ART for 1170

Chihuly Last winter I traveled to Grand Rapids to the Meijer Gardens and Museum. Wow amazing Chihuly glass, not to mention a great time of year to visit the almost empty gardens and museum.  I decided to take coffee filters, washable markers, brushes and water to my Young Fives program.  I love their enthusiasm as the colors mixed.  I squashed them into this rubber ringed sheet that I picked up at Arts and Scraps and sprayed the daylights out of them with spray starch. They look crowded in the photo (they were.)  My plan was to mount them on card stock but the school year ran down fast, but I will definitely do this lesson again.

I'm not sure if it's the LARGE square eyes or the HUGE smile but this artwork created at the ECC just makes me laugh when I look at it.  I really hope their parents keep it or better yet, frame it!

Remember these?  I posted pics of the flowers glazed but not fired. Love. Them. If you're a NSE Mom yours are drying and haven't been glazed yet. Young Fives have them wrapped ready to deliver.  I usually enlist the help of wonderful Parents or 4th or 5th graders to help. I couldn't have done it without them this year! 

I saw an artist on Etsy.com use lace on clay and just loved the idea.  I have several flower cookie cutters and smaller ones too.  The students take a slab of clay and use those great PVC pipes to roll them out. After they use the cookie cutter, they place lace over the shape and roll again.  We did this last week and today we glazed our flowers. I will post the finish flowers next week. These are So sooo beautiful!

I found this great kraft paper a year ago and I just love the way craypas look on it.  For my young kinders we talked about stamping our wooden shapes by holding them with our fingers and NOT schwishzling them, (made up word for sweeping the black paint all over the paper) instead I tell them to HOP like a bunny with the wooden shapes.  The next week we  have the big discussion on Craypas and how to keep them on the table. I tell them they can use as many as they want but one at a time, placing each one back in its place. If you've ever had to clean up a squished Craypas you know what I'm talking about.

BEARS! This lesson takes a ton of prep work! Be warned... Although I think I have 8 different kindergarten classes so maybe it's just the numbers.  Anyway the idea is to teach how to turn a square into a circle so you pre cut the large brown square, all the ears, etc... The students add their own touch with crayons. I love how some students took their left over white scraps and turned them into teeth!