might need to make them.

I am not sure if it's close to the Poppet Creative process but here is what we came up with.

First the kids decided what animal they would like to make.  We had two wolves, two reindeer, two rabbits, a cat, an arctic fox

We started with tp rolls, newspaper, chopsticks, for legs and cardboard for ears and antlers. We taped on the legs with tape and left newspaper sticking out of the top for the head. We were then ready for the paper mache. 

 Oh paper mache. People have such mixed feelings about this sensory activity. I have actually had children cry as the goo begins to stick and dry to skin, itching and crying to get it off. I guess paper mache is not for every kid. This week though all of the children were very confident with their sensory capabilities. They loved it, sometimes adding on a lot more than needed. We had to actually wait 2 days before we could paint because some of the creatures were so wet.  We use a mixture of flour and water with white glue mixed in. to make our paste. We find that the white glue adds a hardness of the project.

We did one layer of paper mache before adding the cardboard antlers and ears. The great thing about having a cardboard or paper structure underneath is that you only have to do one layer unlike a balloon that needs a few layers to give it strength.

Then came the painting, bringing the animals to lie, giving them personalities. After painting they added, scarfs, earmuffs, painted striped leggings. 

This child decided to add sticks for the antlers of her reindeer. 

The personalities in these little faces are just so delightful. 

In order to make the animals stand, I drilled holes in the rounds of wood to place the animals legs. Sometimes I had to hot glue the legs into the holes in the wood. 

We also decided to make little winter train cars for the animals from milk cartons. But that can be a post for another day.

Happy New Year

We celebrated the new year with a lovely parade through the neighborhood. 

Happy New Years to everyone!!

May 2016 be filled with lots of art making!!