Think!: Blindfold Drawing

We needed a project yesterday. Something a little silly, kind of fun, something to give us a breather from the grind. I looked up the latest Think! challenge, Blindfold Drawing. Perfect. We blindfolded ourselves, drew blindfolded for a short time, switched papers, drew some more, and Voila! A masterpiece to color, with lots of giggles.

Cave Painting

History and art rolled into one big messy fabulous project. We're studying ancient history, so what better way to start off the year's art studies? Cave painting has several advantages as an elementary-age art project: It's big. The materials are easy to find and to use. Cave paintings are very simple when it comes to subject and color. The pictures are not intimidating for children to imitate. You can fingerpaint or paint with sticks, draw with charcoals and pastels, or get even more creative and try to mix paints using dirt, leaves and spices.



You need:
Printed pictures of cave paintings from around the world and/or books with photos and brief explanations of cave paintings
Brown paper bags for practice paintings, or for your project if you choose not to do a large wall painting, crumpled then flattened
A large sheet or two of brown paper, crumpled and flattened
Charcoal sticks for drawing
Pastels for drawing (reds, browns, oranges and yellows)
Paints (Black, brown, red, yellow, orange)
A drop cloth
Rags for clean-up


Session one:
We studied cave painting as an art form. Look at cave paintings from aroud the world. Notice what makes them the same. What differences do you see? Why might people have painted these paintings? What did they paint? What do you think they used? Then do a warm-up drawing. Cut open a brown paper grocery bag. Crumple then flatten the bag. Draw your cave painting on the bag using charcoal and pastels. This step allows the children to experiment with the materials to find out what works and what doesn't, and to experiment with themes and lines and colors. Naturally, the fine young gents drew many weapons. Arrows, spears and blood were popular.


Session Two:
If you've got the time, the materials and the space, create a wall-sized cave painting. Use large paper, the kind teachers put on their bulletin boards. Crumple it then flatten it to simulate the curves and rough texture of rock. Attach the paper to the wall, put down a drop cloth if you're using paint, and let the children paint and draw their cave paintings using paints, pastels and charcoal, even dirt, sticks and leaves. Allow plenty of time for exploration of the materials and of the subject matter.

A flash from the past, a segment of our first cave painting, painted by our eldest lovely lady when she was in seventh grade:
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Internet lesson plans:

Cave paintings: Animals in Art

Art History: Create Cave Paintings

Cave Art: Discovering Prehistoric Humans through Pictures

Color Study

We're winding up our color studies. It's been a fascinating and motivating subject for the fine young gents. Which isn't surprising when you think about it. Color is immediate and relevant. It's something we experience every moment. A color study combines, overlaps and intersects art and science, and the experiments are simple, fun and accessible. And memorable. The fine young gents often talk about color in terms of science and art, remarking at the red light waves that must be bouncing off a shirt, for example. On the way home from a visit to Grandpa's, kindergarten gent stared out at the brown hills and remarked, "Mom, I can't see any tertiary colors out there."

At the beginning of spring break, we spent some school time doing color experiments. We're moving on to an astronomy study this spring, but we didn't want to miss some of the fun activities we'd seen online and in our experiment books, so we spent a fair amount of time playing with color.

Catch a Rainbow from Kidzone Science:

You need:
A shallow bowl
Milk
Food color--red, blue and yellow
Dish soap
Printable recording sheet (optional)

Drop food color at the edges of the bowl as shown above. Add 2-3 drops of dish soap to the middle of the bowl. Sit back and watch the colors swirl and combine.
Then complete the record sheet:


Is Black Black?
(Pictured in notebook above.)

You need:
Black markers, 2-3 different brands
A coffee filter
Water and an eyedropper
A tray or dish

Cut the coffee filter into strips. Choose one brand of black marker, and color a big black dot at the edge of a coffee filter strip. Do the same with the other black markers until you have a dotted strip for each brand of marker. Set the strips in your tray or dish and drip water on the black dots until they are saturated. Make sure your strips are not touching so that the colors don't bleed onto one another. Wait for the colors to wick up the filter. What colors do you see? Are the colors used by each brand different? The same?

Color Filters

You need:
Colored cellophane, different colors
Paper
Markers
Flashlight (optional)

Using your markers, draw a rainbow (or other colorful picture) on your paper. Place different colors of cellophane over your picture. What happens to the colors? Now take your cellophane and place it over different colored objects in the room. What happens to those colors?

