Learning Shapes through Art & craft

Our Shape Collection: Using small collage shapes & Marble Art.

Our first shapes were done by collage,
First I cut out our large shapes as the background (cut a large square, triangle, circle & what ever other shape you wish large enough to glue smaller shapes on) and using paintings left over from Rolling Pin Art & Home made wrapping paper I cut out lots & lots, I mean lots. Of teeny tiny matching shapes.  You could use any coloured paper or any old painting, you could even using magazine or news papers if you felt like a different effect.

Then, we played a shape matching game. I laid out the large square, covered it with glue and we had to pick out small squares  to stick on it - So in a sense it is a shape matching collage.
Then the triangle, cover it with glue and pick out all the teeny tiny triangles to stick on it & so forth.
After the glue on the large shapes had finished, I wrote their name & laminated them so they could go on the wall.

The most recent shape learning art process we did was using marble art.
You can see a previous post of ours using a similar process, but with cherry tomatoes, stones & other circular objects - tomato-marble-art.
Basically, you need a tray large enough to put in your shapes. A plastic storage box or an aluminium BBQ tray would work well.
You put your shape in the bottom, a few marbles or circular objects on top & your choice of paint blobs. Have your little one swirl & shake the box.
Dimples loves this part & we sing a little song made up song to jig to "side to side - side to side- now back & forth back & forth, round & round, can you go round and round."

Remember its the process, not the product when it comes to little ones & this process was lots of fun - do what ever makes it fun for you!  After the shapes are dry & laminated they went up on the wall for display. I ask Dimples to label them & match them etc and to find objects that are the same shape.

Christmas Tree ART

These tree's we made turned out awesome.

First we started with a cut out of a tree, I blue tacked it on to our canvas and smiley sponged different shades on Green in to it. Then i pulled the outline off & gave him a bowl full of decorations. There were cellophane pieces, star sequence, jewels and glitter, cut pieces of wrapping paper & some pom poms.

Some things stuck to the paint but other things required some glue.

He stuck them all on & then we glued a star on top as a final touch (or a pom pom).

The second one we tried as a foil cut out of a tree with blobs of glue as the baubles and then Smiley sprinkled glitter over it.

Pinecone People for Christmas.

Its a cute Christmas Decoration!

One day, we went on a trip to a nearby town & Smiley spotted some Pine cones that he called 'spikeycones', He happily played with them & asked if we could take one to put eyes on it (after the story stones & his pet rock he asks if we can put eyes on everything) So i stashed a few in my bag for play and craft.
The things mothers do! I am sure the lady at the supermarket later that day thought i was quiet strange when i pulled out 3 pine cones in order to find my wallet.


Eventually I came up with this Christmas decoration idea and thought they would be excellent gifts for Smiley to give to family or to decorate our home for the Christmas season. We tried to use some different techniques while making this as well. . .


So here go,
What you need;  Pine cones, 2 pom poms, 2 craft eyes, 1 pipe cleaner, paint & glitter glue, glue, felt, scissors, a stapler, another pom pom & some time.


We did this in steps as it took a while to dry, ill tell you the way we did it but now that it is done I would have done the eyes last. So you might want to swap the eyes til last but seen as this just came to me as we were making it I worked backwards.


Step 1:  Eyes & arms,  2 pom-poms & a cut pipe cleaner, I got smiley to choose a colour & put glue on 2 pom poms, then asked him to wedge the eyes into the pine cone next to each other. then I put the glue on the craft eyes and got him to put these on top of the pom poms. Cut a pipe cleaner in half and put glue on one side of both halves, entirely, I actually put the tip of the pipe cleaner into the glues tip so that it was covered in glue & got Smiley to insert the arms into the body. Make sure the glue has contact & will set.
drying time.







Step 2: Paint. This is a little different. In order to get some fine motor practise in and let smiley practise manipulating a knife I gave him a small old baby knife that i had. He is so keen to use a knife but is yet to master the skill & the baby safe ones really don't do anything but frustrate him as they don't cut through even the softest of foods, they are a little too safe that they are not functional at all so for him to practice holding & handling a knife with no pressure & no frustration I asked him to use it to "cut" the white paint & feed it to the pine cone, whipping it inside the pine cone section.
Drying time.







