Hunt for Random Acts of Kindness not Pokemon

In my area, a new craze has caught on. Instead of catching Pokemon (which I'm not ashamed to say I do also), the big thing is to paint and hide rocks. Kind of like a scavenger hunt. At this point you're either thinking, "What?" or "Sweet. we play to", but hear me out. The point of this game is to spread cheer and joy within our community. You don't have to be a great artist to play and there's no age requirement. The rules are pretty simple:

• You can paint rocks, or not
• You can hide rocks, or not
• You can find rocks, or not
• You post hints to your rocks, or not
• You can share your designs within the social media group, or not
• If you find a rock:
• You can keep it
• You can take it and re-hide it somewhere
• You can leave it
• You can share it with others
• You can add rocks to it
• You can replace it with a different rock, or not

There are a lot of these groups around if you such local media for them. Type in your city and "rocks". Again, the point is to spread joy and cheer with others. In my area, people have said that this has helped them become closer as a family as they will now paint and hide and search for rocks together. Several others have also said its helped them with depression and anxiety. I know several families who have said its helping their autistic children communicate more.  And I think that's the best part. That this one simple activity by many random strangers is helping so many people in so many different ways. I am really glad and grateful to be a part of this. 

As such, I wanted to share it with all of you. Maybe you have hidden rocks or other treasures in your area. Maybe this is the first time you are hearing of it. Either way, I would love to see any rocks and/or treasures you make if you decide to play along with us in your own areas. 

Here are a few I have done and sent out into the world :)

I post more on my Instagram, check it out. :)

Tennis Ball Painting

A while back I bought a new container of tennis balls and set them aside for when summer came. Today, wanting to hit the courts and play a few rounds with my kids, I went to pull them out. However, they weren't where I thought I had left them. After looking around I eventually found

them. They were a bit worse for wear as they appeared to have been gnawed on and were slobbery. My Sherlock skills tell me that our Great Dane found them to be rather appealing. So today's plans ended up being changed.

Instead of hitting the courts, we used the tennis balls (minus one that we let the dog keep) as paint brushes....sort of.  Here's what you will need to replicate the project:

• Tennis balls
• Paint (we used acrylics)
• Very small Screw Eye Hooks ( I got mine at Fred Meyers-the smallest size they had)
• Yarn or some sort of string ( you might use thing rope as the yarn frays and breaks after a while)
• Canvas or Canvas Boards or something to paint basically
• Some place to hang your tennis ball
• container for your paint
• Paint Brushes (for painting tennis balls or adding details to your canvas)
• Scissors (for cutting the yarn)

Once you have everything ready, you are going to screw in a small screw eye hook into each of the tennis balls. Then tie the yarn to one of the eye holes in the screw (like the image on the left).


Once that is finished you can take the tennis ball and yarn out to where you want to hang it. You need to make sure that the string is long enough after you tie it for the tennis ball to hit your canvas. I figured this out the hard way.  It also needs to have room to swing. We tied our tennis balls to the monkey bars on the play structure.


 And used an old trike to hold the canvas. It worked pretty well.



Now pour your paint into a container and either use paint brushes to paint your tennis ball or dip the ball into the paint container. It's fun to experiment and see what different types of marks you get when you apply the paint differently. We used a different tennis ball for each color so as to not mix the colors until they were on the canvas. However you could paint rainbow tennis balls or mix colors on the tennis ball. We also only tied one at a time, but it might be fun to tie several up and use all at once.




 The last step is the most fun. Pull the string back and let it go! The tennis ball will fly into your canvas and create one of kind marks, lines, dots and splatters. :)

This process can get pretty messy, especially for younger artists. So I would recommend using paint clothes or old clothes, that way when they end up covered in acrylic paint you won't be upset or stress over trying to wash it out. Or you can have kids wear an apron or art smock to protect your clothes.

I personally didn't mind paint getting on the lawn or the old trike, but if this is something of a concern for you, you might think about putting an old sheet or tarp under where your canvas is.











You can also hold the tennis ball and drop it onto a canvas laying on the ground (like the image to the right) or throw it at a canvas that's secured (and not just propped up). The possibilities are endless!

 

As always, we would love to see any variations you may have on the idea or your beautiful works of art.
Happy creating!  ;)

 

 

Typography Made Easy

I love Pinterest! I find some of the coolest things there. My current find is this amazing free typography program at tagxedo that allows you to neat pictures out of words (hence the typography).

