Educational Art Thoughts

Flower Collages: Using pre printed pictures or not?

Tue, 04 May 2010 21:14:32 +0000

There is such a proliferation of preprinted and cut out materials for children to use all over the place. There are coloring books and workbooks galore all over the internet and in thousands of early childhood classrooms all over the world. I however, if you know my work, know that I do not prescribe to [...]

Kids Learn about Opposite Colors: Painting lessons (part 6)

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:39:15 +0000

We did something something interesting with the kids in our painting activity today. I am trying to teach them some important basic concepts through painting so I gave them an opposite colors activity. A while back we had done an activity on how to make a color wheel so I had the children take those [...]

Draw a Carousel Horse: Drawing with Children (part 7)

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:55:23 +0000

If you are of a certain age level you most probably recognize that tag line from the famous Mr. Ed. But a horse is a horse of course and quite difficult to draw. It really is amazing that my small group of 7-9 yr olds are really able to copy lots of these images. This [...]

Kids Try Abstract Art: Drawing with Children (part 6)

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:06:14 +0000

Our last drawing class was when we did Leo the Lion. The kids were really not happy with that. Why? Very simple. They felt that the lion did not look like a “real lion”. Boy! Did I get flack for that. I figured you know what, its time for some abstract art. I’ve always believed [...]

Christmas Crafts: 3 Simple and Cheap Christmas Ornaments

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:45:47 +0000

Christmas crafts are all over the place. You can make elaborate ones that take long and are typical copycat ones, or you can stick with me and find ones that fit developmental criteria What I like to do at times is look though the web through many of the traditional copycat websites and find crafts [...]

Hanukkah Crafts Collage : Do it Cafeteria Style

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:31:52 +0000

In making a Hanukkah or Chanukah crafts collage its always good as I often do to give the children an idea of some of the symbols of what they will be using as a base for their collage or other artwork. When I give collages it is 99% of the time done cafeteria style where [...]

Drawing Leo the Lion: Drawing with Children (part 5)

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:59:33 +0000

Drawing lessons are not as easy as it appears in the book. I’m actually still struggling with the idea of giving kids exact copies of pictures to copy as it is so against my grain and what I’ve learned, but I’m going to stick with it. The kids were not happy with Leo the lion. [...]

Their first actual REAL drawing: Drawing with Children:(part 4)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:53:28 +0000

This was really our third drawing lesson. I didn’t write about our second as I felt it was unfinished and I can fill you in over here. In the first lesson where we actually began our drawing lessons the kids got a basic overview of the elements of shape and did alot of experimenting with [...]

Kids Paint as They Make Their Own Color Wheel (part 5)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:24:32 +0000

I actually started this painting with kids activity by making color wheels with the children, giving them an empty tagboard with 8 empty circles. I realized as they were creating the color wheels that I only wanted them to make primary and secondary colors, so they would only need 6 circles. So when they finished [...]

Learning Mona Brooks’ 5 elements of Shape: Drawing with Children (part 3)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:28:30 +0000

I’ve had Mona Brook’s book in my house, Drawing With Children for the longest time. What Mona teaches is how to teach kids to draw by teaching them the 5 elements of shape there are in the world, like the chart I have above that I made from her book. As my kids were growing [...]