For more cellophane fun, take the colored cellophane and a flashlight into the closet or other dark place. Shine the flashlight through the cellophane. (Moms: This kept my fine young gents entertained for an hour.)

Make a Rainbow

You need: A prism and bright light

Find a prism and experiment with making rainbows in the sunlight.



Color Mixing

You need:
4-6 glasses or bowls
Water
Food color--red, yellow, blue
Eyedroppers, spoons, measuring cups
Tray and towels or rags

Place the glasses and bowls on a tray. Fill three glasses or bowls with water. Add several drops of red, yellow or blue food color to the glasses so that you've got one glass of each color. Set out the the colored water and extra glasses or bowls for mixing. Use the spoons, measuring cups and eyedroppers to mix colors! Make sure to have a rag handy to clean up spills!

Spinning Color Wheels

Spinning Color Wheels

You Need:
Posterboard or light cardboard
A pencil and a ruler
Scissors
Crayons
A sharp point to poke a hole in the cardboard (The pencil will do in a pinch.)
A straw and a craft brad OR string OR a pushpin and a wooden dowel, optional
(Shirts also optional if you're at home and it's sunny out.)

Trace a circle onto your posterboard or cardboard. Using your ruler divide your circle evenly into sections (this makes a fun mini math lesson!) like the picture shown above, or like this:
For one side of your circle, choose two primary colors, or two complementary colors (colors opposite one another on the color wheel), and color the sections of your circle alternating colors. On the other side of your wheel, color the sections using colors of your choice.

Once your circle is colored, poke a small hole through the very center. Use the hole to poke your craft brad, push pin, or string through your circle.

Craft brad and straw: Poke a small hole into the straw, insert the pointed end of the brad that's already sticking through the circle, and widen the ends of the brad so that it won't slip back through the straw. Spin the wheel!
Push pin and dowel: Poke the end of the pushpin through the center of the circle into the dowel. Make sure it's pushed in firmly so that it won't fall off. Spin the wheel!
String: Thread the string through the center of the circle. Holding both ends of the string (one end in each hand), swing the circle around and around, twisting the string. Pull the string tight and watch your wheel spin!
Or....just spin your wheel!

What happens if you use two primary colors? What happens when you use complementary colors?

Why does it work?
Color and Spinning Wheels at Newton BBS Ask a Scientist.

This is a simple project, and lots of fun! We used this lesson plan: Spinning Color Wheels from Crayola.com. It calls for using string through the center of the circle. We used several kinds of string and yarn, and attempted to fasten our circles to the string in various ways, but we could not get our circles to wind tightly enough on the string. They just flopped around and refused to spin. It wasn't time wasted. We found all kinds of techniques and materials that just won't work. Next we experimented a little with methods we've used in the past for other projects: A straw with a craft brad was just the ticket for preschool gent, kindergarten gent used a push pin and a wooden dowel, and their older brother cut straight to the chase, deciding to forgo the spinners altogether and spinning his circle on the floor instead.

Check this out! Color Matters--Amazing Science of Colors. Chockful of information, experiments and color facts, including Color Matters for Kids.

More science, art and vision fun for adults: Here's a fascinating web exhibit entitled Color Vision and Art: Vision Science and the Emergence of Modern Art.

Color Study:Shades

You Need:
White paper (we folded our papers in half lengthwise to create narrow strips)
White paint, black paint and one other paint color of your choice
Paintbrushes
Paint tray, old yogurt cups or lids, or something similar for paint mixing
Newspaper
A rag or two in case of spills

Prepare your area by setting down newspapers, setting out your materials, and choosing your paint colors and brushes.

Read Color(Step-By-Step Science) by Robert Snedden and Sabrina Crewe. This is the best kids' book on the science of color that we've found so far. It's got thorough and colorful explanations of different aspects of color, and several color-related activities and experiments, including step-by step directions for making a shade chart.

Squirt two big squirts of your chosen color paint onto your mixing tray.

In the middle of your paper, paint a stripe of your chosen color.

Squeeze a drop or two of white paint into one of your squirts of color, and mix thoroughly. What happens to your color? Paint a stripe of that color onto your paper, to the left of your original color. Mix in a few more drops of white paint. Paint another stripe to the left. Continue mixing in a few more drops of white and painting new stripes until you reach the left edge of your paper.