I made one for each of the kiddos and then one for my coffee themed kitchen. :) Pretty neat if I do say so myself.

The program allows you to choose your own words, shape, color and font. Try it out. It's highly addicting.

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?

Holiday Advent Calendar days 1-9

So  I know it's December 9th already and I swore to myself I would post this on the 30th of last month, but well...turns out I didn't get around to it.  So here is what we did for the first 9 days of December:

December 1st- Make a New Advent Calendar.  We actually hadn't ever made one. I was picking up those little cardboard ones every year, you kno w the ones with chocolate behind each day. But it with the kiddos getting older it was getting harder to have only one child open the little door for the day and then who would get the candy?  So this year I went to the craft store an bourght some holiday fabric in the clearance isle and some fat quarters that matched it. I pulled them out on the 1st along with a hot glue gun, 3 pairs of scissors and some glitter glue pens.  I explained to the kiddos that we needed to have something with pockets or doors and 25 of them (one for every day of the advent calendar).  What happened next was pure magic.  The kids set to work on their design, all working together. They got great tracing and cutting practice. I help the older two use the hot glue gun under supervision and watched as our calendar started to take shape.


December 2nd- Decorate House

December 3rd- Read a Holiday Book- Llama, Llama Holiday Drama- My kids love this cute story that helps with rhyming skills. It has been something we have read every year since I bought it.
December 4th- 1st Cocoa of the Season- We have a make it your own way cocoa bar, where the kids can add marshmellows, caramel, chocolate shavings, whip cream, cookie pieces, candy pieces and/or candy cane pieces to their cocoa.
December 5th- Giving Tree- Pick out names and go shopping -This is something we try to do every year from different trees. This year though we sadly had to limit it to only one tree instead of 2 or 3.
December 6th- Visit Family
December 7th- Holiday Work Party
December 8th-  Pick Up a Tree
December 9th- Hand and Foot Print Reindeers - These seem to be all over pinterest lately, but in case you haven't seen them, here is how we made ours. You will need brown paint for hand and foot prints. Red paint for noses and a different color for the eyes.  Start by placing hand or foot in the paint (or we used paint brushes to paint the palm of one hand). The make your print on the paper you plan on using. Once dry or dry-ish, you can use a paintbrush to add the red nose, paint on antlers and add eyes. Then the rest of the paper can be decorated or left blank, depending on the project. For a framed piece for a gift, it might be best to leave the rest of the space white for a clean look, like the one above. We just did ours for fun and as decorations for the house, so I let the kiddos go to town.

We only used paint for ours, but you could easily use twigs or pipe cleaners as antlers. Googly eyes could be used instead of painted ones also.

Ebru Paper Marbling

 When I was younger I can remember doing an art project with water, paint and paper. In which you poured small amounts of paint onto water and then gently placed a paper on top to create a one of a kind print. This project was always one of my favorite memories.  But everytime I tried to recreate the project I had done as a kid, it always ended up in a failure of attempts and frustration.

A few weeks back I had come across a youtube video in which several beautiful images were created by using a special chemical solution in water and ink applied to the surface. The technique dates back as far as the 10th century and was used by many cultures to marble paper, fabric and other materials.

Paper Marbling was exactly what I had done as a kid and wanted to share with my kids and the kids I work with.  But I wasn't sure how safe the chemical solution was for children so I went about thinking of new ways to do the project but still achieve the same or at least similar results.

Here is what I came up with and the supplies you will need:

• Trays (We use throw away trays that are found in the baking isle of your grocery stores. These can be used multpile times.)
• Vegetable oil and water in a tray
• Corn syrup in a tray
• Liquid corn starch in a tray (you can buy this at the grocery store with the laundry soap or you can heat up corn starch and water as I did to make a sort of thick liquid. Be warned though that this does congeal when cold and doesn't work well then. Also let cool slightly before using as it is very hot.)
• Tempura paints
• Water to thin paints
• Paint brushes
• Tooth picks
• Old combs
• Straws (for mixing or blowing bubbles into the oil and water tray)
• Paper (we used a medium thick cardstock)
• Newspaper to put down to limit mess and to dry prints on

The process is pretty simple. Simply pour in the paint and use a toothpick, paint brush, comb, etc. to mix and swirl the paint on the surface to create the image you want. Once achieved, place a piec of your cardstock gently on the top of the liquid and count to 5. Then pull it up gently and viola.  If you want darker coloring, you can leave it on the water for a longer amount of time.

