Precocious Art Critic?

Erin (getting ready to do an art project):  What can I draw you?  I can draw people!
Brian: Draw me the Mona Lisa.
E: What does she look like?
B (looks up the picture on his phone): There!
E: Wow. Why is she smiling?
B: …….  !

"Take 10 Interesting Pictures"

We have an "I'm Bored" jar - a jar with about 50 little slips of paper with different activities on them.  If any kid says, "Mom, I'm bored." she gets to pick out a slip and has to do the thing on that.  Some are chores, like "help fold laundry" some are fun like "do hopscotch outside".

This morning Erin was bored and got the "Take 10 Interesting Pictures" assignment.  Here they are:

Big Painting with Big Paints

Materials: 

5 - colors of tempra paint

2 - 2 1/2" brushes

1 - enormous sheet of brown paper 

2 - very eager girls

Directions: 

1. Spread paper out on concrete

2. Dribble lots of paint on paper

3. Let girls paint. 

4. Stand back and be amazed. 

5. Repeat 2-4.

Erin the Meteorologist

"Mom, guess what I heard on the radio??!!?  Tomorrow there's going to be SHOUTING and THUNDERSTORMS on EASTER!!!"

(Note, the before and after drawing.)

WW: Robin's Dinosaur Collage

Fun with Clay

I picked up some modeling clay at the dollar store (LOVE that place).  The kids went to town!  Over one hour of free form play.  Robin started by using each stick as its own thing, then resorted to making teeny pieces and constructing the longest archipelago known to Casa de McMiller.

Erin busied herself with making "Mini-Me's".  Note similar pose. 

That was a fine $2. 

Project: Dry Erase Markers on Picture Frames

OK, the title kinda tells the story.  Endless writing surface, kind of a thrill because they get to use "grown up" things such as dry erase markers and picture frames with glass.  Nothing like the element of danger, or the forbidden, to make something extra interesting. 

What happens when Robin gets the camera

Oh, and then she drops it and cracks the lens. 

A future mommy

Why does this:

Remind me so much of this? 

Paint Your Body Project

It's been awhile since we've done some big, messy, fun projects.  I busted out a pile of cotton swabs, some large paper, an egg crate full of tempera paint.  I had the girls strip to their skivvies and I traced their body outlines.  The goal was to color in their bodies, putting on clothes, details, anything.

Erin got right into it and "dressed" herself.

Robin took the instructions more literally.

An Evening of Yes

We got home from our first swim lesson today.  Dinner already consumed, "bath" already taken, Erin asked if we could paint.  With the "big" paints (tempera).  This is an outside-only activity, and as the temperatures creeped towards 100F today, it sounded like a great idea to go outside. So, yes, we can go outside and do big paint.

I fixed each girl up with paint and paper, and let them go to work.  They worked on blobs, butterflies, etc.  Then they got into it.


Yes, you can paint with the wheels of a car.

Yes, you can paint with rocks and leaves.

Yes, you can paint with your hands, cotton swabs, and just about anything else you find outside.

Another artist in the family

Robin drew a portrait of "Dad".  And some fish.  And some scribbles. 

Happy Mother's Day!

This morning, Robin settled into drawing.

A: Can you draw me a dog?

R: No, I don't know how to draw a dog.

A: How about an elephant?  Can you draw an elephant?

R: No.  I can't draw an elephant.  All I can draw is a lobster.  See?  Here, mama.  I draw a lobster for you.

May your Mother's day be filled with Lobster!

Paint!

This started out as a simple paint a wooden butterfly (thank you, dollar bin at Michael's) and of course turned out to be a full-body exploration of paint and color

I just love how they get so into their work. They were very serious about the whole affair. 

I am starting to get smarter about these things.  I put out the paint, already poured (just a little teeny bit) and used cotton swabs as the brushes.  Not that that mattered, within a few minutes they'd discarded the cotton swabs for fingers.  Then hands.  Then whole bodies.  Yes, they made belly-button prints.  And the mess was quite minimal since there was only about 1 tbs of paint in each of 6 egg-carton wells.

Robin loves drawing

Robin is constantly drawing. Most of the time she's drawing the letter "R" and singing the tune in The Letter Factory"  ("The A says Ah! The B says B-B-B-B!  The C says cuh!  And the D says duh!") I showed her how to write an "R" for Robin a while back - one big line, one circle, one little line - and it stuck.  This is a drawing of some letters and some people.  Only she knows which is which. But it's the family at the playground.  

Kid Pictures

The memory on Erin's camera was full.  The last time pictures were downloaded form it was about 18 months ago.  There were 750. I haven't looked through all of them yet, and nearly all are blurry, smudgy, unidentifiable color.  Even so, there's tons of cool images in there. 

 Things you'd see in a funky frame and displayed at a coffee shop, on sale for more money than you'd like to spend for a blurry, smudgy, unidentifiable image. 

 

Project Sparkly

The last trip to the dollar store resulted in a glitter shaker set.  What better way to spend some time with a 4-year-old playdate than to make some sparkle-laden paper plate puppets?!?  The results were stunning:

However, the cleanup was is awful.  Sparkles are e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.

The floor, the sofa, the counter, the keyboard, my eye sockets, and probably all over our dinner tonight but who can say. I love the creative, let the kids explore and experiment projects, but the cleanup* kills me.

*The clean up from yesterday's impromptu 15-minute project took at least 30 minutes to clean up and still resulted in some warped IKEA floorboards.  And the floor still feels funky underfoot. I feel we will be finding sparkles for a few weeks.  Good thing the kitchen is going to be demolished in a few days. 

Chalk

When using a new set of sidewalk chalk, why stop at coloring the sidewalk?

More Erin Art

I'm just fascinated at how Erin is expressing her view of the world.

This, depending on her mood, is explained as a rainbow and gold left by the little elves, or the planets.  And she'll tell you which one is Mars (the red one) and which one is Jupiter and which one is Earth, and which one is. . .

'


Then there's this:



Which is her bones as seen by an x-ray.  The x-ray is on the left, the "window" of chalk smudge.

This is interesting as I try to see into the mind of my little sparkle girl. She can draw a person, quite well, when she wishes. She doesn't normally choose to. I look at the drawings by the other kids and there's the big head, minimal facial features, stick arms/legs, fingers, toes, sometimes a body mostly not. And there's this.  What I've learned is if I ask Erin the right questions she can point out to me what she intended - often accentuating the feature she's focused on.  Big tummy for when she has a bonk there, eyes when she's thinking about looking at something, etc.  Her vision is truly her own.

Crayon Project

We had a jar full of broken crayon stubs.  Erin and I set to work this morning peeling off the paper, putting chunks into a mini-muffin tin, baking for a few minutes, and were richly rewarded with new, chunky, Kandinsky-esque results.