Stamps & Stencils

The wonderful and endless world of stamps!!! Today each table had a kind of grouping of different kinds of stamps. We had the traditional rubber and foam stamps with ink pads. The kids got very creative and started coloring their stamps with felts and stamping them down! It worked great! Something I would never have thought of, I love kids! We had the magic marker table that was a huge hit with the older girls. But I have to credit that to crayola. I just thought that tracing stencils would be way more fun if you used magic markers! We had your regular kitchen utensils, the gravy beaters were very popular. I loved the pattern the masher left behind. Actually the egg cartons were very cool as well, they looked like bolts. We had a sponge table where I took regular sponges and cut out shapes. I also loved the texture of these. Reminded me of a dried bubble pattern? Oh and a great one for home is sticky back foam shapes stuck to matte board or card board rolls. The kids can stick the foam onto the board and then use that as a home made stamp. The card board roll was awesome because it made an endless line of stamping fun! All you need for ink pads are facecloths folded into 4s and then watered down tempura paint soaked into the cloth.
I am off to Egypt next week so I will see all of you on the 26th!!

Painting with Chance

Painting with chance was such a fun day! Everyone loved the salad spinners and paint, they turned out beautiful. Malaika had a great idea of turning them into a mobile once they were dry. For those of you that missed last class, watch for my art tutorial on what to do with salad spinners and paint on 'Our Big Earth'.
We brought out the marbles and paint as well. They were creating some great paint tracks. I was finding marbles all over the floor during clean up. I am sure that I didn't find them all. So that everyone knows, I kept all the left behind art and it is dry and ready to take home next week.
Some great print making took place in the afternoon class where the kids explored mixing the paint together with their fingers, sometimes drawing in the paint and then putting paper on top and making a print on paper. These turned out amazing! Almost like paper blots.
We also tried paper towel dying. We folded the paper towel up and then dipped the towel into the food coloring and then unfolding the towels and seeing the wonderful designs left behind. They were hard to unfold so there was some discusion around using cotton material which would probably look great.
I had a great time, took me alittle while to wake up from my morning haze, but all the smiles were so worth it!

Last week before break!!!!

This is our last week before a 2 week break.

This class we are going to explore stamps and stencils. More painting, some tracing and ink.
Hope to see you there!
Becky & Iyla

Painting Surprises

This week will be filled with tons of surprises when we put the paint in, shake it up, and then take a look! The wonderful and interesting world of chance.

Salt Dough Recipe

Salt Dough Recipe

2 cups of plain flour
1 cup of salt
1 cup of warm water

Knead the dough for about 5-10 mins. Make shapes and let air dry for 30-48 hrs or cook for about an hr (depending on size of shapes) in oven at about 175 F. Let cool and paint.

Valentine's Day Crafts

Valentine's crafts were fun! Iyla and I made some salt dough heart shapes the night before for painting. Iyla loved that table, I think she painted 10. Oh and lets not forget the sparkles! Anyone elses magnets not stick because of sparkles?
I loved the heart flowers personally. I have them in my window sill, they are so retro looking. I should post a photo of the few that we made. I got the idea from maya made, I have a link under my links list, check it out. I brought back the beads and pipe cleaner because who doesn't love a heart shaped beaded pipe cleaner? And thanks to Henry and Faye's dad we learnt that you can make a skateboard out of beads and pipe cleaner too.
I got crafty and made some potato heart stamps which worked great! I loved the look of the texture they left behind. I also set up a table full of heart collage. That was a pretty fun table full of sparkle glue, heart cut outs, ink stamps, and markers. I personally really liked the look of the newspaper hearts, something about the unplanned look of the cut out. Iyla and I had a great time preparing and creating the Valentine's day crafts!
Hope everyone has a great, happy Valentine's day and will see you all next week.
Becky & Iyla
PS A big congrats to Max who is now a BIG brother to his new little sister Linden. So exciting!

EGYPT!!!!

I am going to Egypt in March for 2 weeks!!!! My best friend is teaching grade 7 there at an International school. I will be visiting her during her spring break which happens to fall on the last 2 weeks of the program, March 5th and 12th. I want to move the last 2 weeks of class ahead to March 26th and April 2nd. If these new dates do not work with your schedule please let me know and we can workout something that works for your family.

I will be moving the start dates of the spring schedule. Does anyone have a different day that they would like to have the class on? I am at the stage where I feel like I need to set ages to each class and time, as well as, a more defined program guide.
I am still hoping for a space to help with all this growing.

Please feel free to email me with any questions and/or suggestions.
Thank you
Becky

Valentine's Day

Last week was my first week without Margret and can you believe it, I didn't get any photos?! I thought that I would try beading, lacing, weaving, sewing. It was just not messy enough for me!! This week is a couple of days before Valentine's day so we are going to create some Valentine inspired arts. Lots of sparkles, hearts, glue, and paint.

Thinking about changing the set up of the class. I have been tossing around the idea of, instead of having the whole class as a theme, having each table dedicated to one kind of material and each week using that material differently. That way if a child likes paint, there will always be paint. Or if a kid likes glueing there will always be a differrent glueing project. After next weeks class I am going to give this new set up a try and see how it goes. I would also like to end the class with an interactive story or song which will maybe help with the last 15 mins.

See you next week
Becky & Iyla

The Creative World of String

Did you know that such a world existed? Well it does and we are going to explore it this week! Weaving, lacing, stringing, hanging, painting, sparkleing, glueing. String madness!