Coastalgirl

the making of a hallowe'en branch and tree....

Yesterday involved a nature walk around our property and Leah collected dead branches to decorate for Hallowe'en. She insisted on decorating her own branch and wanted me to hang it on the wall. It just so happens that we moved into a house with an orange bathroom (egad), so very fitting for Hallowe'en. This is her branch....

And these are dead spruce branches collected from the yard, stuck in a pail with beach rocks and decorated with things we had on hand.

Yesterday also marked another Hallowe'en party; this one at preschool and she wanted to go as a kitty cat:

A very easy costume to put together with things on hand. Add a touch of face painting and voila there is a black kitty cat.

A few favourite Hallowe'en books we are reading this week:

On the first stroke of midnight, ten children, two dogs and a cat enter a haunted funhouse. On their journey through the rooms, they encounter bats and witches and goblins. As the clock strikes, the children bravely sing, “Oh, nothing frightens me!” — and one by one they disappear. By the twelfth stroke of midnight, only one brave child is left — and he’s about to get a big surprise! This Halloween story is spooky and fun, and just right for young readers (Amazon.ca). We sing it to the tune of "The twelve days of Christmas." It's a hoot!

Preparing a costume for Emily is an event for her entire family. Grandma brings her a purple cape and Grandpa brings a skirt to match. In a pattern akin to "This Is the House That Jack Built," striped socks, a red purse, and, of course, a big black hat are added. Then, "This is a snake that's long and slim-/To go with the hat with a big, black rim-/To go with the purse with the strings untied-/To go with the socks with stripes on the side-." Mom decorates and Dad looks on. Each alternating page is black with a colorful trim and the words for each accessory pop out from the otherwise white print in bold colors along with skeletons, bats, or ghosts. A boldly colored, full-page illustration of the child and the cumulative action appears on the opposite page. This is a great read-aloud for the younger set and a good choice for newly independent readers. It has all of the fun and none of the fright of Halloween (Amazon.ca)

so you want to make a cat?

 So we wanted to make cats for Hallowe'en......we folded a piece of 8.5x11'' construction paper in half, cut out an arch shape, so we had two arch pieces. One piece was made into the head and the other was cut into a tail. Both were glued onto the main body of the cat and then decorated with additional scrap pieces of construction paper. The cat is actually free-standing, but Leah preferred to adorn the fridge and then proceeded to make an additional 3 cats to give to family.

This idea comes from cut paper play by Sandi Henry in the section of 3-D projects for little hands. We've gotten ideas from several of these Williamson Press books. I like that we can start with an idea and never know how it will finish and the result is always a surprise. Projects like these are honing Leah's skills with scissors and glue.

Another lovely figure drawing complete with signature:

This is a happy man with a bubble on his head. I really like how the nose is between the eyes and the smile takes up more than half of the face. This one is going in a frame...it just has to. This one is going out to The Artful Parent who is also enjoying these drawing filled days with her little one.

a few things making our day special

It is this time of year that the creative juices flow, there is excitement in the air, and we enjoy the cool crisp autumn days as they pass into winter. a few special things that are making our day extra special:

1.  I just had a look at the photos from Leah's first costume party. She dressed as a wood fairy and we ventured outside to snap a few photos in the fall leaves.

Here is another while we were getting ideas for fairy houses:

2, We are in love with this book that arrived yesterday via Amazon.ca. We soon will be making thumbprints (aka Ed Emberley), collages, pattern painting, watercolouring...it's a bounty of ideas.

Here's a look at a few pages inside:

3, One of Leah's favourite stories right now is purple green and yellow by Robert Munsch about Brigid, who claims to need 100s of markers to make her creations on paper and elsewhere.

4. One of the most amazing things of the last few months has been the explosion of creativity and imagination I see in Leah. After months and months of scribbles, we finally evolved into figures and animals....I think it's a moment that many Moms of preschoolers secretly wait for with perhaps (I hate to admit it) a touch of impatience. We encourage and praise daily those incessant scribbles, but when a drawing comes along with recognizable features....it's a proud moment!

5. I came across the book the OK book and a video by Amy Krouse Rosenthal that I think is interesting and now it's on our wish list at the local library. "The book's hero is a little stick figure whose head is the O of OK, and whose arms and legs are the K. (Imagine the word OK tipped up on its side.) The scenery is similarly minimal: a black horizon line, a squiggly tree, some grass. I like to try a lot of different things, the OK figure says. I'm not great at all of them, but I enjoy them all the same. On each succeeding page, the stick figure turns in a series of OK performances, roasting a marshmallow, cutting a sandwich not really in half (I'm an OK sharer), and looking at the result of his fishing—a tangle of seaweed and a boot. One day, I'll grow up to be really excellent at something, OK says, while lying in bed. I don't know what it is yet... but I sure am having fun figuring it out." (Reed)

card making and fingerpainting 101

Today we were inspired by a little craftiness.....first came the card making since I get so tired of lamely searching for storebought cards and sentiments. I have a love for paper like some love fabric, so I search out interesting patterns or make them myself. I have collected stamps for years and I'm always thinking of ways to incorporate them into cards for birthdays, thank yous, etc etc. Here are two recent ones. One is made from lemon slice printing with white acrylic paint (great idea for food printing for Leah too).

