An Afternoon in the Sun

An afternoon in the Sun
Bringing Art Outside with stuff in and around the house and yard

1.) Decorate the garden with branch trimmings and wool, string, ribbon, cloth, keys, shiny paper, feathers; anything that you can find that will shine, shimmer, or tie.
Add on long strings or pieces of cloth to catch the wind.

2.) Help kids create their own garden – let them choose the flowers and colors, add other outside art projects to brighten up their garden. Paint a garden sign, paint flower pots, paint rocks – create rock animals, paint bark, wood, old chairs. This can be an ongoing summer project.

3.) Make wind chimes with sticks (chop sticks make a great frame), shells, old nuts and bolts, keys, whatever you can find in the garage / shed.

4.) Make your own personalized hula hoop with colored ribbon and colored tape
Add beans or rice to the inside to make a musical hula hoop
The poly tubing usually used for irrigation is ideal for making hula hoops. Most hoopers use either 160 psi 3/4" diameter pipe (my favorite) or 100 psi 1" diameter. If you want a lighter hoop, or are making them for kids, use 100 psi 3/4" tubing. (Note: 160 psi 1" will make a very heavy hoop.) Tubing usually comes in 100 foot coils, and can be found at irrigation supply stores, and at some Home Depot and Lowe's-type retailers. (Prices range from $15-25 per 100' -- enough for 8 hoops)
Choose your hoop size - and cut. (My hoops are usually between 11'6" and 13' in circumference, but instead of measuring you could just make a loop that stands somewhere between navel and shoulder height.) You could use a hacksaw or a sturdy blade, but to make a safe, clean & easy cut, I've invested in a $12 ratcheting PVC cutter. It works beautifully.

5.) Chalk on driveway. Get the 3D chalk or the paintable chalk for some added fun. Chalk washes away with rain so let the kids go crazy!
Try making a chalk city with roads for toy cars, practice shapes, numbers, and letters.

6.) Paintbrushes and water on driveway, side of the house, a board. Great for young kids that loved to stuff things in their mouth!!!!!!

7.) Make a set of binoculars out of toilet tubes or egg cartons. Bring the camera (digital or their own disposable) on a nature walk with your binoculars and take pictures of what you discover. Get them to collect things along the walk. They can create a photo album or collage for their wall.

8.) Create a treasure map of your backyard. Follow along with your binoculars and find the hidden treasure. You can even make the ‘treasure’ together and bury it to find later.

9.) Make a kite. It is as simple as a sheet of paper and string. If you already have a kite, design a tail for better flying.

1.) Lay your paper down horizontally. Place the long sides of the paper on
top and bottom. This will help you get ready to make your own paper kite.
2.) Fold the paper in half and leave it folded. Do not unfold or your kite
will not be a success.
3.) Mark a point on the top edge 1/2-inch (12mm) in from the center fold.
4.) Mark a point on the bottom edge 3 inches (7.5 cm) in from the other side.
5.) Draw a line between the two points. Fold along this angled line.
6.) Pinch the first fold (the one straight down the center) to hold it closed,
as you fold back the wings along the second, angled fold line. You now have
the basic shape of the kite.
7.) Secure it together with a line of tape down the seam between the wings.
8.) Tape your stick across the top of the wings, horizontally, in line with
the side points.
9.) Use a hole-puncher to make a hole in the bottom flap, about one third of
the length from the narrower end of the flap (top of kite).
10.) Tie your kite string through the hole. Secure with a firm but gentle knot.
11.) Make a tail. This can easily be achieved by taping a length of ribbon,
plastic tape, strips of newspaper, etc. to the bottom end of the kite.
12.) Decorate your kite. Add sparkles, glitter; etc. Use pencils, pens and
paints to decorate. Do not attach anything extra or you will have an
unbalanced kite.

10.) Something on the messier and high energy side is squirt guns filled with watered down paint, shot at paper or an old sheet.

11.) Buckets of watered down paint with tennis balls. Kids can throw these paint filled balls at paper or a sheet up against a fence, side of the shed. The impact creates a splatter effect.

Bring out the sprinkler on days like these.

12.) Recycled Box designs – from small orange boxes to large fridge boxes. Make bird houses, playhouses, and insect collection boxes, make car garages for you chalk city. Or just give them some paint and a box and come up with the use later.

13.) Collect plastic containers wash them out and decorate them for storage. Puzzle pieces, jewels, or create buckets out of them by adding a handle for bugs, worms, or shells at the beach.

14.) Take beads outside. For younger ages, use larger beads and pipe cleaner. You will be amazed watching your 2 year old thread beads onto a pipe cleaner. For older kids, use beads and fishing line.

You can really bring all sorts of fun art stuff outside. Just set them up in a nice shady spot and get the imaginations soaring. From laying on your backs and finding shapes in the clouds to detailed treasure maps your limits are endless.

