Creative Family Fun

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Art Activities

Life-Size Portraits

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I had a completely different plan when we began this project.

Yes, I had planned life-size, but the original plan was to make scarecrows.

The girls had a different idea!

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We began with a roll of brown wrapping paper. You can find this paper easily, and it’s usually inexpensive. I found ours at our local dollar store.

We rolled out the paper and had the girls take turns lying down on it. We used painter’s tape on each end to keep the paper from rolling back up.

I then traced around each girl in pencil. (Warning: this part of the process can cause intense giggling and has been known to tickle!)

We rummaged through our craft closet and found bits of scrap fabric, scrap paper, yarn, and tissue paper. We also grabbed our markers and crayons.

After we had everything set up, I stepped back and let the girls create on their own. I can’t begin to tell you how hard that was for me to do, but I did it and I’m so glad I did.

They considered the idea of scarecrows for about 2 minutes, then completely dismissed that idea.

They started adding long hair with bows. They added necklaces and dresses.

It wasn’t long before a couple of pretty princesses appeared. One was happy and dressed for a ball. The other was sad and crying huge tears because she couldn’t go to the ball. Oh, how I love their creativity.

We do a lot of art & craft projects in our house.

I found our life-size portraits especially valuable because we focused on the process. I let the girls take full control of the project and the outcome was even better than I could imagine.

Have you ever created life-size art with your kids?

Painting with Carrots

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When we harvested our carrots this year, I discovered exactly why I should have thinned them out.

We had several carrots that were very, very tiny because they had no room to grow. (Note to self: thin the carrots next year!)

I thought it would be fun to get a little creative with them.

So, I pulled a few that were on their way to the compost bin and let Miss Preschool have a little fun painting.

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I left the carrots whole and told her she could use them as paint bushes.

We got out a few colors of paint and paper and she started painting.

She painted, stamped, smeared, and enjoyed spreading the carrots around in the paint.

We even had one carrot that never turned orange. Since that one was bigger, I cut it in two and Miss Preschool used that one to stamp circles on her paper.

We had tons of fun with this open-ended art project. If ever the opportunity presents itself, do a little painting with non-traditional brushes.

Here are some more fun examples: 

Teach Preschool painted with dominoes
Mess for Less painted with shredded paper
No Time for Flashcards painted with various items from the recycle bin

What sort of non-traditional paint brush do your kids enjoy using?

Underground Carrot Painting

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After reading the book, The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, my youngest and I were inspired to create out own carrot artwork.

I was inspired by this botanical water color lesson on Classic Play and adapted it for my 4-year-old to try.

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We began by talking about how carrots grow. What part of the carrot is below ground and what part of the carrot is above ground?

I worked right along beside my daughter and we drew a line across the middle of our paper for the ground. There is no need to be straight, after all the ground is never a straight line.

Under the line we drew the shape of the carrot and above the line we drew the wispy leaves. We used the illustrations in the book for guidance.

After we were satisfied with our drawings, we traced and colored our carrot with oil pastels. We love to use these oil pastels from Discount School Supply.

You can do this step with crayon, but you will want to use a heavy hand while coloring. I love the oil pastels because they are so dark and waxy without having to press down too hard.

After coloring, we used liquid water colors (also from Discount School Supply) to paint the ground and the sky.

Since we used oil pastels for the carrots, we could have painted over the drawing to make a nice water color resist painting.

Miss Preschool did not want to, so she just painted up to the edge of her carrot. I think her painting turned out fabulous!

We had a lot of fun exploring The Carrot Seed and this was just one of the projects we did. Stay tuned tomorrow to find out the rest of our carrot projects!

Painted Suncatchers

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We’re trying to bring some fun spring colors into our house, so to decorate our windows, we made these fun and pretty painted suncatchers.

We’ve made suncatchers before using clear Contact paper, like these simple tissue paper ones or this flower garden.

But, this time, instead of tissue paper, we decided to paint our Contact paper.

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Supplies Needed:

Clear Contact paper
Acrylic paint

Yes, it just take two supplies to make these pretty suncatchers.

I prepped the project by cutting squares of Contact paper. I peeled the backing off and taped them to our table, sticky side up.

I used painter’s tape to tape the Contact paper down just so it would not move around while the girls tried to paint.

I gave each girl a selection of paints and brushes. I asked them to think about spring while they were working. Both started painting their own interpretation of a flower garden.

My original plan was to cut flower shapes out of their painted sticky paper, but the girls did not want me to cut up their masterpieces.

So, when they were finished painting, we sealed up their paintings with a second sheet of Contact paper.

I did not wait until the paintings were dry to add the second square of Contact paper. Once it’s sealed, the paint won’t get on anything.

We hung our suncatchers up on our patio window so that they could get plenty of sunshine, plus we can admire their beauty every time we eat.

It was fun to paint on a new and different surface and I love the look that we ended up with.

Have you ever painted on sticky paper?

P.S. Apparently great minds think alike. Soon after we finished this project, I read this post on Picklebums about See-Through Paintings. You should check out their twist of this same project!

Becoming Warhol ~ Kids Art Activity

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New York City is full of museums, so it was hard to pick one for us to talk about during our exploration of New York City.

But, I ultimately chose The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). It allowed us to see all sorts of fun examples of art and well as introduced one particular artist, Andy Warhol.

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After viewing examples of his artwork, both online and in the book, Usborne The Children’s Book of Art: Internet Linked, we were ready to make our own Warhol-inspired artwork.

We used Marilyn Monroe, by Warhol, as our inspiration.

We talked about how the picture looked like a real person, but the colors were different. Warhol used bright colors such as pink and yellow in his picture.

We talked about how art could be anything. It could be realistic or not. Or in the case of Marilyn Monroe, it could be a combination of both.

Then, it was time for the girls to get to work.

I prepped this project by printing out a full letter-sized picture of each girl in black and white.

I found a picture of just their faces since it was most like our inspiration piece. I then got out our markers and told the girls to have fun.

They were a bit hesitant and their first instinct was to try and color their pictures as realistic as possible. So, we looked at our inspiration again. Aha, inspiration struck!

The girls made bright colored hair, hot pink lips, electric blue eyes, orange noses, cool bows, and lots of freckles.

Yes, we became Warhol!

To round out our learning, we read Uncle Andy’s by James Warhola. Warhola is Andy Warhol’s nephew and he wrote and illustrated this delightful picture book describing his childhood visits with his eccentric uncle. It was a fun and very kid-appropriate introduction to Warhol.

Have you studied any of the great artists with your kids? Which ones have you learned about?