Art and Creativity

Monday, January 30, 2012

"Shrink Art" for Valentine's Day

I love Shrink Art and my children have a long history of making shrink art at home with friends. If you’ve never worked with “shrink art plastic” but you’re in the mood for something new, you’ll find it’s a creative, open-ended craft based on children’s original drawings. It’s also super cheap to make, full of magical properties, and it’s loads of fun for children of all ages. Valentine's Day is coming up and it’s perfect for that or any other special occasion, especially considering the material is such a bargain at 15 cents a project.

Shrink art plastic needs adult supervision, since you need to bake it in a standard kitchen oven for 3 minutes. Classroom teachers often take the whole set of finished projects home and bake them at their convenience over the weekend, returning the finished projects the following week. Once you get into practice you can bake 8 or 10 projects at a time, so this phase should not take you long. During the baking process, the projects transform to less than half their original size and take on a nice, thick density, thus the “shrink” part. Here you see baked and unbaked samples.

Children as young as 3 can have fun with this craft, since it’s an art form based on drawing. Young adults will enjoy it too, like my friends Emily and Maya who came by my house this weekend for a visit. This craft really does span all ages and ability levels, and it’s very motivating for both children and adults to watch the process of transformation.

Shrink-It Sheets (SHRINKIE) comes in a set of 24 opaque sheets for $14.59 with a clear, easy to follow instruction sheet. I prefer the opaque style sheets (they come in “clear” as well - CSHRINK) because colored pencils show best on the opaque version.

You’ll prepare the plastic first by lightly sanding the surface and cutting each full size sheet into quarters (thus making 96 projects out of 24 full sized sheets).

Now the fun part begins. Here’s what you’ll do.

Step 1: Make a line drawing using a fine line permanent marker (SHARPULT). You can draw directly on the plastic or draw on paper first then trace your drawing onto the plastic.

Step 2: Color your drawing with Colorations® Regular Colored Pencils (COLORP).

Step 3: Trim the edges and hole punch (OHP) the top, so you’ll have a place to hang it from.

Step 4: Bake it in the oven for 3 minutes at 300 degrees. Both Steps 3 & 4 are shown in this last photo (before and after baking).

Here I’m putting a Valentines design into my toaster oven where I’ll leave it for 3 minutes until it shrinks. I much prefer using a standard sized oven and baking 8 or 10 projects on a cookie sheet all at once, but a toaster oven will work in a pinch.

Lastly, here’s a page of “practically professional” shrink art designs to inspire you, created by my daughter Lillie who began with shrink art at about age four and continued until she was eight. When Lillie was a little girl, she absolutely loved to draw and she drew all the time, it was her passion. I’m sure you know children like that too. Shrink Art is the perfect craft for the child who loves to draw.

If you really get carried away with this craft like we did, you’ll find other applications like mounting them in these small wooden frames with a poem or some dictations. This makes them even fancier and adds about a dollar per project. These wooden frames are painted with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor so the wood grain shows through.

I hope you’ll add Shrink Art to your repertoire of arts and crafts ideas for both classroom use and for play dates at home. It certainly added a lot of pleasure and creativity to my home as our children were growing up. Oh, and one last thing: Shrink Art “charms” stand the test of time because they don’t break or wear out so your children’s creativity will essentially last forever. Now that’s something to write home about.

Materials You Will Need:
Shrink-It Sheets (SHRINKIE)
Sharpie® Ultra Fine Point Black Markers (SHARPULT)
Colorations® Regular Colored Pencils (COLORP)
One Hole Punch (OHP)
Wooden Standing Frames (WDFRM)
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor (13LW)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

Labels: activity, arts and crafts, Discount School Supply, Shrink Art

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Fine Art of Scribbling

Children’s scribbles were once conceived of simply as practice for “real drawing,” but educators today recognize that scribbling is an important step in child development. Scribbling is the foundation of artistic development and is intimately linked with language acquisition. Young children love to scribble and adults will enjoy it too, if you give them permission to “let loose with a crayon.” So, as I pondered what to address in my first post of 2012, it seemed like a good idea to start at the beginning – with the scribble stage.

Scribbling reflects a child’s physical and mental process. This young girl is scribbling with one of my favorite early learning tools, a Colorations® Smooth and Silky Art Stick (SILKYSTK). Colorations® Silky Sticks are great for toddlers because they’re easy to grasp and make exceptionally smooth, bright marks on paper. When toddlers first pick up a crayon and make a mark, they experience a pleasurable moment in which they use a tool and produce a result. They don’t realize they are taking the first step of a long journey, a journey that will culminate around the age of 8 with a mastery of line that is remarkably controlled. They only know that in this powerful moment, something they did with their body created a visible result and that feels very exciting.