Now try the same thing in the other squirt of your original color, this time with the black paint. Be careful to start with only one drop of black! Black can quickly overpower your original color, so it's better to start with one drop each time, then add another if you need to. Paint a stripe of that color onto your paper, this time to the right of your original color. Continue mixing in a drop or two of black and painting new stripes of color until you reach the right edge of your paper.


Set aside your shade chart to dry. Try another color! Or make another shade chart by mixing your color with its complementary color (the color opposite your color on the color wheel) instead of using black or white. What happens? What happens if you mix your color with a color adjacent to it on the color wheel?
_________________
Color Wheel and Color Mixing at Enchanted Learning

Lesson Plan: Tints, Tones and Shades

Science and Art: Color Lesson

Read Color, Ruth Heller. There's a clear and colorful explanation of printing using four colors: Yellow, cyan, magenta and black. Or find another simple explanation to read (like this one, The Science of Light: Made from Dots).


Dotty Dots: You need a pencil, a piece of white paper, a yellow marker, a red marker, and a blue marker (preferably a cyan blue rather than a royal blue). Draw three circles with a gray pencil on the white piece of paper. In one circle, use the red and blue marker tips to make red dots and blue dots, as close together as you can get without overlapping. In another circle, do the same with the blue and the yellow markers, and use red and yellow dots to fill in the third circle. Look at the circles close up--can you see the separate colors? Now ask another person to hold up your paper as you look at it from across the room. Can you still see separate dots of different colors, or do they blend to look like one color?

Colors under the microscope: Look at a variety of pictures--photographs, postcards, books--with a magnifying glass and under the microscope. Do you see tiny dots used to make the rainbow of colors? Now look at a part of a printed photo or postcard that looks white. What do you see under the microscope?

The Side Show (detail), Georges Seurat

Bonus Lesson: Read about Georges Seurat. His art was influenced by the science of color. Look closely at his pictures, and you'll see that they're composed of tiny dots of pure color.

Wordless Wednesday: Color wheel

Science and Art: Color

Last week, we started our color study with an art project as basic as you can get: Think of something brightly colored. Choose colors from the crayon box and draw it. We have two beautiful drawings of rainbows and a paper with circles and L-E-V-I written all over hanging on the fridge.

We read about wavelengths of light in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science (DK).
Explanations of light and color online:
Visible light waves at the NASA website for kids
How Are Rainbows Formed? at Science Kids
Lightwaves and Color at The Physics Classroom (for older children or for adults)

Next, a color wheel study. Kid Zone Science has some nice material, including The Color Wheel, a colorful explanation of primary and secondary colors and a color wheel worksheet.

Today's study, a simple science study of color: Coffee filter colors

You need a coffee filter, markers, an eyedropper and water. A paper plate, thick paper towel, or baking sheet is nice too, as it keeps the inks from bleeding onto your work surface. Color large dots or thick lines of single colors on your coffee filter. Drop water on the ink dots with the eyedropper. It's fun to watch the colors wick across the filter, so take some time to observe. Set aside the filter to dry. Once it's dry, observe what's happened to the colors, especially at the edges. We discovered that our colored inks separated into different colors. We used Crayola markers and they worked dandy. The best color markers for the experiment: Brown, which separated into orange-pink-purple-blue, and green, which spread into a vivid blue edged with the faintest line of yellow.

The fine young gents recorded the results in their science notebooks using this form. It's a great all-purpose science form for young students. Students to make a prediction, observe, and come to a conclusion based on the observation, which, when you think about it, is the nuts and bolts of a science experiment.

A color study lends itself to a blending of art and science, and since we had all of the materials on the table we ended with coffee filter butterflies. Color with marker on a coffee filter. Use lots of bright colors! Drop water droplets onto the colors with the eyedropper and set aside the coffee filter to dry. Once the coffee filter is dry, scrunch the filter into a decorated doll clothespin. Add pipe cleaner antennae or tie a ribbon around the top to hang your butterfly.


Next week's art studies:
Color mixing and the Color Wheel from Enchanted Learning
Actual color mixing, and creating color wheels based upon these lesson plans: Color Wheel and Twelve Color Wheel

Upcoming science experiments and notebook entries:
Catch a Rainbow (also from Kid Zone Science)
Spinning Color Wheels from Crayola
A drawing of light wavelengths copied from our science encyclopedia
Bird in a Cage at Exploratorium's Science Snacks
The Science of Light at the Annenberg/CB Math and Science Project Teacher's Lab
Create a rainbow with the prism we've got stashed around here somewhere, and maybe with the hose too if we get a day that's sunny and warm enough.

