halloween

We had the best Halloween, we made spooky gingerbread, eyeball potions and Jack-O-Lanterns. We did a crazy halloween window drawing and went trick or treating. The cat pirate and the tiny dinosaur joined in to a swarm of children, I think our neighbourhood may be the new hot spot there were tons of kids. It was really fun.

cloud dough

 turn this...

into this...

with these super easy cloud dough instructions

cloud

Tomorrow in our Art class we will be talking about weather and playing with clouds. It may be a little messy so if you like wear some old clothes, I will have a couple of smocks as well. Tomorrow's class will be the last one for October. I will be continuing the class in November but will be charging $5 per child to help me cover costs. It has been a great month I have really enjoyed it and hope you have too, thanks so much. See you tomorrow I hope you can make it.

giselle potter

Giselle potter is a wonderful illustrator whose books we are loving reading at the moment. Cecil the Glacier is on high rotation at our house.
Years ago I used to know her and two strong memories spring to mind. One is of a wonderful puppet show she and her husband created. The other is walking into her disco party dressed to the nines only to realise no one else had dressed up and the "rubber cement" which I had used to stick stars all over my body turned out to be not the natural adhesive I imagines as each star burst into an agonising blister. It was pretty hilarious.

colour

This week in our Art/Science class we did several activities exploring elements of colour. The results were so beautiful as you can see. 

turn this...

into this...

with these make your own stained glass instructions...

circus cake and tigers

My son turned four yesterday which was super exciting.He was so looking forward to it and kept pointing out things that had changed since he was three the night before. His voice for instance he told us was much different and the strange part is he really does seem older. We had a very fun circus party to celebrate. Originally I planned to maybe let this year slide without a party but he had other plans and they involved a three ringed circus. I bashed my way through the cake sculpture obstacle and managed to turn out this somewhat passable circus tent cake and my younger son just moved out of his cot so we held off packing it down and used as a tiger in a cage at the party. It was all very lovely and fun.

And now for our Art Class tomorrow!! We will be exploring colour theory in a round about way using three different activities which should be fun for even the youngest child, so if you are about come on by I did a trial run today and it all looked pretty smashing.

Pheobe Wahl

I have been enjoying losing myself in the forest with Phoebe Wahl. You can see more of her work which ranges from illustration to animation sculpture. Here are some lovely pages from her sketchbooks.

terrarium

This week in our art/science class we did a bit of gardening and all the children made terrariums. It was really fun and muddy and here is all you need to make it yourself.

turn this...

into this...

with these terrarium making instructions...

Art class number 3

This week we will be making things in glass jars I have a few but if anyone has some and wants to bring them along to share that would be wonderful. The bigger the better, something like a pickle jar is perfect. There will also be dirt involved. Hope to see you there!

agence eureka

I can't remember how I found this collection of collections and my French has gone from scratchy to non existent so I can't find out too much about it, but if you want to lose your self in some beautiful graphic design collections covering everything from matchboxes to fonts have a look at Agence Eureka. I especially like the collections of the same images with slight variations.

tin can drum

Here is lesson two in my correspondence school for children. This week in our art class we made lovely tin can drums here are all the instructions so you can do it too.

turn this...

into this...

with these make it yourself tin can drum instructions

art class

Woo hoo tomorrow will be my second free art class/ science lesson for tiny people. We had a great time last week and would love to see anyone in the area there tomorrow. It goes from 10-12pm and you can drop in anytime and join in. We will be making instruments and talking about sound it should be a hoot. You can revisit the details here.

Roxy Paine

As well as having a pretty fabulous name Roxy Paine makes some great art. He "describes his work as a trajectory of five oscillating wavelengths: Art making machines, Replicants, Fungal Fields, Specimen Cases and Dendroids" I think that pretty much sums it up!

moth shadow puppets

As part of my month of free art activities for children that are happening each Tuesday morning, each Wednesday I will be posting what we did in the class so if you are far away you can join in. This week we made moth shadow puppets.

turn this...

into this...

with these moth shadow puppet instructions...