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Showing posts from July, 2016

Summer's End

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This final week of summer camp we are revisiting the portrait. In the beginning of summer the children drew portraits of themselves. This time we had each child pick a friend to draw. On large pieces of butcher block paper with bright oil pastels the children drew their classmates.  We hung them on our largest wall in the red room . Take a look , you can't miss them.

Foam Printing

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This printing project was done using styrofoam trays from the grocery store. Using a pointy object the children carved a design into the foam tray. The children used a paint roller to distribute the paint evenly on the tray. The painted foam is then turned over onto paper.  As an extension activity we used white paint and printed on black paper.

Action Painting

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We read a book about Jackson Pollock called "Action Jackson". The book taught us that Pollock used his whole body when he painted. " He swoops and leaps like a dancer, paint trailing from a brush that doesn't touch the canvas." We invited the children to paint like Jackson Pollock and with much energy and excitement they did just that, In the end everyone was covered with paint and our paper was beautiful with lines, splotches, drips and splatters. One of our friends said " it sounds like rain." When we felt done we took a piece of our painting away to dry and then let the children ride the bikes across the paper making tire trails curving and looping along the large butcher block paper.  What a super fun day! We cut our giant painting in half and hung them in our studio. 

Painting Sunflowers

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We extended our sunflower still life invitation to include color mixing and painting. Using paint swatches the children chose the colors that matched the colors of the flowers and the vase. We talked about "shades" of color . They were given the opportunity to try to mix colors together to get a different shade or a more precise color. When they felt satisfied with the colors we provided paper and brushes and asked if they wanted to paint the sunflowers. It was really interesting to see the mixed ages in our classroom reflected in their beautiful paintings.

Drawing Sunflowers

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We read a book about Vincent Van Gogh called "Camille and the Sunflowers" by Laurence Anholt.  In our studio we invited the children to draw sunflowers simply using pencil on paper. We used the term "still life" and had a great discussion about how a very long time ago there were no cameras and if you wanted to remember the way something looked you had to draw a picture of it.  Some of the children drew more than one  picture of the sunflowers. It was interesting to see the way the drawing improved with each rendition. 

Getting Creative with Picasso

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After drawing our first portraits inspired by Picasso's realist sketches, we then took inspiration from his cubist period. In these drawing the children were able to be as creative as they wanted. They drew their faces using different angles, colors and shapes.  They came out fun, funky and beautiful!

Bubble Prints

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We did another cool printing project, this time using a bubble and paint mixture.  We mixed dish detergent, paint and water together and with a straw we blew bubbles until they rose above the level of the bowl.  The children placed the paper on top of the bubbles. They were  thrilled to see the bubble prints on their paper.