Reading:
Color, Ruth Heller (This is a great explanation of color in printing and as a general color study. Fantastic!)
Mouse Paint, Ellen Stoll Walsh (Lovely intro to color mixing for younger readers.)
White Rabbit's Color Book, Alan Baker (Another wonderful color mixing book for younger kids.)
Color Me Science (Experiment With Science), New Book of Popular Science. (On request from the library.)

Art Study: Native American Art

Our fall history study: Native American history and culture. I wrote a review of our Native American study using History Pockets: Native Americans, and promised an overview of our art studies. Finally, as promised, here it is. In addition to the History Pockets, we read a few pages from Native American Art (Art in History), whichever section dovetailed the best with the art project we'd planned.

Buckskin Painting (Pictured above)
From Native American Art (Art in History), Petra Press.

You need:
A brown grocery or lunch bag
Crayons
Household wax (or an old candle, in a pinch)
Thin dishtowel or rag
An iron

Cut and flatten a brown paper bag. Using crayon draw a picture on the bag. Crumple and flatten and crumple the paper a few times to make it soft and wrinkled. Rub wax all over the paper, cover with the dishtowel and iron.

Read: The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, Tomie DePaola and Storm Maker's Tipi, Paul Goble.

Coil Pots
Internet lesson plan here
You need:
Air-dry clay (You can find this at any craft store.)
A cup of water
Acrylic paints
Glaze, if desired

Coil pots are a fun and easy project. Many Native American peoples made pots and other useful items out of clay. Flatten your clay and cut circles for the base, roll snakes of clay, and coil them into pots. Dipping fingers into the water, then smoothing the water onto the coils allows the coils to hold together better. Let the pots dry according to the clay package directions, then paint with acrylic paints. If desired, paint with gloss once the paint has dried to make a shiny pot.

The fine young gents had a fine time with this project. So much so that I bought more clay when I went to the store-that-shall-not-be-named. (Shhhhh....I went to Walmart. It was next door to another stop, so I shopped there. Don't tell anyone who knows me.) The value of the coil pots was not necessarily in the end product. As you can see, despite our reading and looking at clay art online and in our art book, the pots don't necessarily look as though we're imitating Native American clay pots. The value of the clay pots was in the experiences with clay. What an adventure! The guys dutifully made their clay pots, but were most interested in finding out exactly what they could do with the clay. Make sure to include lots of time for experimentation.

Sand Painting
Lesson here

You need:
Posterboard, cardboard, or other fairly stiff paper
Pencils
Glue
Paintbrushes
Colored sand (buy it at the craft store, or color your own using play sand and tempera paint) in small dishes
Spoons
Lots of newspaper and a rimmed baking sheet

Easy idea. Really really messy. And I don't usually mind a mess. Definitely look at pictures of Native American sand painting beforehand. We got the desired result: An afternoon of color, a chance to experiment with new materials, an opportunity to look at a kind of art we'd not studied before and even better, to try it ourselves.

With older children, try this: Poetry and sand painting lesson

Dreamcatchers
Directions here at Enchanted Learning
You need:
A bendable twig
Thin wire
Twine or yarn
Beads and feathers

Dreamcatchers are fun and fairly simple to make. We used twigs from the back yard maple to make our hoops and fastened them with leftover wire from a beading craft kit. The fine young gents wanted to use our orange twine, but a yarn or a rougher string would probably work better, as the nylon twine was slippery against the slippery bark of the maple twig. The gents had a grand time decorating with the beads and feathers, and 3 months later, the dreamcatchers are still hanging on the fine young gents' bedposts.

Information, legends and directions for making dreamcatchers

More great directions for making Native American dreamcatchers

Dreamcatcher store, books and links

Clay bead necklaces
Lesson here
You need:
Air-dry clay
Clay tools or similar for carving lines and shapes into the wet clay
String or twine or leather laces
Glass beads (optional)
Blue paint

Make your beads out of clay-- flat, square, round. Experiment with different shapes and sizes. Once you've created a bead, etch designs and patterns into it using clay tools, bamboo skewers, or the wrong end of a cheap-o paintbrush. Let dry according to clay package directions. Paint blue. When dry, string them onto the string (with or without glass beads) using knots to hold the beads in place.