This scribble drawing is from Mona Raoufpour’s 4 year old classroom at Pressman Academy in Los Angeles. Mona artfully links children’s early drawings to language and literacy. Early in the school year, many of her students are immersed in the scribble stage or just moving into more representational drawings. Mona takes meticulous dictations and mounts them directly onto children’s scribble drawings as shown here. Without this detailed dictation, who would ever know that Noah, this young artist, has a story in his mind about a “big monster who ate broccoli then fell down and broke his face and arm and leg.”

Mona has her 4 year olds work on long term book making projects that include scribble drawings with dictations. Children are indeed natural storytellers, and scribbling is how their visual story telling begins.

No study of scribbling would be complete without mention of Rhoda Kellogg. Kellogg was a pioneer in the study of analyzing children’s art. Over the course of 20 years, Rhoda Kellogg collected and analyzed over 1 million children’s drawings from children ages 2-8. In 1967, she published an archive of 8000 drawings of children ages 24-40 months, focusing on scribbling and the early “ages and stages” of child development. Kellogg concluded that children need plenty of time for free drawing and scribbling to develop the symbols that will later become the basis for all writing and drawing. Before Kellogg, scribbles were considered nonsense. Children were discouraged or even forbidden from scribbling, and encouraged to copy adult models (sounds ghastly and misguided, but this shows how far we’ve come in understanding child development.).

Stages of Scribble
Here's something creative to do with scribble drawings - check out the "Stages of Scribbles" created by children at the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach, CA. Assistant Director, Alayna Cosores, asked teachers to contribute examples of scribbles and compiled them into an Ages & Stages frame that hangs in their Early Childhood Office. Not only is it colorful and fun to look at, "Stages of Scribble" reminds parents that scribbling is an important process to encourage at home. Why not try something like this in your own center, it costs so little to put together and will provide years of stimulating conversation.

Last but not least, scribbling is not just for kids…it can also be liberating for adults! Scribbling is a physical process that emphasizes freedom of movement. It can help us relax and get into the sensory mode of our bodies as well as the creative, right hemisphere of our brain. With this in mind, I often begin Teacher Trainings with some form of a scribble warm-up. My favorite is a paired up exercise called a “Scribble Chase.” Click here for the printable lesson plan from my book Smart Art Ideas 2 (MOREART). While the original lesson plan used Colorations® Liquid Watercolor for the top layer, I’ve come to enjoy it even more using Colorations® No-Drip Foam Paint. (BFPSET).

Scribbling is it’s a great way to energize a room at the beginning of a workshop, and we got beautiful results from the Scribble Chase warm-ups shown here. Both were created by teachers at this week’s Messy Art Workshop, hosted by Beach Cities AEYC at Long Beach City College. I suggest you try “grown-up” scribbling sometime soon. Happy New Year!

Materials Used:
Colorations® Smooth and Silky Art Sticks (SILKYSTK, set of 24, or SILKYPAK, set of 72)
Colorations® Regular Crayons (CRS16)
Colorations® No-Drip Foam Paint (BFPSET, set of 7)
White Sulfite Paper (A80SU)
Smart Art Ideas 2 (MOREART)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

Labels: activity, arts and crafts, artwork, BioColor®, Colorations®, liquid watercolor, open-ended, Smart Art Ideas

Monday, December 12, 2011

“The Painting Experience” by Stuart Cubley

This week I am fulfilling the lifelong dream of taking a painting class at Esalen Institute. I am “out of my mind” excited about being here, and each day is a gift. Here’s my first painting, which I just finished yesterday. This is process oriented art, which I find is just as “developmentally appropriate” for me as it is for children.

To be painting for five days straight in an incredible environment overlooking the ocean, this is the stuff that dreams are made of.

I am painting with 25 other adults who came here from all over the country. None of us knew each other three days ago, but we all came in search of relaxation and restoration. We come from a multitude of professions but we’re all searching for something authentic and meaningful, and we’re finding it here as we paint away in this large white canvas “yurt” by the sea. Esalen has five different workshops going on this week and most people here are steeped in gratitude for this opportunity.

I love immersing myself in creativity with a group of adults. You can feel the sense of community as we paint together, share materials, and observe our creative process emerge. Here are a couple of my new “best friends” – one a therapist from Montana and the other a widow from Sebastopol who is reinventing her life. Isn’t creative companionship grand? And isn’t it amazing how the creative process can magically break down the barriers between us?