The paint can be applied straight from the bottle or can be watered down and poured into the pans. I recommend using small cups if pouring with little kids so that they don't dump large amounts of watered down paint into the pan.


Also, the oil and water pan has to have paint that is thinned down and applied carefully or it will sink to the bottom and you won't be able to make your prints. This one can be a little tricky for younger kids but is still very fun to explore and play around with.

I will also warn you that the corn syrup is sticky and will stick to everything while drying. This is why I recommend laying them in the sun on newspaper. That way you can cut around the newspaper once they are dry. Sometimes they are a little tacky after they're dry, but are very pretty and fun to make.

 Each of the ingrediant trays creates a different type of marbling effect. Which allows for quite the exploration and discussion between kids during the project time.

 The one on the left here is corn syrup while the image on the right shows the results from the liquid corn starch. The image above (with the hand pour liquid froma cup) shows the tray with oil and water.




I found that this project was rather successful in teaching young kids about primary and secondary colors as the colors will mix together, creating new ones when the kids swirl the colors around. This is also a great sensory project and allows for creative exploration.


By the end of our project time however, most trays had become goop. But the kids had a great time.


As always, we would love to see any variations you may have on the idea or your beautiful works of art.
Happy creating!

"I'm Bored" Game Boards

If your kids are anything like mine, then you have definitely heard this phase said in the whiniest of tones, " Moooom, I' bored!!"
As much as I love that phrase, it gets old real quick.  So during a rainy afternoon one day after hearing that phrase about a thousand times between the kids and having them reject any ideas I had come up with I threw my hands up and said, "Well, I'm gonna clean the toilet. You can entertain yourselves or help". Can you believe they chose to entertain themselves? I mean come on, who doesn't love to clean toilets? lol.

So while I set to my work, I started thinking there had to be a way in which I could entertain them and still get more things accomplished around the house or education wise. Then like that caffeine buzz you get after having a 6 shot espresso, it hit me. So that night I drew up what would be known as the "I'm bored! Game Board".

Here is what they look like:

I used an 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper and drew 9 columns across and 11 columns down. I did this 3 times, one board per kid. Then I filled each square with this that was relevant to each child. For example, Kat's board here has boxes like make dessert, plan the dinner menu, or babysit brother for 30 minutes. Where as Clara's board has things like, wash windows, put laundry away in rooms,  and set the table. Levi, being the youngest, has things like brush teeth and pick up toys.
And since I never miss an opportunity to educate my kids, I added things like math test, spelling test, write in your journal, science experiment, etc. to all boards.

Then feeling that the kids would refuse to play, which would make my efforts useless, I added things like trip to the park, scavenger hunt, library visit, ice cream parlor, etc.

 I also added 5 special squares. These are special because the tasks are more intense, but come with a great pay off.  If all 5 squares are collected, the winner of their game board gets to pick a prize from the treasure box ( which is extra little toys and things I collect through out the year and wrap up. They then go into a giant box we call the treasure box). The last square I added to each board is a free square, because well, it makes them happy to think they get something for free. :) Don't we all.

So in case you're interested on how the game is played, here are the rules I came up with.
A player can start on any square on the first row. Each square is a space. Spaces are gained by completing the tasks on them. You can only move spaces in a vertical or horizontal manner (see more of that education stuff right there). No diagonals. You also can not skip or jump over spaces (unless a spaces says to, which none of these do, but it might be fun to have some like that).  Once a task is completed a sticker must be placed on it for completion and moving forward ( X's would work too, but we like stickers here ).  Follow this method until you hit the bottom row. Once you have completed any task on the bottom row, the game is over.

Now the 5 special squares work like this: there are 4 on the main board and 1 on the bottom row. In order to get the treasure box prize you have to do the task on each of these and "collect" them. So for the last row, you would have to make that your last square. This forces them to think ahead (see more hidden teaching). If 4 or less are collect, they can be traded in for random things, most likely smaller goodies or candy.

Lastly are the initials on each piece. For every 10 square they complete, it counts as chores towards their allowance. When they choose to use this, I initial them off so we don't get the "but I didn't use them..." whine.

So now when they say, "I'm bored" I get to say, "have you checked the game board yet?" it doesn't always work, but it has definitely cut the whining down by at least half. Which in my book is awesome!!

