Cardboard Chairs and Preschool Bird Art

Hi folks!  What have you been doing this summer?

It’s already flying by, isn’t it?  Here is a recap of my summer so far.

What I HAVE been doing:

• keeping Daria busy
• playdates with friends
• Children’s museum, zoo, pool, splash parks, playgrounds
• feeding Desmond and changing lots of diapers
• organizing my room at school (I will give you a tour of my revamped room when it’s all done.)
• grilling out, eating icecream, going out to eat
• family reunion in IL

What I have NOT been doing:

• blogging much
• my own art as much as I’d like
• sleeping enough!  Luckily Desmond will do a 4-7 hour stretch at the beginning of the night, but after so many nights of fragmented sleep, I am EXHAUSTED!

I signed Daria up for a preschool/toddler art class for her, but also for ME, because I love to take a peek at how other art studios are set up, how the teacher teaches and the kinds of projects other teachers come up with.  We had our first session last week at the Monroe Street Fine Arts Center.  The teacher read a story about birds and then the kids made these colorful 3-d birds.

The teacher cut in half a cardboard circle and stapled it at the top.  Then, the kids used paint dotters and foam stickers to decorate the circle.  They glued feathers on the bird and poked pipe cleaners in the back.  Then, they added beads to the pipe cleaners and twisted them.  Finally, they glued on googly eyes and a beak.  Daria had a great time and I love seeing how she puts things together.

We also went to the children’s museum in Madison a few times.  We’ve been there before many times and I have written about it before on this blog, which you can see with these posts.  There’s always something fun going on in the art studio at the museum.  Currently they have two giant chairs made out of cardboard and paper mache.  These were designed by the engineering department at the university.  They had crayons out for the kids to color on the chairs.  It’s a great idea for a collaborative art project.  As people come in to the museum they can add to the surface design.