Open Ended Art ~ Paper Collage/Mosaic

Teaching My Little Bookworm's Open Ended Art project this week was to do a collage/mosaic with paper.

I had an idea last week to cut out various eyes, noses, mouths, hair styles and outfits from magazines and have the girls glue them to a popsicle stick to make puppets. Then I received a Poptart sample this week in the mail. It had a little pamphlet in it with suggestions for fun things to do with your kids. This idea was one of them, but they suggested having the kids randomly draw their face parts out of a paper bag so it would be more of a surprise.

So, I spent (way too much) time cutting the various face parts and such out of magazines. I was going to have the girls do it, but we didn't have enough scissors or time for me to supervise all three of them doing it.

I sat the girls down with a popsicle stick and a round piece of construction paper. They took turns drawing their face parts, hair and outfits out of a bag.

Then they glued them in place.

They turned out kind of creepy!!

They actually didn't get as big a kick out of them as I did. It might be a better project for older kids. Mine are 4. (As I was typing that, however, they picked them up off the table and started playing with them. One of the girls said, "Mine is creepy!" and another said, "Mine is a pig!" Come to think of it, their noses do look a little snoutish!)

Next week's collage/mosaic medium is beans. I have an interesting take on that one, that has to do with our lunch for the day, so check back next week!

Open Ended Art ~ Pebble Collage/Mosaic

This week's challenge for Open Ended Art by Shannon at Teaching My Little Bookworm was making a collage or mosaic with pebbles.

I thought long and hard about this one because I didn't want to do stepping stones.

This is what I came up with.

First I cut out the first letter of each girl's name, those being "B", "M" and "M".

Next I tore construction paper into small pieces in the colors of the girls' bedrooms and set it all before them. I spread a thick layer of glue on their letters and told them to just start sticking the construction paper all over them.

When they were done we hung them to dry.

After I trimmed off the edges, the girls then sat down with clear glass pebbles and placed them all over their construction paper covered letters.

Once they had them completely covered them, I spent some time hot gluing the stones to their letters. I tried very hard not to mess up their pattern of stones, but I did have to do a tad bit of straightening to get them to fit.

And they ended up with these.

I am planning to use these as gifts for the girls. The twins' birthday is in October and I thought this might make a cute canvas wall hanging for the girls for their bedrooms. We'll see how they turn out.

Next week the theme is Paper collages. I have a fun idea in store!!

Open Ended Art ~ Crayons

My friend Shannon at Teaching my Little Bookworm is an amazing mother and teacher! She does some of the coolest things with her kids, and is so incredibly organized as she homeschools her preschooler!

She sponsors a weekly art project, in addition to many other things, called Open Ended Art. With this she will give you a medium with which to work, and asks that you cut your kids loose to make art projects with that medium.

Since I have different combinations of 4 year old girls throughout the week, I thought I might try to tag along with her. I may not be able to do it every week, but if we hit a couple of times a month it will be worth it.

This week's Open Ended Art project was to be done with crayons. And that means you could do anything with crayons you wanted!

I planned to do stained glass with crayon shavings, but realized I didn't have any wax paper. Being stumped, and not wanting to copy anything anyone else had already done, I considered skipping this one. But while making Eli's sandwich this morning I saw my ziploc bags and was inspired. Morgan and Makenna were here today, along with my Brynne and her friend Kate. (I was lucky to have little help from Kate's mom). Here is what we did:

1. I grated crayons onto plates. Each girl got the same four colors, and then got to choose a 5th color.

2. I took quart sized ziploc bags and cut the sides to flatten them out into opened rectangles (keeping the bottom intact).

3. The girls sprinkled the grated crayons onto the ziploc in whatever pattern they liked.

4. We closed back up the ziploc (so the shavings were in between the front and back of the ziploc, like it had never been cut), layed a towel over it and ironed it until the crayons were melted.

5. And we ended up with stained glass.

6. Here are all four girls' end products.

This was fun, Shannon! I can't wait to see what everybody else does.