If you have a fun, outside art idea to share, please make a comment or post it on our facebook page. Search ‘Creative Exploration’ to join our group.

Spring Program details 2010

Spring Calendar

May 13th Explore the world of stamping. Use and create your own stamps and take home ideas to make stamps with things around the house.
-stamps and ink, sticky back foam and TP rolls, matte board cut outs, potatoes, paint and egg beaters

May 27th Dive into your senses with textures. Children will explore different textures through finger paint to buckets of goop.
-play dough with different textures, salt and paint, foam paint and combs, bucket of cornmeal goop, mixing and making your own goop, finger painting on sand paper, flour tray with toys

June 10th The Crazy world of PAINT! This fun class will teach children that there is more to painting then a paint brush and paint! They will paint with marbles, cars and trucks, spaghetti, salad spinners…and more!

June 24th Get Sticky and Build!!! Glues, tapes, stickers, what kinds of creation can you make from your recycling? This class will have no boundaries on how much tape or glue you need. Have fun taping and piling boxes watch them get higher and fall over. How high can you build your tower? There will be tin foil and crayons available to decorate these amazing towers.

Nature creations

Last week we made beautiful branches by weaving ribbons and yarn through branches. We created nature light switch covers for our bedrooms. We made nature gardens in clay. And of course nature printing of leaves, grass...whatever the kids could find in nature! It was a beautiful sunny day! We've put Iyla's branch in our garden for some color, I love it. That was my favorite of the day. Her light switch cover is in our bedroom. All of these activities are a fun way to get outside and look for different shapes and colors in nature.

This week, we are going to concentrate on making paper bag kites. The weather is calling for a chance of showers so we will set up under the covered area incase. But this could mean we might have some wind to fly our kites...that is if they dry in time. We were outside yesterday and saw some kids with some kites and thought it would be a great time making our own. So, I've got streamers, sparkles, paints, stickers everything to make the brightest, shiniest masterpiece in the sky!

Week 5 - Balloons!!!

Hooray for the sun! We had a great day last Thursday. I acutally got a tan that day it was so nice out! I am happy too since it was Balloon theme. We had bubble wrap printing, which made a nice honey comb pattern. We had balloon heads and of course water paint balloons!!! I had a bunch of white sheets that I cut up and made into 'flags, capes, curtains...' whichever, and the kids had a great time jumping on the balloons; tie dying the material with wonderful paint explosions!!!! Super fun day, we had naked kids running around covered in paint - to me that is a very successful class of exploration.

This weeks theme is creating with nature. We will be branch weaving, grass printing, nature arranging with foam and clay, painting and printing nature and creating our very own nature light covers for our bedrooms!!! The weather forecast says sunny so hope to see you out! Don't worry I won't forget the cream this week.

Contact Info...

Hi Parents,

Some how in the daze of it I have lost my cell phone so if you are wondering if class if running you can call my home phone 250.338.6310 as for the afternoon class...I will leave a message on my answering machine for you. I just hope that I find my phone. Another problem I am having is with my shaw account. Is anyone else only able to pull up their address book? This is really causing some problems with my online courses...
So if you have emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you this is why.
Becky

Tomorrows Theme...come on sun!

This weeks theme is going to be the exploration of balloons! We are going to milk rubber gloves filled with paint and squeeze punctured balloons also filled with paint. I have looked up and mastered the water balloon fill up so we are going to do a water balloon splat as well as decorating balloon faces with all different kinds of materials. Children can use the materials supplied to create their balloon friends or take things from nature. Children will also explore bubble wrap printing. Now all of this is counting on the 'NO RAIN' factor once again. Thanks to some of you S.M.A.R.T parents I will bring a big tarp to set everything up on this time. There will, of course, be hot coffee and water and this week I will be bringing the ghetto!

Just letting parents and children know that this weekend, Sat 16th, is Market Days in Cumberland. There will be a kids zone activity tent set up. Creative Exploration will be providing art activities until 2 after which there will be scarecrow creating. The theme for Market day is the Olympics so art acitivities will include a tennis toss, mosaics, facepainting and other fun acitivies.

What luck...

What luck, as soon as we change our classes to outside we have rain! I want parents and children that registered to note that the end of the spring program will be pushed back to the 25th of June because of our sick week and last week being rain.
We were able to have the morning class before it rained, I am calling that a test run. I forgot about the elements such as wind and paper flying around! So I really hope that it stops raining this week :(
Our theme for our first week outside was 'Art sports.' We played golf on paper, we used squirt guns and a combo of bowling and soccer with cups with paint sitting waiting to be kicked over from the soccer ball. Cups flew, paint didn't, it was an interesting try but not what I expected. The wind was blowing and it was cold, thanks to all the paretns and kids that bundled up and braved the weather last week for our first week outside. Lets hope for better weather this week...