Art Project: Feelie Goop

This is art only in that it is proto-sculpture. Mostly Feelie Goop is a sensory exploration not terribly different from a sandbox, but it did succeed in entertaining J long enough for me to clean up the Cheerios-chips-pennies array that had been scattered on the floor since noon! I also asked him what color resulted from combining the red and yellow food coloring and he correctly reported, "Orange." Oh, AND, this won't kill my lawn, and I can't say the same for the vast quantities of sand Jackson enjoys spreading all over the grass. Hee.

Thanks again to MaryAnn F. Kohl for writing First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos! It's superuseful for non-creative moms like me, and this was a cinch to whip up and then clean up. (Although though to be fair I haven't tackled the various drips yet!) Thank you!

Art Project: Press and Stick Collage

The artist at work

This is our second project-of-the-week from MaryAnn Kohl's First Art book, and it was a hit with both of us. This is our first experience with collage (one of the five types of art we'll be exploring along with painting, printing, making marks and sculpture) using the sticky side of Contact paper as a base!

I taped down the paper using painter's tape, and then gave him an assortment of doodads to add: hoarded tissue paper from a gift bag of the past, puzzle pieces that are a lost cause as a puzzle and have been hanging out on our living room floor for a week, the bingo markers that came with the dollar-store loteria set and a bunch of punched-out holes from various documents.

The Contact paper worked much better as an adhesive base than I would have expected--most of the stuff actually stuck!--but it wasn't so sticky that it was going to stick to a wall, never to be separated again.

We'll do this one again someday, especially since I have many many feet left on that roll of Contact paper!

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't use this space to mention that MaryAnn Kohl is alive, kicking and pinning up a storm on Pinterest!

Final product

Art Project: Busy Printing

We've started doing an art project a week (for one whole week so far!) from MaryAnn Kohl's First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos and we launched this week with Busy Printing. Jackson thought this was great (there's thumping involved) and I loved that it put my hoarding tendencies to good use (lots of junk in the garage can be used to make weird shapes). Jackson says he wants to do this again so we might try again in a couple days with a different paint color and different implements.