Category / Uncategorized

by arTree

Self portrait and lines


What is a line? 

A dot that went for a walk. — Paul Klee

I started today’s at project with a mission in mind – I’m documenting kids work during the year and would like to make them a book (presentation folder) that will hold the most memorable moments. And that book needs an awesome personal cover. 

We talked about lines and Wassilly  Kandinsky. What is a line? What types of lines do we know? What can we draw with them… and then we made our background with oil pastels, sharpies and liquid watercolors. 


Then we used our art easels with little mirrors taped into them to draw our self portraits. It was really fun to see how different they were… M decided that he will be a mountain 😉


When the boys were done (yes, this class is full of boys), I cut their portraits out, framed then with black paper and we glued them onto the colored background. 

Aren’t these portfolio covers going to be just perfect? 🙂

by arTree

Building an Igloo

igloo

Would you like to build an igloo?

This is just a tiny little provocation that I set up for the kids – to go along with our winter theme. We are exploring ice, snow and polar animals… and since the block area is a big part of our preschool experience, I set up this little challenge. Let’s see what the kids will come up with.

And yes, it is Han Solo and Wampa from Star Wars (I painted them for my son couple of years ago ;)).

by arTree

Open House

Do you want to see our preschool in person?

We have an open house this Saturday (January 14th) from 9 am to 12 pm. We will have a lot of activities and centers for kids so they can experience the preschool for themselves.

Fun themes to explore
Light table play

Come to learn more about our program. We will give you a tour and talk about the schedule, themes, philosophy and plans we have for this year. We will also start taking registration this Saturday (for February and for September). If you cannot make it but would love to see the preschool, just email me or call me and we will schedule an individual tour.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Saturday! 🙂

by arTree

Going to a fair…


It’s finally here! The preschool is ready and the registration is opening. I can’t wait to show everybody what I was working on the last year. 

I’m going to be taking to people at a local preschool fair in Sammamish this Saturday – for the first time – wish me luck! ☺️

by arTree

Tinkering in Tacoma

tinkertopia

If you love tinkering, upcycling and art – bring your kids to Tacoma!

I have never been in this tiny little store before but I wanted to get there for quite some time. It is a little bit far for me now but oh my goodness, am I glad I spent an hour in the car!

As soon as I walked in, I knew it was worth it. They have so many treasures here (at least my kind of treasures). I found translucent Plexiglas crabs for the light table, plastic tubes for robot’s legs, transparent circles for alcohol-ink sun catchers, wooden spaceships ready to be painted, wooden horse-monsters from an old piano, apple-monster ready fall art project-in-the-making, microfilms and photo negatives and of course a LOT of samples of tiles, bricks and stones for our block area. And the best part? A huge paper bag is $20. I stuffed it to the rim and beyond  😉

tinkertopia finds

They also offer drop-in tinkering sessions for the kids. I talked to the owners and the best time to go seems to be Saturday morning or Sunday early afternoon. Just check their online calendar to see if there is a birthday party or not. It’s $7 per hour an a half and you can use whatever there is in the tinkering section of the store. I know what we are doing the next weekend it’s raining…

by arTree

Melting Cups

cups

 We decided to bring some color to our windows.

I have always wanted to try the melting-cups-into-suncatchers idea. And yesterday we finally decided to give it a try. It was super easy and the results were amazing.

We used colorful sharpies to decorate our plastic cups. I read that plastic #6 is the best one to use so I searched for the right cups and found them in a local grocery store for about $5. The kids loved decorating them! They were pretty sturdy so it was easy to draw all over them.

When we were done, we covered a baking sheet with aluminum foil and placed the cups on it. Then it was just a matter of minutes. The oven was heated to 350F and within a minute the cups looked like Chihuly’s flowers. Within 3 minutes, they were flat and we took them out. The kids were able to handle them almost immediately. They loved them. They kept swapping them to see which one is the most fun to look through… I think they will make an excellent addition to the lighting table as well. We may make more in the future just for this purpose!

I also saw that you can get jell-o shot cups that are plastic #6 and I am thinking about using these next time. They would be even easier and faster to decorate and we could make a LOT of tiny little circles, which would be perfect for the light table. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

by arTree

Art Book review: Beautiful Oops!

art_book_review_beautiful_oops

There is no right or wrong in art.

This is a message I try to teach the kids every time we create an art project. Art is not about right and wrong answers; it is about creativity, fun and self-expression. That is why I love this book so much.

Barney Saltzberg did an amazing job showing kids that every “mistake” is an opportunity to make something beautiful. Every stain, cut, drop of paint can be used to make something new and exciting.

I have used this book with kids 2-10 years and all of them love the message. It helps them to see what ‘no right or wrong in art’ truly means. I would definitely recommend this book to every budding artist and especially those who are afraid to start painting because they are afraid they will make a mistake.

I sometimes even do a little exercise in mistake-making. I ask the kids to doodle randomly on a piece of paper, make a stain or a tear and then try to figure out what to do with it. You can even mention that some artists, like Joan Miro, used this technique to make some of their art. Miro loved automated drawing: basically random doodles on a piece of paper that he later transformed into art… here are some examples of my older student’s work (K-2nd grade). What do you think, aren’t those Oopses wonderful?

art_book_review_beautiful_oops_example