Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Art ideas?

Do you have any art projects or ideas that you have used or plan to use for your child? I know there are some other artists on this board and would love to read what you have come up with, but really this is for anyone who has done some interesting projects and would like to share. Look forward to reading about the ideas.

Do you have age group in mind?

Here's a few ideas:

Playdough - roll long snakes and make a face or flower picture, You can even make your own playdough with the kids.

This is my all time favorite- Save all interesting things like cardboard, caps from milk jugs, foil from the coffe can, egg cartoon. Then have the kids create something, it does not have to be realistic. It's fun to cover a old pasta box with foil and make a robot.

Long roll of paper - make a banner, we like to do a theme, like easter or what types of things should we do this winter. this is fun to have a few kids to join in and do. We have done this at easter or birthday parties. I like to have out an ed emberly book drawing books related to the theme for inspiration.

Make books - Loreen Leedy has a great kids book on this for inspiration.

Nature crafts - lots of books on this at the library. Painting rock like bugs is fun

Get a long piece of burlap type fabic, that kids can stick stuff in or sew. use buttons, feathers, pipe cleaners, etc. You don't need a plan just have fun.

We wrap all our birthday gifts in white paper from a roll and then the kids decorate. They make all the birthday cards.

The kids make Valentines for all their class mates. We start a month ahead of time and make it an ongoing project.

If you can manage it take photos as the art is created and put into a photo album. This is a nice way to keep it without having so much around the house piling up.

I could probally go on for days. This is a fun idea for a thread.

Thanks for the ideas onthegomom and no ... no age limit on ideas.

This is a spin off of another thread and thought it would be fun to see what parents come up with to inspire their children. One complaint is that schools' art projects tend to be restrictive and for the little ones, it is more about staying in the lines than creativity.

Some ideas: shadow drawings - take some paper outside and have the child put it on the sidewalk or on a clipboard if you are going to explore in the grass. Draw the shadows.

Collages using magazines, found objects, gesso, charcoal pencils, oil pastels, paint ... the list goes on and on. I find that the cheap canvases found at a local art supply make great backgrounds for this type of projects and kids really get into it.

You are very welcome. I hope more will add here to. I like to hear new ideas.

This year my kids have a wonderful art teacher. They do open ended projects and are encourage to think and do more details. The assignment might be to draw an underwater scene but before the class begins that talk about how things look near and far and kids brainstorm for what could be in the picture.

Last year, a teacher read poems, Where the side walk ends, by Silverstein and the students drawed what they thought of. I remember doing this with music when I was in elementary school.

A great idea with art is to tie it into the cirriculium. A unit on Ireland can include Irish Soda Bread and Castles out of paper towel tubes. How about some irish music?

Now I'm getting myself thinking wouldn't that be a great Nonschool way to enrich a child at home. It would be wonderful to then bring this into school and show a teacher.

I saw mostly little-kid stuff, I though I might add some big-kid stuff while I'm procrastinating on other things

A friend came to me for tutoring in art for a gifty who isn't managing school too well this year. (I'm a working artist, when I'm not on mat leave, Student wants to be). She's 14. Here's some of what I've been throwing at her:

Graded detail: She had an asignment to draw scenes from Hamlet, but hadn't enough time to finish in her usual style. So I had her ID the focal points of the images, and increase the detail in those regions, but minimize and obscure detail in the other areas. She did two high key, one low key, one "soft focus," and one I didn't see finished. Goal: 5 complete, full-page illustrations in two hours... she *almost* made it (and finished the next morning in time to hand it in). (Pencil on Paper)

Eyelines: On a different asignment, she had a lot of people to draw, and the pics weren't comming off with the kind of "sparkle" I think she can achieve. I thought the eyes were the problem, so I had her experiment with drawing eyes in such a way as to produce a clear sence of the subject's gaze, including depicting one person's emotions towards another. She got some good stuff, but perfectionism got in the way (Pencilcrayon on paper)

Footprints in clay: She didn't have much to do last week, so we made footprints of my baby's feet in clay. You need the clay just right to get a good print, so this got her to really engage with the basic properties of a medium she's been interested in... And I got memorabilia (DS took his first on-purpose steps a few hours later, how cool is _that_)

And she'll be here again on Thursday....
I need a good excuse to get her sketching in various media, she's a crazy perfectionist, and she won't be making a living in any kind of art until she speeds up by an order of magnitude or two!

-Michaela

I wanted to get some art stuff last summer for my son's school, so I emailed all the museums I could find around the county with this:

Dear Madam or Sir,

I am a 2-4 grade teacher in a Montessori school in Louisiana. I�m writing to see if you have any free educational kits or materials that you can send from your museum. We are working on lessons for the 2008-2009 school year and would like to incorporate some new material. There are 24 children in the classroom. Anything you can send would be much appreciated.

Send to: insert your information.

I up'd the grade he was actually in so I would get stuff I could use. By the end of the summer I had gotten so much free and fantastic stuff that I now have an huge plastic tub to choose from! Posters, curriculum, handouts, puppets, workbooks,ect. A link for a list of museums is below.

http://museumca.org/usa/

I think collage is a wonderful way to get kids interested in art. It is doing wonders for my 4yo who doesn't want to draw or write because, he can't do it perfectly. I have noticed his coloring sheets from church are coming home with more and more crayon on them since he has started doing collages.
Plus, it isn't an age thing. I can happily do collages myself. Just change the materials.

We like to use:
foam shapes, foam sheets, foam letters and numbers (these can be hilarious with words on the collage, a recent one had T-O-E on it, ha ha)
pom poms
googley eyes
torn paper
construction paper
markers and crayons


I also like to make little flags with paper and popsicle sticks. That is something I did as a kid and have started doing with my DS. I used to just make them up, but DS is obsessed with geography so we have been doing real ones.

Mine is only 2 so our art is not that complicated. We did the potato carving. DD told me what to carve and we had few different color paint on the plates for her to mix. she stamped and painted with those potatoes twice yesterday.

What would be good washable paint that mixes well? We have tried aquarelle but she ends up mostly using water so the paper gets wet and soggy. The paints we have now are not great to mix.

We have also painted flags and used sticks from outside as poles.

Thanks! we will try those out next. Now we have Melissa & Doug paint and they are hard to mix. I'm not worried about her clothes as as a perfectionist I have developed a quite a talent on stain removal LOL I just don't want her to look like I painted her skin instead of her painting the paper.

ETA What kind of glue is good for little kids?

Two big favorites that we do in preschool involve crayons and heat. For the first, we grate crayon pieces then put them between two sheets of wax paper. Apply a warm iron so that the crayon all melts. Let it cool and frame it with cardstock. Wa La! Stained glass to hang in the window.

For the second put crayon pieces in muffin tins, one color in each hole. Set the muffin tin in an electric skillet with water in it. After a few minutes the crayon will melt. We use this to paint textured pictures. It dries almost immediately and the texture seems to inspire the kids to some really great creations.

Obviosly these both require adult supervision because of the heat, but the kids love them!