Bear's Blanket: A Pattern from Purl Bee

This is Bear's Blanket, a beautiful crochet pattern I just discovered on Purl Bee. Have you found Purl Bee yet? This picture makes me feel like working on my much-neglected crochet project! Here's a link:

http://www.purlbee.com/2012/11/15/whits-knits-bears-rainbow-blanket/

Spin Art in the Salad Spinner

I gave a second life to my cracked salad spinner after taping it up! It works great!

 We used squirt bottles from some hair dye kits for the paint. It was tempera paint, not too thick and not too thin. Try to squirt it in while your salad spinner is turning. A little tape, or wedging the paper in place in the basket will help keep it from whirling out when you take off the top of the spinner.

WOW!

The children loved it and look at the results! Don't you want to try?

Monoprinting in the Sink

 We have a wonderful new art space for after school classes, with four sinks, and we took full advantage of them last week.

Askar and some of the children were experimenting with the consistency of tempera paint in squeeze bottles for a spin art project. They were having an awful lot of fun squeezing the paint into the sink. It looked like a good chance to try monoprinting to me!

 All you have to do is put a piece of paper down on the paint and smooth it out.

 WOW!!!!!!!

 We didn't want to stop. We might use the monoprints for collages papers. I wouldn't try this in a ceramic sink...it might stain.

City Collage for Kindergarten and First Grade

 This is another project where the children had fun digging through collage papers and creating something unique.

 This child didn't feel like making a city. He wanted to make a sailboat. I like what he did with the cover of the construction paper pad.

 Seeing these exuberant crayon marks made me want to run home and make collage, too.

 Wow. Look at this luscious collection of shapes and gorgeous collage papers...plus some butterflies.

 This artist created some very striking shapes on black.

 This child worked with great intensity. He made a bridge, a building with many windows, some dark and some lit up, some towering buildings, a stop light, an observatory, and a rocket shooting to the moon in a star-filled sky. Wow.

 Exuberant marks and a striking collage shape.

 These boys had time to make wonderful masks.

 The child who made this is Polish and her art always has a wonderful Polish folk art flair. These buildings remind me of a szopka theater.

And one last beauty mounted on some yummy found collage paper....

Make a Mobile!!!!!

 Make a mobile using a clothes hanger, fabric, tissue paper, construction paper, beads, and pipe cleaners! Yay!

 Let the children rummage around and use whatever they want.

 When I saw a whole package of pipe cleaners get twisted into this mobile my heart sank. I had brought bags of pipe cleaners all the way from the States to Switzerland. But, how can you say no when you see all this creativity and fun?

 I love the hook shapes.

 This is a lyrical design.

                                              I love these shapes and the twists of colors!

 Glory, glory, glory!

 Gorgeous stripes, like candy sticks!

I love it! How fun!

Making Cardboard Castles with the Little Ones

Castle building! We do it every term. The children who have never done it before get pretty excited about being architects.  They use white glue and masking tape to put things together, and we grown-ups have a glue gun handy for glueing the difficult bits. Staplers would be handy, too!

I bring lots and lots of materials. In fact, my house gets pretty junked up with all the stuff I collect: toilet paper and paper towel rolls, shoe boxes, cereal boxes, corrugated cardboard, egg cartons, and more. I also bring in beads, yarn, tissue paper, and everything else handy. As a matter of fact, I brought in a box of beads to iron into patterns, (just for the beads,) couldn't find it, and then discovered it in this castle! I had to cut the box lid and take out the kit!

Do you see the inverted cones on top of the paper towel rolls? They contain pretty colored beads.

I love to see the children's hands darting in and out, showing me things, making things.

I brought in some little wooden fruit crates to hold materials and they became pieces of castles!

This zebra pattern-covered toilet paper roll is a chandelier inside a castle.

This bat got mixed in. It was part of a Halloween decoration at the school Halloween party recently. The crate on top is full of little pieces of blue construction paper.

This crate is a comfy bed. Some of the children were planning on playing with their castles when they got home.

And another comfy bed, on the second floor.

This tower had a ladder made out of wooden skewers when it was finished.

Egg carton forms make good turret roofs. You can also make good tower roofs by slitting a circle to the middle, and taping it into a cone shape. I couldn't believe that this child managed to cut out a little door using safety scissors! We grown-ups also have sharp scissors and a craft knife for these sorts of tasks.

What do you think these little pieces of gold paper are? I wish I could remember. It was something really funny.

During class someone suddenly cried out, "I lost my tooth!" Her hand flew to her mouth and we rushed over.

"Look, it landed right here in this glue!" We stared at it, amazed...(see it on the left?) Well, I am just as gullible as the average 8 year-old, I guess. It's was just a white bead!