Another Successful Camp!

Final Recap for 2015 Art, Theatre and Photography Camp!

With not a minute to spare and with the help of my incredible student volunteer Hannah, we pulled the second load of still warm pieces out of the kiln so that campers could take their clay home after the performance. The last thing I wanted was to have to track down campers to get them their clay pieces!!

The project had issues.. but on the whole, how can I be bummed about ceramics created by the campers! If I do a project like this again, I don't know that I will use terracotta. Anyway. as you can see, there were some cool parts of each kids pieces, but the colors were too muted. I need to use vibrant glaze with kids!

Here is a close up of the pieces that Kylie and Lexi created.  The "plaques" were for the kids to put their pictures on.. (we ran out of time..) So we just sent the ceramic piece and their group picture home separate.

How fun is that!  

Anyway, here is what Kylie and Lexi's samples look like fired. This is one case were the more glaze the better!

(I think this is what I will do next year... super simple, roll your slab, decorate it, put your name and date on it and load it with glaze..) 

Anyway,

Here are a few pictures from the last day of camp.

We bound sketchbooks and autograph books. (big hit.. but they kept pulling the pages out of the binding.. gonna have to work on that for next year.)

 

We finished the guitar watercolor paintings. Some of the campers left their paintings simple, others were happy to go that next step and make it more abstract.

 

We signed the autograph books. This was so much fun! The kids LOVED it!

And we showed off our week's work!

Wow. This is that moment when I see the fruits of my labor from the week!

In their art rotations they created a ceramics piece, screen printed, worked with charcoal, drew with watercolor pencils, painted, and bound a book. In a 40 minute segment over four days!

 

Wow!

 

And here are a few pictures of the performance.  104 campers makes for a full stage.

And there you have it. We have already started on 2016 camp. (and we already have people wanting to register! wow!!)

Art Camp Week

If you have been around my blog over the last few years, you know that art camp week is a crazy week in my household.

This year has been no different. (Well, add summer grad school to the mix.)

In fact, we have the most campers we have ever had. whew.  We are AT capacity!

Here are a few pictures of the kids in action.

For new visitors, I'll give you a run down. The kids come to camp and participate in either photography or art/theatre. If the kids want to do both, they do both the morning and afternoon session. This year, we have 14 all day campers.

We take PreK (fully potty-trained 3 years old) up to 6th grade for art/theatre and 4th grade-8th grade in photography.

We have a total of 104 campers!

The art/theatre kids have 3 rotations each day. Art, acting, and set/props.

On the first day I had the kids make terracotta plaques. We were so busy I forgot to take pictures in action. Thankfully a local reporter came and got some great pictures! Thanks The Flash Today!

And they even got a picture of me in action! Cool.

Here are some of the finished pieces. Nope, not fine art, but the campers had a great time and they learned a lot about clay and the glazing, firing process. I have to count that as a successful project even if I'm not necessarily in love with the product.

We also did the first step for abstract watercolor paintings.

On day 2, the campers continued to work on their watercolor paintings. I think this was the most successful project in terms of art. But it has taken the longest.

Day 3 was my nightmare. We screen printed AND tie dyed.. both in one day. CRAZY! (and will not do that again!)

Here we are screenprinting. 

The really cool thing is that our repeat campers LOVE screen printing and they remember how to do it. In fact, one little girl told me yesterday that she still has the picture of the two of us screen printing and that it was one of her favorite things to do. :)

And we tie dyed.. 104 camper shirts plus workers. oh my.

You can't even imagine the mess. 

Or the staining on my hands from working with fabric ink all day.

But today is day 4. And that means wrapping up all the art projects for me and the kids will practice their show.  One combined performance this afternoon and another year will be complete.

It's a hard week, but these kids love camp.

Faux Stained Glass

I'm quickly running through my stash of fun and easy kids activities for church! I'm going to have start branching out and creating new things.. but for now, I've still got a few tricks!

Anyway, last week I had the kids look at the stained glass windows in the sanctuary and talk about them.  We looked a little at the colors, the symbols and all of that.

Then I gave them each a transparency that I had printed a line design onto.  The internet is a great resource for "coloring book" stained glass designs!  I wanted the patterns to be interesting, but not too hard as I have from 4 years old to 14 year olds!

