Birds

It's Wednesday which means art atelier day. Little S is really into it and he's a little disappointed because this week it's on hold. The mom hosting isn't here because it's one of those long May weekends and half of France is gone this week. Since we're in the middle of a two part project with them we decided to just do nothing this week and wait it out. Meanwhile another mom asked me if she could do something at her house with us this week. We don't spend much time with this mom but Little S loves her two girls so I said sure. Isn't it funny how news travels! Lots of people want to get involved suddenly.

On the weekend it rained and rained and to keep little people busy we dug in the recycling bin. We found some paper towel rolls and that had me thinking of something I saw recently on Lori's Camp Creek blog. I let him brainstorm but I kind of helped him along with it. First he started playing with the pieces, cutting up boxes. It sort of started looking like a bird so I pushed him a bit. "what's it look like?" Silence. "Ohhh, I think it sort of looks like a beak there" Silence. He cuts up a bunch of boxes and I grab a triangle and muse. "oh look it kind of looks like a WING doesn't it?" Lightbulb clicks on and then he got excited, "I'm going to make a bird!" After that I stopped the prompting and let him solve all the assembly. Then we looked up parrots on the computer, videos and nature sites, and then he'd run back and add something. He chose all the shapes and cut them and I taped them on with packing tape. Then he painted it all with acrylics. It turned out kind of cute but the whole thing was more a process than a result. He had so much fun constructing it and imagining where everything would go. This is a great exercise. The recycling bin is a goldmine for the imagination.

On Monday after school we painted. I just got some new ink and brushes so we did these painting similar to the ones I talked about from the Dali musuem project post, layered paint with ink. It makes some gorgeous paintings. First I let him choose two colors, which normally I might let him mix for the experience of mixing, but I was feeling lazy. We each painted swapping the colors back and forth, turning the pictures all different ways to see it from all directions. Then we let it dry five minutes (a long five minutes for a four year old) and then we did Pollock ink splashes and drops. I really enjoy doing these, fun project with good results. You'll have to try this one. Bottled ink is pretty easy to find and you can just use ordinary brushes. One little note though, dilute the ink by at least 1/3 and don't give them the entire jar for dipping because it's just too tempting for them to keep dipping. Put a bit of the diluted ink in a small dish.



They're pretty. Little symbols here and there, a smiley face and an escargot. French kids love drawing escargots! Mine of course is the swirly feminine one. I still have to varnish them.

I'll share the atelier project "new mom" does this week, I'm curious what she'll do. And then when the other mom comes back and finishes her project I'll share that too. It's a really good one.