Sidewalk Chalk

The weather has been pretty hot lately, so I make it a rule to get the girls outside every morning while it's still bearable. This week's art project involved playing with sidewalk chalk. This activity isn't new to the girls, but to make it a little more interesting we brought out a small tub of water and a handful of paintbrushes as well. First I had the girls draw with chalk as they always do. Elliot scribbled and Rebecca tried to draw recognizable objects in an unrecognizable fashion. Next I set the tub of water out and encouraged the girls to dip their chalk in the water prior to coloring with it. The result was very exciting as the colors appeared brighter and smoother. Finally we dipped paintbrushes in water and used them to blend the chalk lines we had previously put down on the concrete. The brushstrokes transformed the chalk strokes so that they looked almost like tempera paint rather than dry chalk. Even I had fun playing with this technique!

Beach Fun

As was mentioned in the previous post, summer time has changed our routines a good deal, which has also allowed us to get out of town on the weekends. A few weekends back we went to Santa Cruz, where we played on the boardwalk and enjoyed the beach. It was interesting to observe two valley girls' reactions to scenery both in and around Santa Cruz. Elliot, who is usually more adventuresome than her older sister, was frightened by the waves crashing on the shore, and thus refused to do anything but be held by mom. Rebecca on the other hand happily strolled up and down the beach searching for treasures to collect and built sand castles with dad. The previous day, however, she too had been frightened by the giant redwood trees in a grove in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. I suppose it makes sense that a child with a large imagination who isn't accustomed to seeing such large trees would be so affected by their ominous presence, as well as by the darkness they cast on the trail below. My husband and I have a fondness for natural places such as these, so I guess with more exposure and a bit of education our girls will come to love them too.

But back to art. We toted home a small bucket full of mussel shells, driftwood, and other small fragments of things that Rebecca found on the beach, and just yesterday we finally got around to doing something with them. I pulled out the glue gun and put spots of hot glue on a piece of driftwood while Rebecca firmly pressed the shells and feathers into the glue as it dried. Elliot also got to try, though she needed a bit more help than Rebecca did of course. Rebecca was fascinated by the thought of putting glue in a gun, and she especially enjoyed playing with the little strings of glue that form as the hot glue is stretched. When all was said and done each girl had a souvenir from the beaches of Santa Cruz, and I had a small blister on my thumb from the hot nozzle of the glue gun.

Paper Collages

Our summer routine has left us little time for our regular activities, such as story time at the local library and morning outdoor park play. We spend most mornings these days watering our ever-growing garden and preparing for, attending, and unwinding from swim lessons. Today, when Rebecca woke up too ill to attend her lesson, we decided to take advantage of a "rest" day to get creative.

Rebecca has been quite intrigued by glue lately, so I decided to incorporate glue into this week's art project. I cut small scraps of various different kinds of paper, including newspaper, tissue paper, construction paper, etc, I placed each different kind on its own cocktail plate for sorting, and I gave each kid a large page to work on and a pool of glue with a cotton swab for spreading said glue. The girls then covered their pages with a collage of rectangular paper pieces. My directions were to dab glue onto the page and then place a paper piece onto the glue spot, but Rebecca soon discovered that she preferred to coat the back of each paper piece with glue before pasting it to the page. Elliot was a bit thrown off by this two-step technique and soon began scattering paper pieces on the page without the use of glue. As you might guess, when I picked up the pages to set them to dry, many of Elliot's paper pieces slid right off. Both girls were also taken by the little paper pieces themselves, and after lunch as I set to unload the dishwasher, I found a small stack of paper pieces inside the mixing bowl cabinet. Rebecca even tried to take a few into bed with her for naps! My new rule is that all art materials are to stay in the art room (aka nursery).

Elliot's creation is on the left, Rebecca's is on the right.

Chenille Stems

This week's art project unfolded quite on its own, which can be exciting and worrisome for a mom who likes to keep her house tidy! As was mentioned in an earlier post, I have made a lot of our art materials accessible to the girls, with the exception of paints and paint brushes. Yesterday I went for a short run and left the girls in dad's care, and when I returned I found chenille stems (formerly known as pipe cleaners) scattered across the floors in basically every room in the house. Rebecca and Elliot had found the unopened bag of 100 assorted chenille stems and quickly emptied the entire contents of the bag as they traipsed through the house, likely following the cat we are watching while grandparents are on vacation. After a quick moment of panic and a "What's going on here?" I realized that Rebecca was busy bending some of the chenille stems together into little creations. The following picture shows what she came up with.

