Fairytale Cities

Friends help friends hold the stencils.

One of the children donated Taschen's Grimm's Fairytales to the School in celebration of her "growing day". The book is beautiful, both inside and out, bound in purple cloth with sewn-in ribbon bookmarks.  The illustrations are stunning. Using the one on the back cover of the book as inspiration, the children used stencils and permanent markers to sketch out buildings and then used watercolors to bring them to life.

The watercolor layer.

Once the watercolor was dry, the children used gold (pictured below) and silver acrylic paint to fill in the backgrounds. This was a change in plan. I was actually going to ask the children to cut out the painted buildings to later collage them against painted sky backgrounds. The watercolors were so lovely, I talked to the artists about my idea and they voted on using the gold and silver acrylics instead. Gold and silver metallic paint, is after all, almost as good as glitter.

Backgrounds using gold and silver acrylics.

 The collected works.

One of Those Days

Have you ever had one of those days when nothing seems to be going right? I was going to use today's project center session to retry a map project. I have a batch of old maps that I like to recycle for art projects. The lines and shapes on the maps give a new spin on color placement when painting or using oil pastels. I didn't have buy-in on this project last week -- the lines and shapes of the maps did not appeal. I thought I would try a different approach today using egg shells.

We had a large collection of egg shells sitting in the fridge, but it seems between today and last week, they were thrown away by an industrious adult with the goal of cleaning out the fridge -sigh-. I sent out an email asking for more eggshells and went outside to cut stalks from our different ornamental grasses. The children sketched these using permanent markers and then painted the drawings using watercolors.

A good use of our time, certainly, but I am really, really looking forward to using the eggshells on maps. Stay tuned!

Self-Portrait Backgrounds

Working in the round. Circles are traced using what we had on hand...two different sized bowls and a mostly used roll of tape. These circles were traced in pencil and then designs added in black permanent marker.

Later, watercolor was added.

This is the first phase of the background. Interestingly, the centers of these radiating circles will eventually be hidden by the heads of the self-portraits. Maybe that is sad, but mostly that is so cool...it is a hidden feature nestled inside their brains.

A Worksheet We Can Live With

After visiting AVAM to search out circles and spirals, the children used w-o-r-k-s-h-e-e-t-s to document a favorite sight from the museum. They used permanent markers and then watercolor. Since we were not able to photograph in the exhibits, this gives the children that important Look Twice needed for reflection.

Found Objects

Parent involvement means that you have that many more eyes and ears open for opportunities. We have exponential awareness of activities and items. We are on the same page, moving in the same direction. So exciting when a parent brought in a bone they found on a hike. We don't know what kind of bone it is by the way. It seems to be a tibia. I vote for bear, but most of the votes have come in as dinosaur.

Documentation is the natural next step.