(Side note..it is super easy to print onto a transparency! Just change the setting on your printer to transparency and put it through the side feeder of the printer.)

The kids colored the transparencies with oil pastels.  I use oil pastels because I have them. You might could use crayon.. I'm not sure.

Purple was the hardest color to get to go on smoothly.. for whatever reason. What is pretty cool is that if the kids color a section and they don't like it, they can just color over that section with a new color.

After they finished coloring, I took a blank transparency and sandwiched the pastel between the two transparencies.  I then used masking tape to secure the two pieces together.

And that was it! The kids LOVED them.  I was thinking we would make them to hang at the church.. but they all took them home! We will make some to hang at the church another time!

And that's it. Another super fun and easy craft project for kids!

Watercolor Resist Painting for Kids

Every other Wednesday evening at church I try to come up with an arts based project for the kids to create. I am NOT a fan of coloring sheets and I don't like having kids make things that are messy, going to be messy at home or that the parent's are going to be forced to keep forever. And, I want the project to either reinforce what Doug preached about the previous Sunday or introduce what he will be preaching on this Sunday.

So with those parameters, I found this painting on pinterest that was perfect.

But, knowing that I had three young ones that would not be able to write the verse easily, I wanted to make the project more accessible.

So I opened up a word document and used a block letter font and wrote the verse pretty much like it is on the inspiration piece.

Once I got the words positioned on the paper, I changed the color of the lettering to yellow.  (Tip.. use yellow ink/pencils anytime you need to be able to see the lines, but you need to be able to paint over them. Yellow colored pencil/printer ink hides.. graphite doesn't.)

I then printed the verse onto watercolor paper.  You can purchase 9x12 watercolor sheets inexpensively. You can then cut down to 8 1/2 x 11 if your printer won't accept larger paper.

The first step is to use a white crayon or white oil pastel and completely fill in the inside of the letters. The was in the crayon resists the water. This process is very individualized, as the kids can choose not to fill in the entire letter if they don't want too. I like keeping the edges of the letters a little rough but filling the rest of the letter pretty solidly.

Once the letters are completely filled in, use watercolor and paint the paper.  At this stage, I suggest more paint, less water as you want to protect the paper from bubbling up too much.  You can always add more water to the brush, but keep it simple.

All of the kids had fun and painted their paintings completely differently.

 

Besides wanting the kids to have opportunities to create art, I have learned that busy hands create open minds when it comes to learning.  Sure, I could make the kids sit still and then tell the kids the story of Samuel and Eli. I can make the kids look at me and be quiet and "respectful." But they will probably not remember much of anything.

On the other hand, I can have the kids make art that reinforces the story and as they are working, they are listening to the story and asking me questions.  The kids never look at me and there is no way to know that they are paying attention. But when they finish their project, they have a deeper understanding of the story and a connection that lasts.

 

And this is why I love art. 

Kid Created Artwork and Curtains

Yesterday the little girls and I worked on making custom curtains for Lexi's room. This in turn opened the door for artwork. The girls had a great time and it was really easy, fun and not too messy!

If you need kid created custom curtains, you can see my guide for that... here. You use the same supplies, just trade out the canvas for curtains!

So, here is what we did...

We started with 3 shades of pink, plus glitter paint that we added to each of the colors. I like using 3 shades of the same color for projects like this... when they end of mixing colors, which they will, you don't end up with sludge, you end up with pretty variations of the same color!

 Plus you need plastic bottles of different sizes.

Pour some paint on a paper plate. This makes clean up soo much easier!

Then take a bottle and press it into the paint and stamp it onto the canvas.

 It's that easy!

Just for clarification, Kylie is using a mounted canvas and Lexi is using a canvas panel. Use the mounted canvas as it has natural give. The panel was harder to make an impression on!

We used a cork to make the centers and polka dots.

And of course, a paintbrush. Cause as Kylie explained, it's not painting unless you have a paintbrush!

Kylie's masterpiece!

After Lexi finished her curtains, she completed her painting as well.

I have to say, I love two projects completed with one set of supplies and very little cleanup!
Here is the guide for the curtains should you need it!

How to customize curtains by emilymclemore