The girls had also opened up a bag of beads and were stringing beads on the stems, or, in Elliot's case, stringing them on the stems and then slipping them off in rapid succession. For those with young toddlers like Elliot, chenille stems make an ideal material for stringing such beads as they are easy for little fingers to hold on to and the whole process is fabulous for strengthening dexterity. I have to admit that, while it sometimes makes me anxious to think about what can come from two young children exploring art materials at their own speed (this morning Elliot was putting colored pencils inside everyone's shoes), I am encouraged by the fact that they are starting to let their creativity take a life of its own! Yesterday for Father's Day Rebecca decided to decorate the house by stringing ribbons around all the door knobs, and she had so much fun doing it!

Candle Dipping

Last Friday our family took advantage of our new summer schedule and travelled up to the foothills for a day of hiking and enjoying Columbia State Historical Park. While at Columbia we enjoyed ice cream (much deserved after our morning hike), panning for gold, and candle dipping, and it is the latter that I am using for last week's art project. For $2 Rebecca chose a plain white candle and, with help from dad, dipped the candle in several different colors of hot wax, giving the candle a layered look. She chose red as her base color (no surprise here), and proceeded to add layers of orange, green and blue. Elliot made it clear that she wanted to take her turn as well, but I couldn't justify taking the chance of her sticking her little fingers into the pools of hot wax. Maybe in another year darling.

More Paint

In case you haven't noticed as yet, my favorite medium by far is paint. I think Rebecca's is also. The other day we were at a concert in the park when we found a bunch of magnolia leaves laying on the ground. I love how large and waxy magnolia leaves are, and as soon as I pointed the leaves out to the girls they immediately set to filling their little arms full of leaves. On the drive home we were brainstorming what we could use the leaves for, and Rebecca decided she wanted to paint them. So I pulled out the paint and brushes, put the girls in play clothes (or no clothes as in Elliot's case), and we painted the leaves. Rebecca diligently covered the entire back side of every leaf, while Elliot, noticing her bare skin, decided instead to paint her body.

I guess that should teach me not to let her paint unclothed! The funniest part was that she named each body part as she was painting it, saying "toes," "knees," etc.

After the paint dried I took thread and strung the leaves up as a sort of mobile, using two sticks that Rebecca collected on another trip to the park as the cross bars. The girls really liked the result. As the leaves twist on the threads you can watch the painted sides disappear behind the unpainted sides and vice versa. We might make a trip to the craft store and pick up some pastel-colored beads to string on the threads to dress them up a bit. Perhaps we should even look to add some different shaped leaves as well.

I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas!

This next project was entirely for educational purposes. I have been thinking a lot about the nutrition of my children recently, so I thought I would spend some time teaching Rebecca about the food pyramid and the different food groups. If she had her way she would eat peanut butter crackers and pasta for every meal, and while she likes plenty of other foods as well, these are what she requests when given an open-ended meal choice.

To start us off I went to www.mypyramid.gov and printed off a personalized food pyramid for Rebecca which laid out how many ounces/cups of each food group a preschooler her age is to eat in one day. Next we flipped through magazines and cut out pictures of food to match and glue on each respective food group. Now Rebecca loves to use glue sticks. Unfortunately she loves them so much that they don't last very long before all of the glue has been used up and we find ourselves opening the packaging of a new stick.

Finally we made up a chart to keep track of her daily food habits, which she fills in after each meal. I thought that by showing her what the requirements are and how well (or not) she fulfills those requirements it would give her (and me) a better idea of what kind of food choices to make throughout the day. The next couple of photos are what we came up with. The chart is a sample chart from yesterday that includes everything except for afternoon snack and dinner, which I am proud to say ended up completely filled in by the time those two meals had been consumed.

After three days of filling out charts I think Rebecca is a little weary of it, so I won't press it further, but her pyramid is posted on the side of the refrigerator as a constant reminder of balanced eating. Where was Elliot during all of this? I set her up at the little table with stamps and stickers, which she seemed completely content with. She is still too young for scissors, and with her fondness for chapstick I'd hate to see what she does with glue!