Gelatin Giggles for Summer Fun!

Outdoor art is great for summer when we can enjoy time outside in the light and sunshine. If you love COLOR and gem-like quality of the Gelatin Giggles pictured here, you will want to add this simple sensory activity to your summer plan. Because we are making memories here with our summer, right? And there’s nothing much more memorable than colored gelatin slipping through your fingers on a perfect summer day. 

These photos are from Sari Abram’s 3-year-old classroom at Pressman Academy in LA where I recently a led a 30 minute Gelatin Giggles activity on a corner of the playground. I took in eight blocks of gelatin, plastic eyedroppers, five bottles of Colorations® Liquid Watercolor, and an art tray with a 1” lip to contain the mess. I volunteered for this because I’m developing a new workshop called “Messy Art with 2’s and 3’s.” I had already tried Gelatin Giggles with school-age children, but I wanted to see how very young children would respond. I learned that the best way to introduce Gelatin Giggles to a group of toddlers was to have them take turns two at a time, while I managed some semblance of control over the paint. As a firm believer in messy art, I also recognize there’s ultimately an “art” to controlling the mess while allowing children the experience of freedom with the materials.

Things were pretty clean and tidy as the first two children began playing with the eyedroppers on the white art tray. I instructed them to fill their eyedropper with the color of their choice, then stick the eyedropper into the gelatin chunk and squirt the paint inside. They learned that if they didn’t stick their eyedropper in very far, some of the color would splash back out on them, surprise!

They also learned that their eyedropper would sometimes suck up the gelatin and create a colored gelatin snake, surprise!

Before they finished their turn at the sensory table, I offered the opportunity to select a second color and inject that into the gelatin. Then they could watch the colors blend and pick up a chunk of gelatin in their hands and hold it up to the sunlight. We didn’t clean up between children, so the colors and gelatin chunks accumulated on the tray as the activity progressed.

To create Gelatin Giggles, purchase unflavored gelatin (Knox makes one and others are generally sold next to the flavored gelatins at the grocery store). Use less water than called for to make your "giggles" a bit more solid than usual. Here’s the recipe:

Knox Gelatin Mold: The ratio is 3/4 cup water to 1 packet of Knox. Take the number of cups of water your container holds and DIVIDE by .75 This is how many packets of Knox you need. In a saucepan, heat the water over low heat, add the packets of gelatin. After it dissolves pour it into your container. Let set over night. **BE SURE TO USE OIL OR SPRAY YOUR CONTAINER WITH PAM FIRST! Wait for a sunny day and unmold your gelatin onto art trays or a sand and water table.

Did I talk enough about the exciting presence of light and color? Check out how this glob of green sparkles in the sun! Does it make you think of stained glass windows or a sparkling crystal? If you own a diamond ring or anything cut from crystal, bring that to class and show children how these minerals are faceted, which means they have flat planes that refract color and light. Amazingly, clear gelatin also breaks along facets in similar fashion, which is why Gelatin Giggles look like gemstones in the light.

There's nothing like group art experiences to bring children together and create a sense of collaboration in the summer. Gelatin Giggles is a perfect way to introduce sensory art while the weather is warm enough for outdoor play and the sun can provide a brilliant light source to enhance experiments with light and color.

If you like this art idea, you’ll probably also enjoy “Ice Tunnels” and “Sand Tray Gemstones”, two of 18 Colorations® Liquid Watercolor Activities in my book Smart Art Ideas 2. Thanks for checking in, and I look forward to reading your comments. If you would like to have your own art ideas included in a future post please send me an email at areyner@discountschoolsupply.com. Together we can continue to build a strong art and creativity community.

Materials Used:
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor
SuperSafe Plastic Droppers (12SSD)
Brawny Large Art Tray (RECTRAY)
Smart Art Ideas 2 (MOREART)

From grocery store: Knox or other brand clear gelatin

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

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

I Love, Love, Love COLOR!

It’s officially Spring so let’s celebrate COLOR! 

I think color is the most fun part of art.  Do you adore brilliant colors, too? 

How about these huge coffee filters painted with Colorations®Liquid Watercolor™? Aren’t the colors inviting? 

There’s nothing like Liquid Watercolor™ to bring colors to life.     

The pigments are amazingly intense, and they are so easy to drip, spray or dab on with a “bingo bottle.”  Plus they are washable, affordable, and just about the most versatile paint on the planet.

Here’s a photo of a recent conference where we painted Texas-sized coffee filters with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ and sprinkled them with salt to create Salt Crystal Coffee Filters. What’s not to LOVE about this easy and playful art idea? 

Get your Salt Crystal Coffee Filter Lesson Plan here!

Young children can safely explore color using Colorations®Liquid Watercolor™.  This 4-year-old girl is exploring magenta.  She’s lucky enough to be in Francine Farkas’s class, where they do open ended art every day!  Here are two more of Francine’s students, dripping Liquid Watercolor™ onto White Canvas Backpacks (BACKPACK) using special eyedroppers called Super Safe Plastic Droppers (12SSD).  Notice how engaged they are in the painting process. Their sheer concentration speaks to the value of child-centered, self-directed art.  Experienced teachers know how important it is to provide paint and other unstructured, fluid art materials daily.  Wet or fluid art materials like these provide exciting physical contacts that motivate exploration and provide children with an almost magical sense of discovery.

Here are some Liquid Watercolor™ paintings on Real Watercolor Paper (PMONET) with salt sprinkled on while the paint is still wet.  The same paint is also applied to a long piece of paper towel.  Can you see the textures created by the salt?  Always apply salt to WET Liquid Watercolor™ and as it dries, the crystal patterns (little dots and textures) will appear.