Do you play games like this at your house? How do you deal with the "I'm bored!" whine?
I'd love to hear your stories and if you should choose to try the game out, please share it!

Hope everyone has a nice and sunny weekend!

DIY Scratch Boards

Geh, I can't believe January is already almost over. It seems like it was just the other day that I wrote up the post on the To Do List Project. Man, I have no idea how other parents manage to blogs so often. I made it a resolution to try harder on my frequency. So here's hoping, right.

Well today I'm going to cover a project I taught in Art Discovery a week ago. It's pretty simple but does require a bit of prep time, which I would suggest you span out over a few days. Otherwise your hand will cramp up from the coloring you have to do.

In Class we covered expressionism vs. realism, so I made the base multiple colors. However, you could alter the project for halloween or Xmas by using only those colors. Another variation would be to color white crayon over white paper and then paint with a blue. This way you could make snowy wonderland scenes. Now onto the project:

What you will need:

• Cardstock (or thick paper)
• Color crayons (I used cra-Z-art, but crayola work well too. Any that are waxy should do it)
• Scissors or an industial paper cutter-if you want to make them smaller(the scrapbook ones wont work unless you have a top lifting blade one)
• Toothpicks
• Black (or blue or whatever color) Tempura paint
• A paint brush

This first part is the most time consuming. You need to take your cardstock paper and completely cover it in a thick layer of crayon. Again I did multiple colors, but you don't have to. My only suggestion is to not use the same color of crayon as you have for your paint. Otherwise it won't show up when you scratch it off.
I colored 25 sheets of 8.5x11 cardstock so after a while I got bored of the same pattern. As you can see you can actually make some pretty nice pictures just by doing this step. If you are having kiddos help you with this part, make sure to stress to them that you don't want to be able to see any of the white paper underneather. You need to build up a thick layer of wax so the paint will adhere to the wax and not the paper. If it adheres to the paper, you won't be able to scratch it off.
Next step is to cover your colored papers with tempura paint in your color of choice. I used black, but you can use whatever color you want. When applying the paint, it does tend to not want to stick. Just be patient with it. You want a nice even coat of paint, but try not to make it too thick cause it will flake off or too thin because the crayon will start to show through. It's best to let it dry for a day or two if possible. I have had the best results when I let the paint still longer than just over night. However overnight does work and is completely do-able.
Once sheets are completly dry, you can use your scissors/ cutting board to cut them into smaller pieces if you wish. Other wise, they are ready to be scratched into master pieces. Using a toothpick, the end of a paintbrush or anything else you might want to try out (forks make cool multiple lines), gently scratch your picture into the paint to reveal the color(s) underneath. Just remember not to scratch it all off. Enjoy!!

Art Advent Calendar

Create a To Do List

This project usually takes my kids all day. It's about a continual 30 minutes of work and then off and on for the rest of the day. My examples are from our summer list mostly, but we make one 3 times a year. These are also nice to point bored kids to later on as they are full of fun ideas/activities. Here are the materials you will need:

* Pencils
* Sharpies (Different colors are more fun- you can get a pack of 5 at the dollar tree )
* Paper (I use a 11x14 sheet of water color paper- but you could do this on cardstock too-I recommend thicker paper as you will be covering the whole thing in watercolors)
* Watercolor paints (we use the cake set from the dollar tree)

* Different sized brushes (this isn't needed but larger brushes will make the painting part faster)

* Salt (plain old normal salt)
First start by deciding how you want the overall design to look. For our summer one, the girls wanted flowers, so I drew in pencil large flowers on the paper and then traced them in black sharpie.
Be sure to set some ground rule if you have younger kids or you will get a crazy wildness of impossible things to do as well as a scribble mess. :) I usually tell the kids they have to keep their art and writing inside the large designs I drew.
Next give the kids the sharpies (the tiny ones work well for little ones who like to push hard) and let them go to town writing and drawing pictures of the things they want to do. Don't forget to date your list :)
Once they have filled the space completely, break out the watercolors and paint your list. Here you can use the salt. If you sprinkle a little bit of salt on wet watercolor you will get a frosted effect. Tip: it works best to not apply the paints too thick or it can be hard to see the words underneath.
And Viola, you have a beautiful and functionable piece of art for your house!
Here is our fall/winter to do list after its been painted- the kids didn't follow directions so much on this one.