Frames

A tip found on The Artful Parent to encourage creativity is to draw frames for the children to paint/draw in. Irresistible! My frames only remained empty for 5 minutes before being used and abused by two excited boys!

Art jar

I stole the idea for the art jar on Chasing Cheerios, and montessorised it a bit with the tongs. It has been such a hit with Alex! I am convinced that at least half of the success of the art station has been down to the art jar. When I ask him what he wants to do after school, his answer is invariably: "I want to do the ideas box" (he has a bit of trouble remembering the name, so we might just rebaptise it!)

Our "art jar" is not only about art. It also disguises some writing activities since it is a perpetual challenge to convince Alex to practice handwriting. Some of the writing activities were found in The Write Start by Jennifer Hallissy, which is an amazing book with tons of ideas to encourage writing:

- writing your favourite menu

- making a voucher book for someone

- writing clues for a treasure hunt

- writing a card to someone

- making a doorknob sign

I can't remember most of them now but do check this book if you know a reluctant writer in need of help.

Art Station

Alex (5) and his brother Leo (2.5) have got a new art station! I have rearranged their space in the kitchen to optimise it for creativity. All the art materials are organised in a tidy way in the drawers on the left and I always make sure there is ample space on the desk to carry out any project. Each of them has their own drawer in which I put printables that are adapted to their skills. They also have a blank sketch book each with detachable pages so that their art is kept in one place. On the right of the picture you can see a blue bin; In there I put things from the recycling: egg cartons, cereal boxes, kitchen towel rolls and any interesting packaging. They use them for junk modelling. So far this setup has worked really well and both boys go to the drawers to find new exciting things to do.

We also got a new easel, the Melissa and Doug Deluxe Art easel, which is great. It has three positions to accomodate the children's size, a chalkboard on one side, a dry erase marker board on the other and a roll of paper down the middle that can be pulled over the top for painting. I made them the Petit Artiste Art Smock from Sew Liberated which they like pulling over their heads independently.


More photos of their art to come!

Un livret des tableaux de Monet

Il y a deux mois, apres avoir lu The Magical Garden of Claude Monet avec Alex, je lui ai proposé de faire un livret de tableaux de Monet. Il était tres excité a cette idée mais le temps est passé et j'ai fini par oublier. Il y a quelques temps il me l'a rappelé, et nous avons enfin fait ce livret.

Two months ago, after reading The Magical Garden of Claude Monet with Alex, I offered to make a booklet of Monet's paintings together. He was very excited at the idea but time passed and I forgot. Some time ago he reminded me and we finally made the booklet.

J'ai plié trois feuilles de papier A4 en deux et cousu le pli a la machine a coudre. J'ai imprimé les images de tableaux de Monet ainsi que leurs titres et les ai découpés (tableaux et titres séparemment) pour Alex parce que je suspectais que ca serait trop long pour lui de tout découper et qu'il abandonnerait rapidement.

I folded three A4 sheets of paper in two and sewed the fold with the sewing machine. I printed the pictures of Monet's paintings as well as their titles and cut them up (paintings and titles separately) for Alex because I suspected that doing the cutting would exhaust his energy and threaten his interest for this activity.

Apres avoir collé le portrait de Monet sur la couverture, Alex choisissait l'image qu'il voulait coller sur la page suivante. De mon coté, je choisissais deux titres possibles pour le tableau, lui lisait, et il devait décider lequel des deux titres allait mieux avec le tableau. Il le collait ensuite en dessous.

After gluing the portrait of Monet on the front page, Alex chose the painting he wanted to glue into the next page. I picked the painting's title and another title which I read to him. He had to decide which one was the painting's original title and glue it underneath it.

Les images des tableaux de Monet sont disponibles en téléchargement gratuit ici pour la version francaise.

The pictures of Monet's paintings are available as a free download from here for the English version.

Cape de joie

Vous savez ces jolis papiers de bonbons colorés et translucents? Ca fait longtemps que je les garde pour quelque projet artistique non défini, et hier ils ont enfin vu leur jour de gloire.

You know all those pretty translucent sweet wrappers? I had been keeping them for a while for some undefined artistic project. They finally saw their glorious day.

Au début, l'idée était de faire un effet vitrail en accrochant une mosaique de papiers bonbons a la fenetre. Puis, l'idée a muté en couverture pour fée, avant de se changer en robe de princesse. Finalement, ce bel assemblage aura fini en Cape de Joie.

At first, the idea was to get a stained glass effect by attaching the mosaic to the window. Then, the idea turned into a blanket for a fairy, and then a princess dress. In the end, this beautiful piecing ended up as a Cloak of Joy.

Ko

Je n'avais pas prévu d'écrire ce soir, mais je viens de découvrir une artiste hors du commun, une peintre d'exception, et il fallait que je partage ca.

Ko peint sur des sujets qui lui tiennent a coeur, tels que la maternité, la paternité, l'allaitement, l'enfance et les relations affectives, mais fait aussi de magnifiques paysages.

J'étais toute tremblante en découvrant son art, et je pense que c'est parce qu'elle met tant d'elle-meme dans ses oeuvres qu'elles ne peuvent pas laisser indifférent. C'est aussi parce que ce sont des sujets qui me sont chers, et qu'elle a réussi a mettre en images des émotions qui me submergent.

Ne perdez pas une seconde et allez voir ca de vous meme: http://kocreations.canalblog.com/