The Unplugged Theme of OCEAN this week comes at a perfect time. In about a month we will be spending some time at the ocean. We have been reading  ocean books and learning all we can about the sea.  I love the art work in so many children’s books. Two artists I really like are Leo Lionni and Eric Carle. THE ART OF ERIC CARLE and the book ARTIST TO ARTIST 23 major illustrators talk to children about their art, are excellent books that talk about and/or show the artists at work.

Another  book we read was SWIMMY by Leo Lionni. We looked closely at the pictures and tried to figure out how Lionni made them. Then tried out some of our ideas in our own ocean pictures.

Looks like doilies!

Molly also used bubble wrap and “paintbrush hair” to add some texture to her work. She also made a fish stencil so that all of her fish would look alike.

Inevitably the painting turned into to finger paint and 5 year olds have their own ideas. Ginger started her painting by cutting out a red fish shape, gluing it down and calling it “swimmy.” The next time I looked their were sunshines and and words and hearts in her ocean. Taking a deep breath I had to remember it’s the process not the product that’s important!!

This was the first time we used acrylic paints. Molly really liked the coverage and control she felt with these as well as the clean finish.

Picture books are a great jumping off point for so many activities. I have a few other ideas to share soon.

This weeks unplugged theme is WRINKLE.  I thought about doing some batik but it sounded way too complicated for 10 AM this morning! So we looked through THE USBORNE COMPLETE BOOK OF ART IDEAS and picked the  Cracked Wax Effect.

First we got out our wax crayons and did some coloring. We tried to cover the entire papaer with crayon.

Then we wrinkled our paper up really good!!!

Then we smoothed out our paper and painted over them with poster paints. Be sure to fill in all the cracks with paint.

Then we quickly rinsed off our paint!

And left them to dry between newspaper.

We  are so lucky to live on a park.  Our backyard butts up to the ball fields of a high school and the the adjacent park.  The phrases; “Meet me at the big tree,” and “I’m going to the big tree,” and “Can I go as far as the big tree?” and “We live near the big tree,” are all things that are commonly heard around our house.  Although the Big Tree is not technically in our backyard we consider it our backyard.   I have always wanted to learn more about our tree and somehow honor the huge beauty but have never gotten around to it.  So when the unplugged project for this week was trees, I knew we would be spending some time getting to know our landmark a little better.

We spread our sheet out under its shade.  First we photographed it from different angles.  Then we looked for some leaves from it and possibly some nuts, so that we could identify what type of tree it is.  We knew it was an Oak but we were still unable to pinpoint exactly what kind-as there were no acorns to be found-darn squirrels.

Then we sketched our big tree.

While the girls continued sketching and snacking I continued reading ,”The Jungle Book,” out loud.   I try to have a chapter book going with them and this is what we are reading now.

Then we tried to figure out the age of our tree.  First we measured 5 ft up from the ground.

Then we wrapped a piece of yarn around the tree at that height.

Then we laid that piece of yarn out straight and measured it with a yard stick.

Then with a bit of figuring…we found our tree to be 180 inches around.

It is said that a tree grows approximately   1inch each year-so our beauty is OLD-180 years old to be close. We are planning to  find some info of what our town was like 180 years ago and hopefully some photos too.  We finished up with a few crayon rubbings and talked about some future activities of painting  pictures of the tree and collecting some fall leaves to press.

We took a few bark rubbings and the girls tucked a few leaves into their sketch books.

That is one big, old, beautiful tree!!!

This weeks Unplugged Project is Metal. The long weekend threw me off a bit so I am posting a day late-but better late then never! This Mexican Metal Tooling project is super easy, no mess.

You will need some heavy aluminum-we cut cake pans apart-scissors, stack of newspapers, paint brushes, permanent markers. Optional materials list to follow.

Place your aluminum square on your newspaper stack and use the back of a paintbrush to draw a picture/design. You can flip your square over and draw on the other side too so that some of your drawing sticks out and some is concave.

Now use your permanent markers to color in your picture.

The next part took longer than anything. I punched holes in the corners and used jewelry wire to string the tiles together and tied them to a dowel rod. We hung some beads off the bottom for weight. This is optional but I think it really looks great. Because we used permanent markers I plan to hang this on our back patio but tonight could not find a single place to hang it to get a good photo. This was the best I could do.

Note–after cutting the pans up the edges are a bit sharp, you may want to use masking tape and tape the square down to the newspaper while working on it. Be careful!

Here is a photo I took this morning outside-looks a bit better!

The pink flubber is alive and well at our house!


I have been reading The Creative License by Danny Gregory. -I know blurry picture.

Today I was doing a drawing exercise from the book and the girls eagerly joined in.

And when her Dad came home Ginger eagerly shared her drawings with him.

This is fast cutter Ginger at work!

We have a grocery/discount store in our neighborhood called Marc’s. I LOVE Marc’s. Not only do they have a decent and cheap organics selection but the have a close out section. You never know what treasures you will find! I picked up a set of books called A FIRST LOOK AT ART. There are four books in the series and they were each $1.99 each. Score!! I really like them and today we did an activity out of the CREATURES book.
We looked at THE BIRD by Eileen Agar and talked about patterns. We also looked at several other works by other artists that also use patterns in their work. We have a game called Art Deck and a great set of art cards from a UNICEF game my mother in law bought me years ago. Both have small works that we can handle and move around to compare and contrast.
Back to the activity-so we took a piece of paper and folded it in to 16 equal squares and filled each square with a different pattern. We used colored pencils and metallic crayons and these really hard crayon like things that I don’t know what they are. I don’t know where thy came from, probably Marc’s. They have no paper wrap on them. They are harder than a crayon, and they mold into a square shape at the end. I will photo them tomorrow and please let me know if you know what they are called! They were a big hit. We will use these sixteen patterns as a guide to fill in one of our own creatures soon-hopefully tomorrow!

We also spent some time outside. It was a beautiful day and great packing snow! After we built our igloo the kids spray painted it with a spray bottle, that I probably bought at Marc’s, filled with a strong solution of food coloring and water.

Tomorrow preschool and circus and possibly/probably a trip to Marc’s!

We spent most of today outside in the 60 some degree weather. We walked to the library to look for some books on Miro’. On the way we found some other interesting things.

We looked through some of our books and used cray-pas to draw some creatures and oddities and then painted over them and inside the spaces with watercolors. Hint-using watercolors with paper made specifically for watercolors, makes all the difference. Also, you can use oil pastels or even crayons and get the same results.

I love to spend time at the library flipping through books looking for ideas. I will try to link to a few good ones tomorrow-I have a sleeping 3 3/4 year old sprawled over me at the moment.