A Penguin Project for Mom and Kids

Oh I am so happy how these turned out!! The boys and I enjoyed making these penguins using simple art materials.  It took us around an hour to finish everything (with a stubborn preschooler) and we were totally blown by the result!  This art project was from Deep Space Sparkle, one of my favourite artsy website and my go to for painting projects. 

Cork Stamping Art: Trees in Autumn

Vito is 34 months old.

My youngest is not really the artistic type. But even though he’s not into painting crafty things, I make sure that these art materials are always available just in case they feel like doing some artistic pursuits. So imagine my delight when he decided to join me with this autumn trees painting activity.

Painting the Moon

Vito is 28 months old.

We have an amazing full moon during Holy Week so I encouraged the boys to the paint the moon.  I can’t believe that it turned out so beautiful and realistic!  The craters are naturally formed and the color combination of paints were fantastic.  The best part about this is that it’s so simple to make!

Best Arts & Crafts for Kids and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Years ago, Mavi would do a lot of artist study.  One of my favorites is our Van Gogh project, The Sunflower.  It was one of those rare moment wherein both Mavi and I were in depth with our subject and were absorbed by the beauty of painting.  But it was just more than artwork. We studied the life of Van Gogh, and how his life reflected in his work.  (click the image below for more details)

Now thinking about it, I picked the best art projects and crafts in our link up this week.  Here are the featured post:

Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci (Making Portraits)

I am rebooting our Artist Study and we’re starting with portraits.  Now this project was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. See our previous activities with Leonardo da Vinci here.

To know more about this genius artist and for inspiration, we first examine his life. We used this amazing book from the library, Levelled Biographies: Leonardo da Vinci[aff. link].  We enjoyed the book, and Mavi loved learning about Leonardo, not just as an artist but as a scientist as well. The book is appropriate for kids as it has a simple way of telling a biography and has lots of pictures in it.

Aside from learning about Leonardo, we also talked about portraits. I showed Mavi random samples in the web.  Then I took some photos of him outdoor to demonstrate what’s the difference between a portrait and an ordinary picture.  (You can also do this with your kids!) After which, we started making our portraits.  We used the DSS lesson for  the tutorial and some inspirations.

To create portraits, we used two mediums:  oil pastel and tempera paint.  Mavi wanted to use oil pastels (I never liked them!) as this is what they mostly use in school. So I guess he’s quite confident with it.

As you can see I also tried creating my portrait using the pastel but the black which I used for the outline started to mess with my peach coloured face! I just have to stop because my portrait is starting to look messy.

Now this is Mavi’s portrait made from oil pastel. He’s so happy with his work :D 

Second try, we used tempera paints.  I like using paints! Easier to handle and less messy. 

And this is our finished product :) 

Tempera paints, oil pastels and other art materials can be purchased through Amazon, Target or any craft store available.

Mavi pointed out he doesn’t know how to make a nose and a mouth … so we’ll he'll be practising more.

Now this is an activity that you can easily do with your kids.  You can use any medium available, pencil, crayons or watercolour.  Discuss what is a portrait and what do they imagine to be in that portrait.  You can also talk about the back of your portrait, whether they wanted to be indoor or in the park, under the sun, the beach etc.

Like my post? More activities here!

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St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Toddlers

I am not really a fan of seasonal themed activities. Why? For a busy Mom like me, it is difficult to prepare and assemble materials.  The fact that we live far away from the city, our resources are quite limited. It is hard to find materials that fits well in a specific theme.

But… we all have to agree that it is fun to do with your little kids.  It’s cute and fun! And the kids will have that festive feeling of the celebration.  That’s why, because this month we are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day here in Ireland, I am trying out these seasonal themed activities with Vito!  Yes, I’m testing the water and see if I can pull off a seasonal themed activity and let’s see where this will lead me.  We’re not doing a bunch right, we’re only trying those that are easy to prepare and feasible for us.

12 Practical Life Christmas Activities: On the 5th day…

Painting a Monet-inspired Christmas tree.

Remember how I raved about the books of James Mayhew (the Katie series)? We'll one of our favourite books is the Katie Meets the Impressionist [aff. link]. We talked about the style of Monet and why he is called an “impressionist” artist.

 

And since its Christmas, we use the Christmas tree as an inspiration.

Below, we work together all the time. His and hers.

