Camel crafts
One of the things we are learning about this year are deserts. (Note, that's one 's', not two, though I'm sure everyone would find a study on desserts very... yummy.) We have spent the late fall in the Sahara and are just about ready to move on, but we have a few things left to do. One is to watch the Michael Palin travelogue about his crossing the Sahara and the other we took care of today, which was doing a substantial art project. Art makes everything more interesting, don't you think?
I have also discovered the absolutely best use of Pinterest, which is to find grade school appropriate art projects that I would never think up on my own. Evidently art teachers across the country have embraced Pinterest with a fervor and as a result there are some really amazing projects to be found there. My newest technique is to type in whatever we are studying and add 'art project' after it and lo and behold, multiple choices will often appear. This is what I did for our desert study and I came across these adorable camel portraits. (Click the link so you can visualize what I describing.)
The plus of these were that they were cool looking, did not require overly messy supplies, and looked as though they could be completed in a morning. These are my usual requirements for an art project actually being done in my house rather than just me pondering it. It did require pastels, though, a supply which (surprisingly) was not on hand. That was one of my many errands from the first half of the week. And even better, I was able to find student pastels which were priced so well that I was able to get each child their own box for the price of what I was expecting to find one set for. This meant that along with trying to direct the project I didn't also have to deal with complaints about who was hogging what color or who was breaking them or who didn't get to finish using a color or someone won't let me see the box, etc. etc.
And it was successful. Everyone from P. on down ended up with a finished project which more or less followed the basic instructions. There was coloring and cutting and drawing and gluing (which was slowed down for a little bit when we discovered our glue supply was woefully low and had to send B. out on an emergency glue run). And they look good... even the three year olds'. We were even able to get everything cleaned up for lunch.
The finished projects are now hung on my picture wire in the kitchen where we will enjoy them for a while. I'll post pictures of the whole thing on the fb page.
I have also discovered the absolutely best use of Pinterest, which is to find grade school appropriate art projects that I would never think up on my own. Evidently art teachers across the country have embraced Pinterest with a fervor and as a result there are some really amazing projects to be found there. My newest technique is to type in whatever we are studying and add 'art project' after it and lo and behold, multiple choices will often appear. This is what I did for our desert study and I came across these adorable camel portraits. (Click the link so you can visualize what I describing.)
The plus of these were that they were cool looking, did not require overly messy supplies, and looked as though they could be completed in a morning. These are my usual requirements for an art project actually being done in my house rather than just me pondering it. It did require pastels, though, a supply which (surprisingly) was not on hand. That was one of my many errands from the first half of the week. And even better, I was able to find student pastels which were priced so well that I was able to get each child their own box for the price of what I was expecting to find one set for. This meant that along with trying to direct the project I didn't also have to deal with complaints about who was hogging what color or who was breaking them or who didn't get to finish using a color or someone won't let me see the box, etc. etc.
And it was successful. Everyone from P. on down ended up with a finished project which more or less followed the basic instructions. There was coloring and cutting and drawing and gluing (which was slowed down for a little bit when we discovered our glue supply was woefully low and had to send B. out on an emergency glue run). And they look good... even the three year olds'. We were even able to get everything cleaned up for lunch.
The finished projects are now hung on my picture wire in the kitchen where we will enjoy them for a while. I'll post pictures of the whole thing on the fb page.
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