I'm biased.

I know I'm biased but I think my daughter has amazing artistic sense.  :)  It's so wonderful to watch her drawing.  She is so focused and intense.  Her little book is almost totally full of her colorful drawings.

Daria's second art class

Daria's second preschool art class was all about gluing.  She had a blast thickly applying the glue stick to plastic containers and putting little bits and bobs on it.  She had fun sorting the pom-poms and coloring with oil pastels on the plastic.  I didn't know oil pastels showed up on plastic!

Daria's first art class and Create With Me magazine

We had Daria's (my daughter) first art class today and she really enjoyed the water cup!  The kids painted on the floor and there was a big tarp protecting the floor.  Some kids used their hands, others brushes and others used their feet.  Some of the other objects the kids (aged 18 months-3 years old) used to paint with were

pinecones
rope
sponges
corks

Painting with a rope.. what does it do?

And here's something cool, the people over at Somerset Studio magazine just launched a new magazine called Create with Me.  I didn't submit anything to the magazine, but I sent them a couple pictures of Daria making art for their "launch party".  So if you look at this website and scroll all the way down to the bottom,  you can see 2 pictures of Daria (the little blonde hair girl) in the photo gallery. 

Fun Activity for Toddlers, Special Needs or just any child!

As art teachers, we often talk about how the process and the manipulation of materials is the main goal.  The product is nice too, but it's the process that matters.  That is where the learning occurs. 

I'm really excited to have my own personal little art student in my house.  I just can't wait until she is old enough to do even more art making.  Here is a really fun activity that my 18 month old loves to do:  making sticker and tape pictures!   I peel off the stickers and she arranges them on the paper.  It is really great for her fine motor skills to try to manipulate the pieces to stick down.  It is fun to watch her attempting to get the stickers off her fingers.  I bought some colored tape to use as well, which makes interesting designs.  Older kids would love to play around with this as well and special needs children could enjoy manipulating the tape to create pictures also.  I have a friend who used to teach students with low cognitive/fine motor skills and she would tell me about how the aides would work hand-over-hand to do projects with them.  This might be an activity that could be done in a classroom with students of varying abilities.  I'm thinking with children older than 2-3 years, they could arrange the tape to make designs, add paint and other collage images and doodle around and on top of the tape.  I will try it out as an extended "free choice" activity for early finishers and show you later what they come up with.

One of my favorite art journalers, Kelly Kilmer, uses decorative tape frequently in her artwork. 

Happy Birthday to my Baby!

Here she is relaxing on her baby couch that we bought for her birthday.

I know this isn't art-related, but we had my baby Daria's birthday party yesterday-- she turns ONE year old on October 7.   Love her so much!! Isn't she adorable?!  :) 

Here is Daria with her cousin Sonia.  Daria can walk on her own, but still stumbles a bit.  The morning of her b-day party she took a tumble on the concrete and hurt her lip, so the rest of the afternoon we tried to keep her from walking on the concrete.

Here is Daria in a pile of stuffed animals.