This project was our favorite. We got to play with clay again. The fine young gents were glowing over their beautiful necklaces and wore thema ll afternoon. Second-grade gent gave his away to the girl next door, and I noticed today that it's still hanging in her play space.





Foil Necklaces
From History Pockets: Native Americans

You need:
Paper and pencil
Scissors
Cardboard squares
Foil
Tape
Beads or macaroni beads
Glue
Yarn or string (about 18 inches)

Another favorite. Cut a 3x3 paper square. Draw a symmetrical design onto the square and set it aside. (The History Pockets unit provides a design for children to trace if they choose not to create their own.) Cut a 3x3-inch cardboard square and cover it with aluminum foil. Tape the foil at the back of the necklace. Using scissors or a pencil, punch two holes through the top of the square. Place your paper square with the design over the front of the foil-covered cardboard square and trace the design with your pencil, pressing hard. Gently lift away the design once you've finished tracing: The design will be etched into the foil. Decorate your foil square with tiny beads if desired. To make the necklace, put the ends of the string through the holes in your foil-covered square so that the ends hang out the back of the square. String beads (macaroni or otherwise) onto the string if desired. Tie the ends together at the top, leaving room to slip the necklace over your head.

Animal Masks
You need:
Animal stories or imagination activity (optional)
Mask-making materials such as paper mache or Rigid Wrap
Paint
Feathers, fur and other decorations

We made up our own mask study two years ago. (In two parts: Masking the Masks and Designing the Masks). This fall's History Pockets study included a mask project, but it involved coloring and cutting a paper drawing of a mask. We decided to make the real thing.

We'd been reading about Native American vision quests and totems and the kinds of animals living in proximity with Native American people, so to choose mask subjects, we used a guided imagination activity from Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children, by Joseph Bruchac. As I read out loud, the fine young gents imagined themselves running, leaping, flying through the forest, and when each gent opened his eyes he chose the animal he'd been imagining. We had a racoon, a deer and a black-capped chickadee. The deer changed his mind and decided he'd rather be a chickadee too, so that he could make a beak instead of antlers. The fine young chickadees were quite focused for this lengthy project, concerned with painting the bird colors just so, and begging for black feathers to glue onto the bird masks. The littlest racoon gent just loved the mess, and happily dabbed and globbed and painted and glued. The reulst was far more satisfying than a paper-and-marker project.

Native American masks as art at snowowl.com

Paint Prints

Cookie sheet paint prints

You need:
Newspaper
Paint
Paper
Paintbrushes
A large cookie sheet for each child

Spread newspaper over your work surface. Set out the paints and brushes, paper, and a cookie sheet for each person.

Paint a picture onto the cookie sheet. Use a moderate amount of paint. Too little and the picture doesn't quite come out clearly, too much and the paint smears and blurs as you make the print.


Press your paper gently onto the sheet without wiggling the paper. It works best if you lift your hands to press all over the paper rather than smoothing the paper over the paint. Peel away your paper carefully.


Bright colors and simple strokes make a vivid interesting print.


If there's enough paint left on the sheet, you can make a second print. Once you've finished printing, you can add more paint to your existing cookie sheet picture to create a series of similar prints, or wash and dry the sheet and start over.


Variations:
Use plenty of paint, and use your print from the cookie sheet to transfer your print painting to a canvas or another piece of paper--a print of a print.
Paint large blocks of color onto the cookie sheet. Fingerpaint shapes, lines, squiggles, or a picture into your paint and print.
Use a paintbrush to paint fine details into your print once it's dried.
Paint your brother instead of the cookie sheet. (Not recommended. But fun.)

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. I forgot I'd promised an art project this afternoon. Making cookie sheet prints took five minutes to set up. The fine young gents spent nearly an hour painting and printing this afternoon, experimenting with shapes and colors, ways to paint and the process of making prints. We used an entire sketch pad and more.

I've been busy......

Woman Reading, Claude Monet.

Japanese Lady Reading By Moonlight, Keisai Yeisen.

Young Lady Reading, Mary Cassatt.

Blue Girl Reading, Auguste Macke.

Girl Reading, c.1874, Pierre-August Renoir.