I think art or crafts is an important part of a child’s education. Some children have more natural talent than others but I think everybody can do something artsy; it just takes some direction to help mine the artistic ability.

Today I’m going to share some art (or craft) ideas with you.

Barb – Harmony Art Mom hosts Sketch Tuesday (this link takes you to the directions for participation) on her website/blog. She posts the “assignment” on Tuesdays and has just started the new year. She had taken off the month of August after covering Picasso during the month of July. You can email a picture of you and your children’s submissions to her and she will include it in a slideshow the following Tuesday after she shares the new “assignment”. The first one for this “school” year is to draw something with whiskers. (I’d love to know if you participate in this, so I can go check out your creativity!)

Gail Bartel over on that artist woman shares things she does with her 1st and 2nd grade classes, from what I can tell. I think even my very active niece Macie would enjoy this, if my sister can get her to sit still long enough and remember to blow through the straw and not inhale the paint. It is a really good late fall/winter art project since it is painting a fall tree; so I guess I should’ve saved it for a month or so but it was just too good not to share. Do take some time and look around her site because she has some really cute projects.

Over on make and takes, they have some cute crafty ideas; they also have some good food recipes too. Mmmm, Mmmm! The reason I bring them to your attention though is because of this cute “Underwater Silhouette Paintings” idea. It starts by using watercolors, cheap are fine, and adding a few drops of rubbing alcohol on the wet paint to make “bubbles.” Then let that dry and cut out sea creatures from black paper and add other details with black marker. It is a pretty simple activity. The hardest part for some will be the cutting out sea creatures but you could use stencils or print out some sea creatures coloring pages (may need to scale it down so they are smaller) and use them as stencils.

Here’s another idea over on Art is Fun to make an art journal, just sketching something small each day as a symbol of what the student did that day or really just anything they want to draw. Sometimes drawing something so small is difficult for little ones, so consider drawing bigger shapes, maybe the size of a quarter of the page, for the smaller ones to draw in. Check out the links on the left sidebar for drawing lessons and painting lessons.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Zentangle. Check out Wonder Wednesday on the menu above; Zentangle really is simply to do. Here are a few links to how some people are using Zentangle with children.

• For the older ones, Art Room 104 has a Zentangle Unit with 4 projects that look interesting.
• What Do We Do All Day has a cute journal idea for the youngest ones.
• At Lasso the Moon there is a video tutorial, by a child, showing how to make an aluminum foil zia (Zentangle inspired art).
• On this website, though in another language, I think you can get the idea of how to use a button for the center of a flower and draw patterns around it to form the rest of the flower.

I hope these give you some ideas for art with your child. I highly recommend doing art WITH your child; you might find a side of yourself that you didn’t know existed before. Doing art with your child creates memories as well as art.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº