Piet Mondrian

Supplies:
*cardstock or canvas
*paint in primary colors
*pencil
*ruler
*black electrical tape

Slideshow about Mondrian: https://www.slideshare.net/nivaca2/piet-mondrian-for-kids

Some of his most famous works: https://learnodo-newtonic.com/piet-mondrian-famous-paintings

Make your own Mondrian painting! Activity here: http://www.happinessishomemade.net/kids-homeschool-art-lesson-piet-mondrian/ (I'm planning on putting the tape down before the painting process rather than after).

Reflections in Water Art

Supplies:
*regular white paper
*spray bottle with water
*washable markers

Art involving reflection in water:

Activity here: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2011/09/reflections-for-2011-12.html

Crayon Etchings

Supplies needed:
*cardstock
*crayons
*black paint
*foam brushes
*something to etch with (toothpick?)

Activity found here: http://eighteen25.com/2010/05/summer-craft-ideas-part-one/

Jackson Pollock

Supplies:

various brushes

other things for flinging paint (sticks, combs, toothbrushes, yarn)

paint (watered down in bowls)

Watch video (probably just some parts): 

Look at some of his works:

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/jackson-pollock-famous-paintings

Activity found here:

http://www.classic-play.com/jackson-pollock-art-lesson-for-kids/

(I'll just use large paper instead of a sheet)

Michelangelo

Supplies:

paper

tape

paint or markers/crayons/pencils

desk or table large enough to lay underneath

Watch video:

Look at some of his works:

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/michelangelo-famous-works

Sistine Chapel:

Activity:
Tape some paper underneath a table or desk and paint (or draw if you don't want to deal with dripping paint) upside down like Michelangelo did.

St. Patrick's Day Art

Mar. 4-17, 2014

We had some fun doing art projects for St. Patrick's Day. I started them off doing one of the classic elementary art projects: wrapping tissue paper around the end of a pencil and gluing it onto paper. We cut out green tissue paper and glued the paper onto a shamrock shape:

Obviously my kids lot interest WAY before they managed to fill in the entire shamrock: 

We also painted some watercolors: 

Two rainbows.

The one on the right has a pot of gold at the end of it.

And for extra fun on St. Patrick's Day morning, we made rainbow toast: 

This was such a big hit that we've had rainbow toast for breakfast several times since!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Valentine's Day!

Feb. 10-14, 2014

Holidays are always fun at school! We had lots of fun with Valentine's Day this year. First we painted Valentines to send to our family members:

Then we made our Valentine boxes for co-op (a giant Lego):

We started learning about estimation with Conversation Hearts: 

And we graphed our hearts by color (graph found here):

Happy Valentine's Day!

January Art

January 7-11, 2014

Both of these activities kind of ended up being busts, but that's okay! Art's supposed to be about the process when you're this age (or so I hear).

First, bubble prints:

Allegedly we were supposed to blow bubbles, lay a piece of white paper on top and the color would transfer to the paper. We got some very, very faint prints, but Seth was not impressed.

Next, chromatography: 

Had some mixed results here. Possibly we're just not doing this right, but we had a hard time getting the filters into a spot where they could absorb water but not get saturated. 

Also, the kids pretty much just wanted to drop a ton of food coloring on the filters, which pretty much defeated the purpose: 

A few of the finished products: 

Pretty, even if we didn't quite get the results we were hoping for!

Christmas Art

Dec. 9-12, 2013

Christmas is a great time for fun art projects!

First we made some ornaments out of pipe cleaners and beads:

Candy canes, icicles, a globe ornament, and snowflakes

Then we made some wreaths out of paper plates, torn paper, glue and glitter:

Seth's wreath

Catherine's wreath:

Catherine was a bit more into this whole glitter thing...

We also made cards for our family with glitter glue.

It was great fun and the cards were so cute--I just wish I had kept one for myself!

Color Wheels, Air Pressure and 3D Shapes

November 7th, 2013

I decided to let Seth have a little more control over some of the things we did at school, and, of course, he picked some of the fun science experiments! First up was a color wheel using colored water and paper towels (blame Blogger for the crooked picture). We set it up and let it sit for a few hours to see what would happen: 

A few hours later the empty cups were full and we had some new colors on our wheel! Seth recorded the new colors and wrote down his favorite colors (pink and purple). 

We also did a fun experiment with air pressure. The kids LOVED watching the bottle spray water all over the place as the balloon deflated.  

We also started learning about 3D shapes. After introducing the shapes to Seth, we had a good time making some 3D shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Then we went on a shape hunt around our house! This was a great way to reinforce that a circle is not a sphere and a square is not a cube (which is really confusing at first): 

This was a lot of fun, but it sure was hard to find anything pyramid-shaped in our house!

Candy Experiments & Gratitude Leaves

November 4th, 2013

We put some of our Halloween candy to good use for school! First we did an experiment about whether the candy would sink or float in a bowl of water. First Seth wrote down his hypothesis (above), then performed the experiment: 

After observing the candy, he would go back and write down his conclusion and see whether his hypothesis was right (FYI--pretty much everything he got floated). 

Next we opened our M&Ms and Skittles and sorted them by color. Then we made a bar graph to compare the colors and did a little math using the graph. It was easy for Seth to recognize when the bars were equal, and to see that a bar with two more squares meant that there were two more yellow candies than blue ones. But he had a hard time translating that to addition--instead of comparing the two columns and just adding one or two more, he would try to re-count the entire column. 

To kick off the Thanksgiving season, we made gratitude leaves and hung them around the house. I drew leaf shapes on construction paper and Seth would cut them out and draw a picture of something he was grateful for.  

And then we hung them all over the house to remind us of all the things we're grateful for! (Seth is apparently very grateful for broccoli soup). 

Halloween School Activities

October 28-30th, 2013

We finally got some use out of our number magnets and used them to make subtraction equations! We used some of the candy we got from our trunk-or-treat as manipulatives. "Seth got eight pieces of candy and ate five. How many were left?"

I also got brave and let the kids help make Halloween sugar cookies. They had a great time cutting them out and decorating them later with their friends.

We also had a lot of fun at our co-op Halloween party! We decorated cookies, sang songs, and wrapped each other up like mummies!

Pumpkin Math!

October 21st, 2013

We ended up with quite a few pumpkins after our trip to the pumpkin patch, so I thought it would be fun to use them for some school activities. First Seth lined them all up according to size and labeled them 1 through 8. 

Then we filled out a paper for each pumpkin. First he wrote the number, then drew a picture. We used a ruler to measure height, a measuring tape to measure circumference, and a scale to measure weight. 

In retrospect, 8 pumpkins was WAY too many for a little guy. Four would have been just about perfect.

The best part, of course, was carving some of them that night!

Equations and Ghosts

October 15th, 2013

I started introducing Seth to written equations. We would take turns: first, I would tell a story problem using his cars ("There were 5 cars driving and 2 cars crashed. How many cars are left?") and he would write the equation and solve the problem. Then he'd tell me a story and I'd write the equation. He had a lot of fun crashing the cars and got a very basic understanding of how equations work.

And, for a fun Halloween craft we decided to make ghost windsocks out of styrofoam cups and tissue paper. 

BEWARE!

October 2nd, 2013

A nice mix of art & writing for Halloween! We made this signs to hang in our front window (using blood red paint, of course!). Seth had a great time painting ghosts and writing scary messages: 

(I know it's sideways. Blogger is stupid sometimes).

This one says, "Boo! Beware!" I've discovered that Seth is much more agreeable about writing if he can see the purpose behind it. He hates worksheets/books, but he'll write someone a letter or make a sign. So I just have to get creative about his writing projects. 

Bubble Day!

August 9th, 2013

This was our last day of school before we took a two week vacation, so we decided to have some fun with all the bubble stuff I'd been researching on Pinterest.

First, we attempted to make art by blowing colored bubbles onto white paper:

This was kind of a wash--the bubbles were really light on the paper.

Maybe we needed more food coloring?

Then we experimented with different types of bubble blowers: 

The Washcloth Over The Waterbottle was a big success!

The Group of Straws Banded Together was a complete flop

The flops: straw blowers and Dollar Tree "Grab-A-Bubble" bubbles (just regular bubbles!)

Luckily the Washcloth Blowers were extremely awesome: 

Plus they left this really cool bubble cocoon laying around: 

Bubbles were great summer science!