Most people taking The Painting Experience are not artists, and many have never painted before. Stuart Cubley created The Painting Experience to help people find pleasure and meaning in process oriented painting. His book Life, Paint and Passion is wonderful, but there’s nothing like taking one of his hands-on workshops. Some are just a weekend long, and others are a week or ten days. The Painting Experience embodies open ended for adult “non-artists” in the same way we encourage open ended art in early childhood education. I encourage you to try it for professional development, or as a vacation treat that will make your spirit soar. Imagine walking along this pathway to your painting class every morning. That’s something to dream about for 2012.

REFERENCES

Find workshops and classes with Stewart Cubley at The Painting Experience (www.processarts.com).

Check the schedule at Esalen (www.esalen.org) for more workshops!

Read Life, Paint and Passion by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley and learn all about creative process!

Labels: art, Esalen Institute, workshop

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Weaving with Young Children

Weaving is a traditional art activity that most children enjoy. It’s probably easier than you imagine to introduce a loom into your classroom. Weaving on a “classroom loom” brings children together in a collaborative learning activity and provides a unique experience that ignites curiosity and imagination. Boys and girls will often spend long periods of time weaving together at a classroom loom, experimenting with a variety of yarns, collage strips and other raw materials. Weaving is fun, it’s challenging, and it enjoys a long, historic tradition across world cultures.

I was so moved by this weaving I found while visiting Creative Care for Children, a family childcare owned by Danielle Monroy in Santa Barbara, CA. It seemed to transform an already lovely room into an artful studio space. The children at Creative Care created so many weavings on this one classroom loom that Danielle said she often ran out of wall space to display them!

I loved the unique shape of this one with its irregular sides. It felt like “real art” and reminded me of the many folk art weavings I had admired over the years at art festivals and craft fairs.

I was truly inspired, and ended up ordering the same loom so I could try it out myself. (Classroom Loom - STLOOM). Thus began my journey into weaving. I took photos of the loom assembly to show you here, so I could share my story and perhaps invite you to do the same. The loom is just $29.99 and about the best deal around for a holiday gift. I assembled the loom in about 15 minutes, and then took another 15 minutes to thread it (called “warping the loom”). All materials were included and the instructions were visual and easy to follow (whew).

Along with the loom, I ordered Textured Crafts Yarns (TEXYARN) to which I added leftover yarns from another project, Jumbo Roving Yarn (ROVING). You may have yarn scraps of some type around, and if not you can work with a combination of donated and purchased yarns. I was very happy with the Textured Crafts Yarn, they are fluffy, colorful and fun to work with. If you have a fabric scrap bin, tear strips of fabric and weave with those as well, or be creative with old t-shirts.

Here’s how the Classroom Loom looked after I had assembled it, warped it, and started weaving. The loom comes with a wooden threader, so I tried weaving just with my fingers then with the threader. Both were easy.

Here’s a close-up where you can see the combination of yarns, fabric strips, and even a few bird feathers (we own a large macaw so that part was easy). Half the fun of weaving is figuring out what to weave with. It’s more interesting if you incorporate the odd feather, strip of newspaper, pipe cleaner, or plant material from your yard.

Instead of finishing my weaving, I donated it to a 4-year-old classroom at Pressman Academy where I asked mentor teacher Francine Farkas to incorporate it into her classroom. Her 4 year olds finished the weaving and were so enchanted with it, Francine told me weaving was now her favorite new art form.

Later that same month, I visited Little Owl Preschool in Long Beach and noticed children working on smaller individual looms (Beginner's Wooden Looms - RLOOM). These individual looms were a lovely counterpoint to the Classroom Loom that I had fallen in love with.

I can’t say enough about the learning that takes place when children approach a weaving project. Weaving teaches children many developmental skills while offering a creative and challenging learning experience. As they weave, children learn patterning, critical thinking skills, problem solving, and they learn to create 3-D art, or think in three dimensions. By weaving in and out in a pattern, children learn to coordinate their eyes, hands and minds; and they also cross the midline, which reinforces brain development between the right and left hemispheres.

Last but not least, weaving appeals to our innate human desire to experience patterns and rhythm. Humans are pattern-seeking animals. Weaving helps us slow down and enjoy the rhythm and pattern of repetitive motion as we weave in and out, over and under, around and through a series of warp threads. Weaving can even reduce stress and provides a positive community activity where children work together.

Thank you for taking the time to check in, I so appreciate your interest in sharing art ideas. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and I look forward to reading your comments!

Materials Used:
The Classroom Loom (STLOOM)

Textured Craft Yarn (TEXYARN)

Other Materials Shown:
Beginner's Wooden Looms (RLOOM)
Jumbo Roving Yarn (ROVING)

Pipe Cleaner Classroom Pack (PCPACK)

Labels: arts and crafts, Discount School Supply, loom, weaving

Thursday, September 08, 2011

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

I just got back from a much needed summer vacation and was reminded that I need more NATURE in my life! Since I’ve attended numerous “Outdoor Classroom” workshops, and learned about the negative effects of “nature deficit” on today’s children, it was good to be reminded that I too find nature incredibly inspiring. On my vacation, I renewed my love affair with the sensory world of the forest. I fell in love with colored rocks, birch trees and waterfalls. It was all so simple, yet profoundly restorative.

