The Art Shelf...

seems to be in a constant state of disarray! We must do better!



I'm hoping this post will motivate me to get a little more organized :)

Salad Spinner Art

Hooray! We finally made salad spinner art! This activity has been on my to-do list since last summer, but I didn't have a salad spinner. Last week when we were at Guh-guh and Grandpa's house, we borrowed my sister's salad spinner for the activity.



O enjoyed the activity, but my almost 5 year old niece LOVED this activity! I think she would have continued making art for hours and hours if we hadn't had to stop for lunch.


 
We used food coloring since my sister plans to use her salad spinner for salad eventually. We learned that the food coloring spreads better if you use only one color at a time and quickly put the top on and spin it. Otherwise, the food coloring soaks into the paper too much and won't spread as you spin the salad spinner.

Texture Collage

O has had a great time working on her texture collage for the last 3 days! The idea for this activity came from Montessori Mama (I think).

I collected lots of different objects of different textures, including foam shapes, cotton balls, bits of sandpaper, beads, toothpicks, rubber bands, aluminum foil, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, etc., and put them in this container for O.

 
Then I taped a piece of contact paper sticky side out on the glass door. O has had a great time sticking different objects on the contact paper. She especially loves the foam shapes and cotton balls. She thought it was "cool" that she put the cotton balls on the paper, and some of it stayed when she pulled the cotton ball off the paper. She also stuck a couple of balloons on the collage. I intended for her to put use deflated balloons, but she insisted that I blow them up. I was surprised that they stuck to the collage, but she didn't leave them up for long :)

 
O has enjoyed working on this texture collage so much that I've left it up on the door. I think I may switch it out for new contact paper once a week, so it can be her ongoing art project :) Next time I think I'll give her a selection of construction paper cut into various shapes or tissue paper to tear into bits (we have tons since I save it from all birthday parties. Yes, most people think I'm crazy, but I don't mind.)

 

Bird Puppet Kit

A friend gave O 2 Martha Stewart Puppet Kits for Christmas, and we put the bird puppet together today. This was a fun and very quick activity, and O really enjoyed herself. I bought several of these kits (holiday themed) after Halloween and Christmas (for 1 dollar each), so I'm glad she enjoyed herself so much! It was nice to do a project that required no preparation on my part :)



 

I'm glad I waited a little while to do this project. O is really into puppets right now, so this was the perfect time. I love how she talks to the puppets like they are real. So cute!

Marbilizing Paper

This fun and easy art activity comes from A Bit of This and That. Thanks for the great idea, Jo!
For this activity we mixed about a tsp of cooking oil with several drops of food coloring.



We stirred it with a fork. It settled quickly, so we had to keep stirring as we made our art.



Then we dropped the mixture onto a cookie sheet using the dropper. We also flung the mixture onto the cookie sheet with forks.



O placed a sheet of paper on the drops of color, and we watched as the color appeared on the back of the paper as it was absorbed.



Ta-ta! (as O says anytime she has something to show you!) Here are our masterpieces!

She LOVES Tape!

O is VERY interested in tape lately. She loves to pull out long strips of tape, cut them with her scissors, and then arrange them on her paper. I thought about buying tape in different colors, but she's so absorbed by the clear tape that I decided not to rock the boat :)

Black & White Art Activities

I bought Young at Art by Susan Striker months and months ago, and we've done a few of the activities in it. I'm trying to get into more of a routine of doing art activities now, and I'm using this book as a guide. Here is O's white sticker collage on black paper. I offered her small white dots, small white rectangles, and these big rectangles. When I first showed her the materials, she was not interested AT ALL. She was much too busy flying around the room in her new fairy costum and playing with her punch balls. I didn't push it, and she was eventually ready to try the activity the next day. I was surprised by how focused and intent she was once she got started. She was into minimalism on this day :)


 
Yesterday we tried a couple more white/black art activities. I offered her white chalk and black paper and a black crayon with white paper. She was only inerested in this activity for about 2 minutes. She tried the chalk on the white paper and was curious about why she couldn't see it.



Today O painted with water on her Buddha Board to go along with our black/white theme. Again, she was only minimally interested in this activity. I'm glad to be done with black and white. I hope she'll be more interested in next week's art activities!