Art Lesson #1 ~ Hot Air Balloon

This morning Holly really enjoyed her first art lesson from the new art program we purchased, Atelier level 4. This program offers dvd lessons with an art teacher, ideas, inspiration and shows other children also doing the lesson. The first lesson is a review of the color wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The walked through mixing all of these colors from the primary colors and created a color wheel.

After the color wheel was finished they then designed a hot air balloon. First the dvd shared great footage on hot air balloons along with several photos and a discussion on how they are designed, the detail of them. Holly then sectioned her paper and set to work drawing her hot air balloon in pencil and tracing it in black marker. Once she was finished with her drawing she then mixed all the colors she was using for the painting. She spent a nice time painting her project taking great care in her color choices. It turned out beautifully!!! This was a great art lesson - she is excited for more!

Pasta Rainbow

After enjoying our bin of colorful pasta we made a couple weeks ago (http://ourcreativeday.blogspot.com/2011/03/rainbow-pasta.html) Holly created a lovely rainbow from pasta. She enjoyed the texture of the pasta, the bright colors from it and designing her angles using 'straight' pasta. This project turned out lovely!!!

We used thicker construction paper to hold the weight of the pasta, Elmers glue and the pasta. She made a thick line of glue to get the outer rainbow edge first (red) and then worked in from there.

Butterfly Beauties

This is a classic project for us, we enjoy making these year round. They are super simple too! You take coffee filters and eye dropper liquid water colors on them. Let them dry and then gather them up into a butterfly shape that you twist up with pipe cleaners. Very easy and so very pretty. Today we diluted the water colors to make more pastel colored butterflies. Holly is very excited because we are about to order up some caterpillars to observe very soon... so fun!

Rainbow Patterns

Holly did some beading work for fine motor skills and practiced creating patterns within the rainbow color scheme. As simple as this project appears to me, it took her a long time to bead - she grew tired of beading and her fingers got sore she said. This was a good little project for her as she practiced some patience skills, thoughtfulness, reinforced our rainbow theme and incorporated a bit of pattern skills for math.

The goal was to create a unique pattern for each color. It is hard to tell from these photos however she did accomplish that. Whenever she started a new color she had to stop and look at the other and determine a new pattern. The beads were solid, shimmery, glittery and opaque - making it hard to really see the full differences in the photos.

Rainbow Xylophone

Continuing with a bit of rainbow fun this week, we created a rainbow xylophone. Holly helped to fill and color the glasses, we found a little drum stick and then she played for a while. After a bit of exploring with the sounds of each glass we then created some music cards. We took strips of paper and water colors to create the music sheets for her xylophone. She tapped out some tunes and then transferred that song onto the paper. After she created some I tried them out, some pretty sounds for sure! This was a really fun project that will sit out all day for play.

Rainbow Pasta

We made some rainbow pasta to use in school this week. It is very easy to do and was fun to watch what happens. In a ziploc bag you add about a 1/4 cup of rubbing alcohol and then several drops of food coloring, shake to mix. Then add your dry pasta and seal the bag. Gently shake the bags up (be careful because pasta can puncture the bag). Let them sit, flipping the bags about every half hour or so until the color absorbs to your taste. Then drain out the colored alcohol and lay pasta out to dry over night. The next day you have a nice colorful pasta treat to play with.

This makes for a great sensory bin, pattern pieces, measuring play, estimation & math skills, art fun and more. We will be using it all week and finishing up with some art towards the end of the week. Holly is loving it!

Colorful Fun

This week we are going to be enjoying some color fun -- color mixing, art appreciation, rainbows, color wheels, etc. Should be a fun week that goes great with a bit of rainbow fun and St. Patrick's Day. Yesterday Holly was really wanting to some school work and I don't know why but I always feel guilty when it is workbook style work rather than fun stuff on the weekends.... even though today first thing she broke out her sight words workbook and worked in it forever. So, who knows - maybe it is a hang up I need to get over.

Anyhow, in her interest of school work we decided on art. Painting a rainbow. First she chose the primary colors of paint and then we set up six containers, three for the primary colors and then she had to tell me which ones to set up for mixing the secondary colors. She is really good at this too! So, all her dishes were set for mixing and then painting.... a very pretty rainbow!