January Flowers

Here I was thinking, "I can't believe its already January" and before I knew it January had come and gone.  Now with it begin February I'm playing catch up.

Last month at my daughter's school I taught a class on Georgia O'Keefe, who is an amazing artist and an amazing woman. She stood tall and continued doing what she loved, painting;  no matter how people looked at her or what they said about her. I think that's a great lesson that we can all learn from and it was a great way to start out the beginning of the new year.

This year I teach an art class every other month to a class of third graders. For our project on Georgia O'Keefe we painted flowers from the perspective of a bee (or other small insect). The pieces turned out fantastic I think.

This project is really simple and would make for a great rainy day art project at home. Here's what you need:

• Thick paper like card stock
• watercolor paints
• paint brushes
• small container for water
• a tissue or napkin for drying your paint brush
• a pencil for drawing
• a sharpie marker (or other permanent marker) for tracing

Have children look at a flower or imagine a what a flower would look like to a bee. Tell them the flowers have to be BIG and has to touch each side of their paper. Have them draw the image out first in pencil. Then they trace the image with the marker. You need to use a sharpie here instead of a crayola because you will be adding water and paint to the paper and other types of markers can bleed sometimes.

Once the flower is traced, the next step is to paint it. I like to let kids go crazy here and paint however they want. Maybe they want rainbow flower petals or orange steams or flowers with stars on the petals....the skies the limit.

Once the painting is dry, you are done. I think a set of these framed would be wonderful to dress up a bathroom or nook in a hallway. And what better to display proudly in your house, than your child's masterpiece?