Step 3: Hats and boots.
Using felt I cut out a heart shape felt piece that the pine cone will glue onto as feet and I also made a hat from felt by cutting it & rolling it into a cone, I stapled the hat and asked smiley to glue another pom pom on top of the Santa hat and due to the nature of felt I clipped the pom poms on for the drying process so they didn't spring off. If you wanted to go one step further you could sew the hat instead of stapling it :-P




Step 4:
Dust on the glitter glue. Smiley dipped a duster in the glitter glue and dusted the pine cone person with gold glitter glue, just to give it a christmas feel. The idea of the first white paint is to get in to the middle of the pine cone and this step is more to frame the surface with glitter. To "dust" it with glitter so to speak.
drying time.







Step 5: Glue the hat & feet.
I put glue on the tip of the Pine cones head & inside the hat and asked smiley to glue the hat on, then put glue on the felt feet and asked him to place the person on top. Press them on firmly. Then we let it set.

There we have a cute Christmas Pine cone Person Decoration. 

Spider Webs & the very busy spider

THE VERY BUSY SPIDER ~ Web/Glue paint activity.

After reading the Very busy spider by Eric Carle & noticing that my little one loved the feel of the spider web embossed we did this Art project using Glue & black paint, then he painted his webs & made spiders on wool web to hang off his Art.
He was so pleased with himself when he had his finished & dried project, spider & all, which felt just like the busy web in the story.

First you need PVA glue or similar & some cardboard or card stock.  If you have an older child they could help with this bit if they are patient enough to leave it dry overnight but seen as my little man is only 2 I pre-glued his web & put them out to dry.
Black glue:  Glue with black paint, or you could do red if you wanted, clear or any colour depending on what you wanted to use it for.

We tried a black web & a clear web.

Once they were dry (the next day) I got out the paints & some rollers, brushes and sponges. With a variety of colours I let my little boy pick & choose how he wanted them to look. I'm still trying to get him out of the habit of smearing, he loves to get a bit of green on his brush, then red, then yellow, then blue & so on before painting with it, mostly his art turns into a big smear of brown ha ha, but the rollers seem to do the job. He enjoys it!

One was yellow. I don't know how that worked so well, i think because I had a cheaper full paint tube of yellow. . . So I stacked the yellow on & it was his first choice, he had a little help with this one. Initial encouragement to show him the ropes, that's all! Then i let him at it.

This one above was a fence post, tree & a web through the sky. He did really well at painting the fence palings.  The one below was just a random experiment I did with the black glue on normal A4 printing paper to see if it was too thin but it worked fine, the glue also worked fine so i held onto it so he could use it up after he did his webs.

After all our paint sessions there must be an outburst of hand painting & messy prints on the left over newspaper, that's his new thing!

Then he helped with the spider making. These are our drying spiders. All they are made from is a large pom-pom with 2 eyes & 4 matchsticks criss crossed & glued on the underside.

Then a thread of wool is also glued to the under side. Easy peasy. I am sure their are some much more creative & better looking craft spiders out there but this is what i had in the junk box & it was something he could lend a hand in making. He chose the colours & put the eyes on, then the hardest bit was waiting for them to dry!

Once the base/background was dry on the yellow web we got a mauve coloured paint & a sponge, then only lightly smeared it over the web. This was in the aim to only brush over the intruding glue web that you can feel, just to make it stand out a little. This was his final task & here it is below.....

Once they are dry I scewed a hole threw the cardboard for the wool web to be threaded into, taped it  secure onto the back from one corner so the spider was hanging from the front of the web. Now that i am reflecting, it would possibly have a better effect with a shorter thread attached through the centre of the web!  This is web #1 that got given to Nanny, he was so happy to give her his master piece.

#2 web got kept. I asked who this one was for & he said it was a present for Daddy. I'm glad, I wanted to hold on to it, we'll put it into our under bed container of Art pieces & memories after it has been displayed for a while.