Art Class #4

For this class, I had the boy and his sister again, along with the other little girl (ages 5,7, and 9).
The melted wax project I'd originally had an idea for didn't really turn out how I'd hoped. Instead, I went with a project that was inspired by one I found on the Sharpie blog website.
Their project used ceramic tiles, Sharpies, and rubbing alcohol.
Since I didn't have any ceramic tiles, and I was unable to find any before my class, I instead used Elmer's poster board. Because it's so thick and has a smooth, shiny finish, it worked well for our purposes.
(I did find that regular markers worked better than Sharpies on the poster board; the Sharpies don't seem to blur and smudge as well as regular marker.)

The kids got to take their clay projects from the last class home also; I gave them all the option of gluing more lentils onto their sculptures, but they were eager to move on to the new project.

For this project, I gave each of the kids a square of poster board. I had them use the markers to scribble designs, patterns--whatever they wanted--onto the poster board. They were very excited, because I'd explained to them before hand how the project worked and what the end result was.
The girls had fun using lots of colors all over theirs in scribble-designs. The boy decided to experiment with squares in different colors. I really encouraged this. I love for the kids to experiment and see what happens, which is exactly what they were doing. They also really enjoyed not having to worry about being too precise.

As each child finished, I took their boards and dripped the rubbing alcohol onto the marker designs. This was also fun for the kids, because they got to watch the ink swirl together. They also got to complain about the smell of the alcohol--which gave us something to talk and laugh about!










After putting a decent amount of alcohol on the board, I then tilted it around a bit so that the ink would run together better.

"Squares" experiment by the 7 yr. old boy 

It took the boards maybe 5-10 minutes to dry, during which time the kids decided to practice drawing pictures of people.

After the boards were dry, I invited the children to add to them with Sharpies and glitter glue. I told them they could draw a picture, write their names and make a sign for their bedrooms--whatever they wanted.

It was a lot of fun, and the kids really enjoyed it. It was also nice to hear how some concepts I've been emphasizing with the kids are really making an impact.
I've been trying to emphasize with them how one of the beauties of art is that there is no wrong way to do art, and that each person has his/her own unique style. During this class, the kids said things amongst themselves such as "I think they will all look good and have good styles!" "We have good styles." "If you got ten people to each draw a person, you couldn't really say one is better than the other, because they'd all be different and different styles."
I love hearing the kids think on a concept and expound upon it. 

 

Handiwork of the 5 yr.old; a flower that's being rained on,
with little fairies above it. Very creative!

Anyway, now I have to come up with a project for next week! It will be a bittersweet class, because I'm sure I will miss my little creative kinderlings! 
My husband, who loves that I do this little "class," is really pushing for me to continue with more. 
Maybe I will! ;)