Creative Family Fun

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Art Activities

Books = Fun: Square Cat

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We recently discovered a fun gem of a book, Square Cat by Elizabeth Schoonmaker.

Square Cat is the story of Eula, a decidedly square-shaped cat. She doesn’t like being square and longs to be round like her friends Patsy and Maude. With a little help from her friends, she learns that it’s kind of fun to be square.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much the girls loved this book.

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After reading and rereading the book about a dozen times, we decided to draw our own square cats.

We decided on our favorite combination of oil pastels and liquid watercolors. I got the girls started with a large square on a piece of heavy-weight paper.

The both got started turning their square into a cat.

The above picture is AJ’s (age 3). Don’t you like those big, long ears?

This picture is Lizzie’s (age 5). She’s been going through a stage where she tries to copy pictures exactly.

I’ve been amazed at how much her drawing has improved since she started this copying phase.

Once we were satisfied with our drawings, we got out the liquid watercolors.

Since square cat was orange, that was the color we went with.

Lizzie decided to paint her entire paper and AJ just painted her cat. I love how they both turned out!

Our current favorite art materials are oil pastels and liquid watercolors. What are your favorites?

Get Crafty: Painting With Worms!

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After our exploration of worms, I thought it would be fun to do a bit of worm-related artwork.

I’ve been promising the girls some messy art and painting with worms sounded like a fun idea.

We didn’t actually paint with worms, just a nice pile of cooked spaghetti. Fun and messy!

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I decided this would be an activity best done outside.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and the girls could get as messy as they wanted without any worry about getting paint on the carpet.

I found a plastic lid from a storage container and put a few globs of different colored paint. I loosened the paint up a bit with water to make it easier for the girls to use.

I then cut off a large piece of paper from a roll of plain brown gift wrap and taped it down to the driveway. (You can usually find this at the dollar store. It’s an expensive way to create some big, messy art!)

The girls were a bit hesitant at first

They gently dipped a single spaghetti noodle and wiggled it across the paper.

It took a bit of encouragement, but they finally went for it, grabbing piles of pasta, mixing all the colors together, splattering the paint, giggling, and having fun.

And, when they were done with the spaghetti, they added their hand prints!

This was such a fun way to get a little messy!

What’s your favorite way to make big, messy art?

Art Lessons: Creating Feathers

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Since we are learning about birds this week, I thought it would be fun to make some pretty artwork with feathers.

Feathers are both beautiful and easy to draw, so I hoped the girls would have a fun experience creating them.

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In order to help them out, I cut stencils from an empty cereal box.

I cut basic feather shapes in several different sizes, so they could cover their paper with unique feathers.

We used oil pastels on black construction paper. But, if you don’t have oil pastels, crayons would also work well. (I would use a lighter color of paper if using crayons.)

I showed the girls how to use the stencils and instead of instructing, I worked alongside them.

AJ used her stencils and scribbled a few lines inside each, which is how she does all her artwork. She creates scribbles in as many colors as possible!

Lizzie watched me carefully and noticed that instead of coloring my feathers all one color, I was using different colors.

The more she worked, the more creative she got. I love her multicolored feathers!

This was an easy project to set up and a nice way to create a beautiful picture!

Watercolor Resist Flowers

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This isn’t our first attempt at watercolor resist. We first tried our hand at it with our watercolor resist circles.

We keep coming back to this method, because it’s fun and the results always look so pretty.

This time we decided our subjects were going to be flowers.

Lizzie has been very interested in drawing lately and I knew she was pretty confident in her ability to draw a flower. I wanted her to enjoy the process and not get frustrated.

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She drew her flowers in pencil, then traced over them with oil pastels. (You can use crayons for this part. The results will be the same.)

When she was done with the tracing, we got out the paint.

Her black lines helped her stay within the lines a lot better, because ultimately that was HER goal with this project.

So in the end, this project wasn’t a watercolor resist in its truest form because that’s not what Lizzie had in mind. But, the results were fabulous!

So, what was AJ, my 2-1/2 year old, doing? Why, she was working on her own project.

She drew as many lines and circles as she could with many different colors of oil pastels.

When she was finally satisfied with her drawing, she started painting too. She was very deliberate with her painting until she noticed the colors started mixing!

So, here’s AJ’s finished project… a very green watercolor resist abstract painting!

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary Mural

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Mary, Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bell,
And cockleshells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Today we decided to make Mary’s garden using leftover cardboard from Christmas.

I wanted a craft that was bigger in scale than what we usually do and we had a large cardboard box that was just waiting for the perfect craft project.

The girls were thrilled to see the big piece of cardboard laying on the ground and couldn’t wait to see what else I set out.

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The materials you use for this project can be as open-ended as you want.

I happened to have some celery, so I cut off the bottom to use as a stamp.

I also cut off two pieces from an empty egg carton. I left the pieces in groups of two to help us make some flower-like shapes.

I also set out a few colors of paint and a brush for each color.

I put a couple of old t-shirts on the girls and they went to work.

They stamped for quite awhile, trying out all the different options and colors.

Then while AJ kept stamping (and so did I), Lizzie got to work with the paint brushes.

She decided there needed to be a sky and in true little-kid form, she created a blue strip across the top of cardboard.

Then she added a sun. I love the look of the orange circle painted directly on the wet blue paint.

Finally, after a lot of painting, stamping, and reciting of Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, it was time to let our paint dry.

After the paint was dry, we came back with some green markers and drew the stems and leaves.

I wrote out the nursery rhyme off to the side to complete the project.

The girls are very proud of their painting and so am I! Mary, Mary Quite Contrary has a very beautiful garden!

Tomorrow, we’re going to attempt to put our own spin on the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. Stay tuned!