We dabbed and smeared our drawing paper with green for the tree. He used a pencil to draw a triangle outline as guide which is not visible in the picture.  Then we added details for the balls, lights, stars and presents under the tree.

 

Here’s my tree.

 

Mavi’s tree.

Now here’s a macro look of our tree…

                        

Colorwheel Flowers

I came across this project at Deep Sparkle and decided to try this with Mavi.  I love how simple the project is and it uses basic colour combinations.  Since the project involves the colorwheel, Mavi and I revisited our basic art lessons about colours a few years ago. We talked about the primary and the secondary colours and how the are organised in a wheel type figure so we can easily remember the colour combinations.

                      

Read about colour theory I and colour theory II.

Mavi worked on the red, orange, green and yellow combinations, while I painted a blue-violet flower combination.  And here’s how they looked like after we added  black and white paint details.

The flowers turned out really good and the colours were vibrant! You can see these hanging in Mavi’s room as of the moment.

For the details of the projects, click this link from Deep Sparkle.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool

Color Gradient Painting

We try to have an art class every Friday as what I indicated in our October Calendar.    I bought new sets of paint last week, they’re 80% organic, non-toxic, water washable and doesn’t have the strong smell like that of Crayola.  So my son had a renew interest in painting and he’s been doing it randomly not just during Friday.

This idea was from a picture I saw in my Facebook newsfeed and I wanted to try it with Mavi, teaching him the colour progression… from light to dark or the other way around.

 

He picked the primary colours and the green. We added 3 drops of white paint each time we lighten the colours.  Son totally enjoyed this activity!  He especially loves the part wherein we changes the shade of the colour and he gets excited to see the effect. 

 

So here’s Mavi’s work and mine. I didn’t get to finish my work as I ended up assisting him in his colour mixtures.

 

As an extra work, he ended up mixing the primary colours…. to produce secondary colours so he can paint a rainbow. A few years ago we had colour mixing activities, you can pay it a visit as it became really popular and was featured in other blogs as well.

 

  

I’m so happy of his renewed interest! And with the new paints, I can allow him to do lots of art works without worrying of the strong paint smell :D

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Still Life 101 ~ Apples

We haven’t done any painting activities for quite a while now.  So I was inspired when I came across this blog of an art teacher.   This site is full of wonderful art projects for little ones and are so easy to emulate. And I said to myself that we have to try her works!

We started with Still Life.  As inspired by one of her art projects for kindergartens, I salvaged some of the apples from the fridge and use it as our subject. Please excuse some of the stains in the mat and plate, prior to this, my son has been playing with them LOL.  So by the time I took the photo, one apple has a bite mark, the paper plate has Nutella on the side and the mat has some orange watercolor stains.

To start with, I created the outlines using a drafting compass.  Using a plastic spoon, we swirled (circular motion) the red tempera paint on each smaller circles.  Then we let it dry for about 3-4 hrs.

               

When it was ready, I let him trace the outline of the apples and plate using a black permanent pen.  Then he added details for the apples as well.

We completed the work by applying green watercolors on the background and yellow on the plate. 

 

And here’s the finish product. Tada! He loved his work so much that he placed this in our hallway (his gallery LOL).  I am amazed on how he can finally follow instructions with regards to painting and enjoy the activity as well.  He told me we should paint the muffins next :)

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
Preschool Corner
TGIF Linky Party
Hip Homeschool Hop
Teach Beside Me

Planets and the Solar System

Saw this book from the library and I thought my son would like it.

 

And he did!  The book got lots of interesting images of the planets and is loaded of information which are very easy for an almost 4 yr old to understand.  I also love that each planet were discussed and has trivia on each one.

                        

Later we made planets using paints.   As we paint each planet, we first refer to the book, discuss the color and try mixing the paints so we can come up with the exact color as presented in the book. And this is how they look like as we wait for them to dry up.

Once they’re cooked, I cut them up so we can glue them on a black cardstock.  They look absolutely perfect!

My son started cutting the orange paper for his Sun.

Then we glue them on the cardstock.  We talk about the order  of the planets in the solar system as we glue them.  Here it seen that he is adding glitters on our space. 

 

Then we waited again for them to dry so we can start playing with it using our Safari Space Toob.

Linking this to: 

The Colorful World of Fruits

This was inspired by this post from How We Montessori.

The printed materials were downloaded from At Home with Montessori.

 

This was one activity my son totally loved! What’s not in the picture was when we ate the other half of each fruit LOL.

Linking to: