Fall Art Projects

My friends and family all kow that I am not crafty or artsy.  This is an understatement. I am not good at, nor do I enjoy, arts and crafts.  But kids love painting and crafts and I wouldn't want to pass on my prejudices so one of my goals this year was to be more adventurous with art stuff around here.  PK1 does have an art class every week, but I decided to supplement it a little bit at home. So with a lot of prayer and a paper bag for me to breath into and a few coupons for carry out pizza, I have gotten a little outside my comfort zone this fall.

In this one, you cut leaves out of paper towel and draw veins on them.  It is supposed to teach about the veins and about texture.  Then you paint the leaves in fall colors and glue them on a paper you have painted blue.

For this one, I just sat down to paint with them and started blending these colors and they decided to copy me.  This, I have found, is actually a really good techinique.  Better than saying..."make something like this."  If I was buying one of these in a store, I would pick PK2's version.  It is the bottom right:

This one was not fun because you the mom had to cut up all these little pieces for the leaves.  But I loved the contrast of the dark tree trunk, light paper and colorful leaves.  This was a first time the PKs used rubber cement and that was a bit of a trip.  They did cut out their trunk themselves, after I traced it, and glued all the leaves by scattering them on top of the rubber cement.

This one was the most ambitious, but we did really enjoy it.  First we read the book Leaf Man.

Then we went for a walk and chose some leaves.  It was a really good year for leaves with lots of vivid colors. I suggested they get lots of different colors and sizes and shapes.  Then we came home and started making a Leaf Man.  PK2 used so much glue.  I had to take really deep breaths and remind myself that glue only costs fifty cents.

PK1 wanted to write Leaf Man and that turned out pretty cute too.  PK2 went with a leaf lady.  I helped PK2 a little, but not PK1.  (As though she would even let me.)

The surprise with this one was that when you bring leaves in from outside and dump a bag of them on your kitchen table, you end up with a lot of dirt/mud on your white tile floor.  Who knew that leaves were not pre-washed.  There was quite a bit of clean up.  All in all, I give myself and "A" for effort and "B" for patience.  Not sure if Christmas crafts are in our future, get back to me at Valentines.