   
Our other bits of craftiness took the form of fingerpainting 101. Leah fingerpainted on the easel and mushed the colours together and then painted arms and backs of hands. I don't know if this is an activity we will ever outgrow. I think she loves the feeling of paint mushed between the fingers. Doesn't it look like great fun?

toothpicks and popsicle sticks

This week we joined the Moms over at unplug your kids for the weekly art/craft theme of WOOD. I dug out the toothpicks, popsicle sticks, and homemade play clay and wanted to see what we could come up with. It seemed the most likely candidate was a porcupine with its spikes for toothpicks and popsicle sticks for legs. As you can see, the activity was enjoyed and progressed into many questionable animals.

Green 5---green day artwork by Leah

Here we are reaching the end of green week at shining egg and I thought it might be nice to get away from the nature shots today and focus on Leah art. This particular painting is a finger painting done on watercolour paper. This paper is great because it soaks up a lot and you don't end up with mashed pieces into the table as more and more paint is applied. Leah labelled this one "green day," so I thought it was quite fitting to be included in green week. Happy green day to all and may the northerners continue to see green things popping out of the ground!

real art? digital too

wolf by Leah, originally uploaded by coastalgirlimage.

This first painting was one of four canvasses that Leah did at Xmas time for gifts for grandparents. She named each one of them. This one was called, "Wolf." The others were called, "ghost, fish, and horsey." She accomplished these in a step acrylic process and mashed colours around to her heart's content. It was a joy to see her loving the colours and all I had to do was scrub the floors, walls, and table....easier than going shopping for xmas gifts!

This second piece was created on the computer using the mouse from this website. She had fun double clicking the left mouse button to change colour and then using the space bar to erase the image and start over. I wasn't able to save the images to the computer, but could print them out. So I scanned this one to add to our digital art files and of course, project 366 .

music at unplug your kids

We joined everyone over at unplug your kids  in a musical theme this week. I meant to post this yesterday, but there you go....sidetracked again. For this week's musical theme, I decided we should add to Leah's musical instrument collection and we made a didgeridoo and castanets. Original didgeridoos hale from Australia and are carved and painted on the surface from the tubes left behind by termites. You blow in one end and make a low pitched hollow noise. We made our's from a saran wrap roll and preferred to treat it like a kazoo. Both the didgeridoo and the castanets were easy to make from things we had on hand: saran wrap roll, buttons, elastic bands, foam, paint, sequins, and coloured tape. Our favourite CD to listen to at the moment is Justin Robert's "meltdown."

Leah ART

Leah did this great drawing a year ago and I have been meaning to frame it for a while. There are a few great ideas over at the Artful Parent for framing kid's art. This piece is a mix of markers and crayon, then Leah asked me to trace around her hand. One would argue that I have mared her work, but luckily, I'm not a purist at heart for every piece she does. Once in a while, she'll ask for help and I'll oblige. We are still pretty much at the scribble stage and I was wondering if Leah could draw any figures, so I asked her, "do you know how to draw a person?" I was just curious. I figured she probably could, but was just more interested in scribbling because it's more fun for her. She came up with this:

Apparently this is a lady on a log. Her nose is below her mouth and what started off as a neck changed to legs so the lady could walk. The purple line on the right started to be an ear, but she decided she didn't know how to do ears and abandoned the idea. Isn't it great? Am I crazy to get excited about the first time she draws a stick person --egg person? I absolutely love the spiky hair. I think it looks more like a punker Easter chick. These are wonderful artful days.

alphabet time

Today it was time to join the others at unplug your kids in art time with the alphabet. We thought about this for a while and I decided to turn Leah's love for stamps into our alphabet activity. First she stamped a whole bunch of favourite stamps on paper and then came time to match up the stamped images with the letters that each image starts with. Soon enough, butterflies had Bs next to them, Strawberries had Ss and so on and so on. It became a good lesson in phonetics. Leah has a stubborn aversion to any lower case letters except in her name, so we only used the upper case letters. She says she does not like the smaller letters....." a little j, is not a J" oh well.....I'm sure this too will pass.

Then I thought we could make an alphabet bracelet. First I slathered glue over a piece of cardboard, and then Leah glued letters from magazines all over it. Once dry, I punched a hole at each end, threaded a ribbon, and Leah was able to play dressup with new bracelet.She happily picked out the letters and sang the alphabet song to her heart's content.