As an educator, I was inspired by what I might bring back from my nature vacation to include in the classroom. There were so many things to choose from! Moreover, having this “take home task” on my mind helped me engage all the more in my natural surroundings.

Trees were just beginning to show off their Fall colors, and the white birch trees were especially lovely.

Imagine how excited I was to find this abandoned bird’s nest, all intact and perfectly formed! The woven strips of birch bark in the nest gave me an idea, and I picked up fallen strips of bark to take home and use as collage.

When I got home I tore strips of white bark and used Tacky Glue to mount it onto wooden picture frames, adding colored rocks as accents. How fun! I was amazed to find that birch bark tears along a seam just like fabric does, so you don’t need scissors to cut it. Such are the discoveries that excite me, and I bet you as well.

We also visited several lakes and found an abundance of beautiful colored rocks around the larger lakes.

Many local artisans made creative use of these naturally colored rocks that were a signature of the local geology. Here’s a large rock and driftwood mirror that I couldn’t resist purchasing. I hoped it would remind me to make nature a regular part of my life once I returned home to the city.

Later, I tried duplicating this idea of rocks as collage material on top of wooden picture frames. The rocks I brought were a little too large so I used them as accents and made a mental note to check out the Home Depot garden department for smaller pebbles. Or better yet, find a local hike where I could collect smaller rocks on my own home turf.

I was eager to make “Leaf Glitter” for a second collage project and had collected just a few Sugar Maple Leaves with tinges of red and yellow. Once they had dried, I made Leaf Glitter by simply crunching up the dried leaves, which were then glued onto the picture frame. When I do this in a classroom, I’ll ask children to sort the dried leaves by colors first, then crunch them into separate bowls so they’ll have yellow, red, brown and orange Leaf Glitter to work with.

Together these two experiments in nature collage make a nice pair, don’t you think? I realized I could extend the activity by first “staining” the wooden base frames with wet tea bags or another natural colorant before gluing items on top.

How fortunate I feel to have been able to replenish myself before the beginning of a busy school year. I hope you were also able to restore yourself, and will continue to do so on your weekend time. It’s so important.

Maybe we will run into each other at an Education Conference soon or at NAEYC where I’m presenting “Art as a Language with Children.” Please attend if you can! Most importantly, I want to thank you for reading my Blog and being a part of the Art and Creativity community. I hope you have a wonderful new school year full of passion and promise. To life!

Materials Used Here:
Colorations® Tacky Glue, set of 12 - (TCGJAR)

Colorations® Wooden Stand Up Frames - (WDFRM)

Labels: arts and crafts, Colorations®, Discount School Supply, NAEYC, nature, summer project

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

BioColor® Monoprints on Fabric, Paper, and Canvas

Last week I attended the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach to see how fabric artist Jane LaFazio uses BioColor® in her Fabric Painting Workshop. I had so much fun and came away with lots of ideas and inspiration. I adapted what I learned from Jane’s adult fabric painting class and simplified it for children’s art making. But before we get to that, let’s look at some of Jane’s inspired students as they use BioColor® and BioColor® Fabric Medium to monoprint on plain white fabric. There was such a creative buzz in the room when I arrived with my camera to take it all in!

To make these fabric designs permanent, students added BioColor® Fabric Medium to their paints as part of their set-up. I was impressed that Jane had marked the fabric medium with a big, bold FM so it would not get confused with the white BioColor®, smart lady! (why hadn’t I thought of that?)

These painted fabric designs were created using 4 basic steps. (1) Apply a thin layer of BioColor® onto a printing plate using a foam roller (2) Drop stencils, drag scrapers and sprinkle rubber bands on top to create shapes & textures (3) Lay fabric on top, then finally…… (3) Rub the fabric with your hands (rubbing long and hard) to transfer the paint, shapes and textures onto the fabric. Jane is quite a whirlwind of inspiration and leads art making safaris to Italy and all sorts of exciting places, so I hope you will look her up sometime, or find other creative “gurus” in your own community to help keep your creative juices flowing.

I came home so excited from the International Quilt Festival that I got out my BioColor® paints and played around to simplify Jane’s ideas for the early childhood classroom. I turned a Colorations® Art Trays upside down and it worked just fine as a printing plate (who knew?).

I especially loved the idea of using rubber bands to create shapes and textures. The results were colorful, creative and easy.