Using Music From Pacha's Pajamas to inspire Young Artists

Recently we reviewed the new double kids album Pachas pajamas: A Story Written By Nature. Our 3 year old, Mini Piwi, especially loves to dance to it in the car (not an easy thing to do). Our eight year old, Miss K seems especially inspired by the art that was featured in the book Pacha's Pajamas: A Story Written By Nature by Aaron Ableman.

All Pacha's Pajamas images are sourced from here

One afternoon this week she gathered up a load of art supplies and headed to her room. A little later she presented me with her version of what our Siamese cat, Perry, would look like if he attended the Music festival that Pacha and all of nature put on. Miss K is still working on what Perry would sing at the Festival.

Today we all sat done to work on creating a parrot that symbolized hope for the rainforest. Well that was the original plan. Mini Piwi announced she wanted to make her own.

The kids used  Learn to Draw Pets to sketch a picture of a Macaw.  If teaching art scares you like it does me, I would definitely recommend this as an easy(and cheap) way to introduce sketching to kids. As you can see even Mini Piwi was able to follow the step by step instructions

The pencil lines were traced with dark oil pastel and they set about adding color and patterns.

Image source

We recently learnt about the Koru symbol used in New Zealand Maori carving. It is based on the shape of a fern frond and represents regeneration and hope for the future. Miss K loves the smudging effect of oil pastels so that’s how the background was filled.

Mini Piwi also added Korus and lots of colors. She named her parrot Sparky. Both Pictures have definitely brightened up the kitchen Art Museum (aka the Fridge).

Don't forget to enter our Giveaway to win one of Ten copies of the brand new Double Album.

2013 Perfectly Pumpkin Contest -Share your Pumpkin fun!

Welcome to the B-inspired Mama's Second Annual Perfectly Pumpkin Contest. Last year was a lot of fun with over 120 creative pumpkin ideas shared!

For instant inspiration you can see the 2012 winners here. This year is promising to be even more fun!

We are excited to be co-hosting along with the talented mamas from B-inspired Mamas, Preschool Powol Packets and Gift of Curiosity.

Meet our Special guest judges! These talented ladies will have the difficult task of choosing a grand prize winner in each of the Four categories.

• Pumpkin Kids Activities
• Pumpkin Crafts
• Pumpkin Carving/Decorating
• Pumpkin Recipe

Jen from Tatertots and Jello

Jill from Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons

Laurie from Alex Toys

Natania from GeekMom

InLinkz.com

Each winner will receive an awesome prize package (to be revealed very soon!) from some of our generous sponsors including ALEX Toys.  ALEX Toys offers a vast collection of toys and craft kits to foster creativity and imagination in kids.  we are also excited about our sponsor is C & T Publishing, publisher of the super fun FunStitch Studio series of creative books for kids.

How to enter:

• Link up all of your Pumpkin themed ideas by Sunday October 20, 11pm EST. There are no limit to the number of posts you can enter. As llong as it is pumpkin themed or made with a Pumpkin you're in! Don't worry about specifying a category, we can do that for you.

• Follow all of the co-hosts on Facebook: B-Inspired Mama Facebook, Preschool Powol Packets, Learning and Growing the Piwi Way and Gift of Curiosity

• Share the contest on Social Media (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, G+ and/or Instagram) with the hashtag #PerfectlyPumpkinContest.

An InLinkz Link-up

Make your own Dinosaur 'Tea Set' with Tea Rex

When you think about Dinosaurs do you also think of Tea Parties?

You will once you have read Tea Rex By Molly Idle

Our Hostess Miss Cordelia loves giving Tea parties and can tell you all about proper tea etiquette. Her Dinosaur friends, however, play by their own rules!
It was a great introduction to irony for DD7 as the instructions on each page don't exactly match the pictures. For example, 'offer a your guests a comfortable chair' shows T Rex perched precariously on a dainty little pink chair.

The Dinosaur's Miss Idle created are my new Favorite Dino illustrations. They are definitely still  prehistoric enough to appeal to all Dino Fans but the T-Rex especially has cheeky charm about him. The Tea Party scenes are very sweet and reminded me of the many pretend Tea parties we have had over the years.

Inspired by 'Tea Rex' we decided to make our own  Dinosaur 'Tea Set'.



I showed the Piwi's how to make their own stencils by drawing an image on a piece of card or a paper plate....



....I cut it out the images for them.

The Piwi's agreed on Green paint and then they got to stenciling the images onto paper plates.

Next week Miss K wants to make matching cups. Mini Piwi wants to make a bonnet like Miss Cordelia.

Please go and check out all of the other Dinosaur themed books and activities from these other great bloggers.



Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Royal Baloo - 3 Dinosaurs - Monsters Ed - Chestnut Grove Academy - Growing in God's Grace - Royal Little Lambs - Life with Moore Babies - Teach Beside Me - The Usual Mayhem - Mum Central - Fantastic Fun and Learning - Kathys Cluttered Mind - Play Create Explore - Toddler Approved - Growing Book by Book - Adventures in Mommydom - B-Inspired Mama - The Fairy and The Frog - Edventures with Kids - Learning and Growing the Piwi way - A Gluten Free Journey - Mom to Crazy Monkeys - No Doubt Learning - Preschool Powol Packets - To The Moon and Back - Our Craft ~N~ Things - Farm Fresh Adventures - Proverbial Homemaker

Sharing is Caring Blog hop is all about Easter!

