Book Love: Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color

I once again send some thanks to KidArtLit - they are such a wonderful resource for combining books and process art in fun and meaningful ways! Awhile back they did a live video all about this book and I was inspired yet again to try out the art activity that they created to go along with it. I saved it for my summer art play class, and it was just perfect.

This book is imaginative and bright, with illustrations that seem to move and come to life. I love the way that it relates colors to everyday objects, but with a child-like perspective. After we read it, we looked back at the techniques the illustrator seemed to use in her artwork with black lines and swirling colors.

Connecting Activity: We called this activity creating wild colors.
First- we drew lines and shapes using straight edges, circular lids, and our own creativity.

Then we mixed together some paint with a little water. I added some cotton balls and fly swatters to the table, and we started to play. The kids experimented with dropping the cotton balls and watching them splatter, slapping them with the fly swatters, and moving the cotton balls around on the paper.

The process was very engaging, and the results were so fun and colorful.

Creative Kids Summer Class: Outside Art Play

I love taking art outside in the summer time, and we had a lot of fun getting out during our art play session of summer classes.

Car Slides

While exploring lines, we sent painted cars down a slide to see what kinds of lines they would make.

This naturally led to some car washing play. :) 

Chalk

Chalk play is kind of an obvious, go-to outside art activity, but there are so many ways to use it! Both my students and children become so much more engaged with chalk when it's paired with water, so we paired it with the water table. We also read this great, imaginative book Chalk.

Squirt Gun Painting

The favorite outdoor art activity this year was definitely squirt gun painting. I just filled dollar store squirt guns with a paint/water mixture. Now, if you are going to do it (and you should- it's so fun!), just be sure to set clear boundaries for how you are going to play with the squirt guns. For us this year, that meant we were squirting the paper (not each other, or the house, etc.), but maybe you are braver than I was this time around. ;) The kids stayed at this for a long time, and got a great fine motor workout in the process!

Book Love: The Black and White Factory

I stumbled upon a new book at the library a few weeks ago, and it inspired this art project for our Creative Kids Art Play class.

The animals in The Black and White Factory have really specific rules about their factory, and that includes no color and no messes! But then one day, some colors start to creep in and they try everything to stop it from ruining their factory. This book is interactive and funny, and I love the way the characters embrace the mess in the end. It's such a perfect story for encouraging creative and exploratory art play.

Connecting Activity
I set out black (dollar store) frames over white paper with some colored glue, and the kids jumped right in to add some color to their "black and white factories."

A few tips for trying this with kids:
#1- When I researched this activity, most tutorials suggested using hot glue to seal the glass frame so that glue doesn't leak out. I would add that you should be very generous with the amount you use, both in front of and behind the glass. I thought I had done enough, but I still had problems with leaking glue and it was messy!

#2- Preschoolers love the process of squeezing and watching the paint fill up the frame. As such, there is a lot of glue that needs to dry. These didn't dry very much overnight, so I tried putting them under a ceiling fan in a bright room, and they dried completely after about a day.

Once they are dry, the colors show up best when you hold them to the light, so they make great light-catchers or sun-catchers. We explored the colors using different kinds of light- windows, ceiling lights, the light table, and flashlights.

Creative Kids Summer Class: Colors, Lines, and Shapes

Each day of this year's art play summer class, we focused on a basic element of art: colors, lines, and shapes. I'll do a few more in-depth posts about some of our bigger projects, and will highlight some of the ways that we played with art in this post.

Colors

We read a book about a Black and White Factory, and explored adding colors to these black and white designs, as well as through this fun invitation to create with colored glue. 

We also played a pass-the-art game (similar to musical chairs, except when the music stops you pass your art to the next person and they add onto it). It was the perfect game to try out my new set of Kwik Stix. These little paint sticks are AWESOME. Bright colors, quick drying, and smooth writing. Great for pencil grip practice, too! I just love how these turned out.

Lines

On the second day we thought about lines, and used print making and free drawing to explore making and extending lines. 

We also read a fun book called Ish, and made some ish-inspired drawings with marker and watercolor.

Shapes

On the last day our focus was shapes. We thought about how lines can make shapes, and how we can cut, tear, and arrange shapes to form pictures in art. ---> (My favorite book for exploring shape manipulation is Perfect Square) 

We had a really fun week! Links will be up soon for some of our other projects:

Outdoor Art

Color Factory Art

Wild Color Art

Shape Collage Art