By the way, sometimes I put Nancy™ Paint Bottle Classic Tips (NANCLS) on top of my bottles.  They fit perfectly and make it easier to control the pour. 

This last Coffee Filter Art came from a workshop participant at the recent CAEYC conference. Can you believe this beautiful Mountain Sunset and Abstract Portrait were both made with Texas-sized coffee filters painted with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ then cut up into these wonderful collages?  My jaw dropped when I saw these photographs!  They are so sophisticated, I am still completely in awe of the creativity it took to make them.  Imagine these materials are exactly the same ones used in other coffee filter applications shown in this post.  They were made by Bonnie Reid, an early childhood educator who simply asked me to tell you “I love liquid watercolor!”  Thank you, Bonnie, you’re  awesome.  I am so inspired by you!

I recently read a quote by Jonathan Adler who said “I love, love, love color – it’s the ultimate anti-depressant.”  I think I have to agree. 

I hope your Spring is off to a colorful start!  Thanks for reading this post, and please come back again soon.

Materials Referenced:

Liquid Watercolor™ Texas Snowflakes (BIGTEX)
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ (LW18)
Colorations® Ultimate Liquid Watercolor™ Paint Kit (LWKIT3)
Super Safe Plastic Droppers (12SSD)
White Canvas Backpacks (BACKPACK)
Smart Art Ideas Activity Book (SMARTART)
Nancy™ Bottle Classic Tips (NANCLS)
Real Watercolor Paper (PMONET)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

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

Enchantment Boxes

I've been testing out art ideas for my CAEYC workshop next week, and have fallen in love with our new Mini Geometric Papier-Mache Boxes (GEOBOX). At first I was shocked at how small they were, but then I realized small can be an asset (think tooth fairy box, ring box, and the old saying “big things come in small packages”). Aren’t they fun? They combine perfectly with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ and Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty (WPUTTY), but you could color or paint them any way you want. The white papier-mache surface is so tactile, it will accept just about any paint or collage material. I recommend my test version of this project for children 5 and up, and the simpler seashell versions for preschoolers. Both are lovely, creative, inexpensive, and make a great gift.

In addition to playing with the mini boxes myself, I sent some to my CAEYC co-presenter, Danielle Monroy who owns Creative Care for Children in Santa Barbara. She tested them with her preschool children who had a great time with them as well. Danielle also used Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ but her preschoolers painted it on with a brush (whereas I sprayed on the Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™). Both painting and spraying work nicely, but painting is easier for the very young. Danielle’s children collected their own sea shells and glued them on top. (They have the good fortune of living near the ocean, but you could collect colorful pebbles, small pinecones, or other tiny objects from your own natural environment). I loved her sea shell idea, so I ordered small sea shells and used them my boxes too. You could also finish off with rhinestones for a little “bling.”

  

Here’s a photo of what I used for the school age version of the “Enchantment Boxes.” The Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty gives them so much interest and dimension. If you haven’t yet tried Air-Dry Putty, I cannot recommend this unique material highly enough. Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty is similar to Crayola® Model Magic® Modeling Clay (BMM), but more affordable. Both materials give children a wonderful tactile experience and offer a 3-dimensional art experience that’s very different from play dough or clay. It’s great for coiling and making texture impressions. You can use it with clay tools, kitchen tools, stamps or stamping sticks, and rubbing plates. It’s stretchy and so lightweight that feels like a magical marshmallow, but it doesn’t stick to your hands. Children do love it, and you can keep the price down by giving them a small amount (about the size of a ping pong ball per child) and having them use it as a 3-D relief material on top of papierpmache, wood, or other 3-D objects like picture frames or masks.

To begin with the Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty, give each child about the size of a small ping-pong ball as pictured here. Have the children experience the texture, pull it and play with it to explore its elasticity, then ask them to practice coiling it into little “snakes” and wrapping their coils into a circle. It sticks to itself so the coil will create a little snail shape easily. This practice and experimentation gives children the ability to discover things on their own, and also provides the structure for how to create a small 3-D shape that they will be able to glue down onto the top of their box before painting it. The flower imprint shown here illustrates a stamping stick impression. Colorations® Easy-Grip Super Stamping Sticks (STICKS) are the perfect size for imprinting Air-Dry Putty for these mini boxes. 

Before painting, be sure to glue your finished air-dry putty design on top of your box using simple white glue. You do not have to wait for the glue to dry to begin painting. I used Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ in our small spray bottles, (again, best for children 5 and up). Practice with the spray bottles yourself first and teach your children how to spray from a distance (8 to 12 inches away from the project) to achieve a light “splatter paint” effect. Use a few different colors and spray from different angles to create secondary colors. 

Here’s a visual review of the coiling technique, the amount of Air-Dry Putty to give each child, a fork used for texture and the result of a stamping stick impression. The close-up shows you how beautiful small sea shells are when glued on top at the very end. 

These enchanting little boxes make a great gift and they cost just 50 cents a piece. Don’t forget to plan ahead for Mother’s Day or any other special occasion on your horizon. Thanks for reading this new post. Please share it with friends and colleagues so we can keep the creative ideas flowing between us. I hope you’ll do something creative today, and remember that creativity exists more in the searching than the finding.

Materials Used:

Mini Geometric Papier-Mache Boxes (GEOBOX)

Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ (BIGLWS)

Colorations® Super Lightweight Air-Dry Putty in White (WPUTTY)

(or) Crayola® Model Magic® Modeling Clay (BMM)

Colorations® Easy-Grip Super Stamping Sticks (STICKS)

Small Sea Shells (SMSS)

Spray Bottles (SPRAYS)

Colorations® Tacky Glue (GLUEIT)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

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

"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

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