We are excited to be part of Sharing is Caring Blog Hop hosted by Monika from Life With Lovebugs.
If you would like to be part of the hop you can join in the fun by signing up here.

The theme for March is Easter! We are sharing how Family project for Lent and a Family Easter tree activity.

 

Edible Hat Art Inspired by Dr Suess' 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins

This hat design craft was inspired by 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. We were fortunate enough to be able to review a copy for iGameMom. Remember the frosting sugar cone trees that replaced gingerbread houses this past Christmas?. We tweaked the idea and made hats. A stack of sugar cones really reminded us of the 'stack' of hats Batholomew had hiding under his hat.

 Instead of frosting we made ‘edible paint’ from powdered sugar, water and food coloring.

 The piwi's painted up a storm, let them dry and then enjoyed them for dessert.

DIY Glitter paint

The Piwi's love paint, all kinds of paint. We do have it in small quantities but we don't have all the different one the Piwi's drool over in craft sections. We have learn't the hard way that paint does not relocate very well.

Instead of buying different types of paints I  have been experimenting with our existing art supplies and trying to come up with different ways to use it.

This week's inspiration was glitter paint...


Basically we mixed glitter glue and paint -sounds simple enough until I tried it. If you mix tempera pain and glitter glue together it makes a thick goopy lumpy paint. The glitter no longer sparkled in the light. It was still fun to paint with though as it was a different texture and dried extra glossy.
Here is picture Mini Piwi  painted from this version:

After a bit of experimenting we found a way to make the glue and paint mix so that the glitter wasnt covered in paint.

Hows how:

1. Squeeze your chosen paint onto a tray 
2. Swirl the glue onto the surface of the paint 'blob'.
3. Leave it alone for about 5 minutes and the glue will begin to mix with the paint.
4. Paint!

Mini Piwi had great fun!

Other mash up art supply projects:
Pre K Monet with Dot Markers

Using Oil Pastels in lieu of paint when we are traveling

George Washington unit & Sculpting Mt Rushmore

Just in time for Presidents day, George Washington was the focus of this week's literature link in Miss K's Language arts curriculum.
The readings in the work book included a simple biography and the legend of Washington and the cherry tree. Miss K really enjoyed several days of timeline comprehension activities that tested her comprehension.

To extend our lessons the Piwi's explored some of art that Washington inspired.
The first piece was Mt Rushmore. We visited the Mt Rushmore National memorial website and took a virtual tour. We also downloaded the student guide. Miss K wasnt too sure it could be considered a piece of art so we checked out the definition.

Macmillian dictionary defines a 'Work of art' (noun) as:

1. something such as a painting or sculpture that is of very high quality
2. something that is made or done in a skilful or attractive way

Although the sculpting techniques were on a very large (and explosive) scale we all agreed that it met the definition of a Work of Art.

The Piwi's made their own Mt Rushmore Paper Sculptures from paper bags. This is Miss K's art work.  I will post Mini Piwi's separately as she did a few different activities.

 Miss K colored in pictures of the Presidents carved into Mt Rushmore. She glued them in the correct order on to a large paper bag.

She scrunched and folded, and held parts in place with staples. Here is the finished product!

Along with the readings in the Student workbook, here are the books we used for this unit...

 

 

Piwi Art study: Learning about Landscapes

After our Monet study we spent last week looking at landscapes. We discovered this great series 'Come look with me'. The one we used this week was 'Exploring Landscape with Children.' by Gladys Blizzard.  The example given in the Amazon preview is for Pieter Buel the Elder's 'Hunters in the Snow' (1565), it also gives the other works of Art included in this book.

Each painting has background information which we read together and questions to encourage thought and observation.  I really appreciate the guidance it give a parent (like me) without a lot of art knowledge.  More importantly, it engages the kids. Although it is aimed towards older kids, once Mini Piwi saw Miss K pointing out parts of a painting she wanted to be involved too.

Another great resource was the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's kids website.  .They offer interactive activities to explanation the horizon line and different perspectives. You can also make your own digital landscape. It is great to be able to instantly see the what happens when you change the horizon line of your painting and/or add different features into the foreground, middle or background.

After a few days of looking at Landscapes, the Piwi's were ready to paint their own. Before she painted I asked Miss K to ponder these questions.

• What materials would you like to use for your art?
• What mood will your art have?
• What kind of weather will it show?
• What time of day is it?
• Will your landscape include people or animals?

She chose to paint with Tempera on Acrylic paper. Her landscape is of grassy meadow on a Spring morning. It shows a deer resting in a patch of Flowers.

 

I had intended on letting Mini Piwi just paint but she thought the questions I gave Miss K was a game and wanted some too! I asked to position her paper like Miss K's to make a painting of an outside picture.

Her questions were: 

• Would her picture show Sun or the Moon?
• Would there be leaves or flowers or trees?
• Are there animals there?
• Is it a noisy or quiet place?

 

Mini Piwi painted flowers and a sun. Later she told Daddy it was Mickey and the Sun. An artist can chance her mind!

I was so proud of the creativity the Piwi's showed! Next we moved onto another Artist study.