beauty for ashes


Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts

21 June 2011

more summer camp crafts!

Nothing like working at an out-of-doors summer camp in the middle of June to really help a person appreciate air conditioning.  I have been slowly melting into a tryna-puddle.  As if 100+ temperatures are not enough, let's throw in 100% humidity just for fun!  Whew!
Anyways, my annoying adorable little campers created a few more lovely pieces of art work that I am pumped to share!

First up: masks!  What summer camp is complete without animal masks made from paper plates?  These have been embellished with felt and pipe cleaners.  Also, they abandoned the tradition string around the back of the head for a popsicle stick.



Next, we have chalk drawings on black construction paper.  These depict prey running for their lives from predators.



And now, finger puppets!  The kids had a lot of fun creating these.  They also enjoyed setting up battles between them and seeing whose puppet was the ultimate fighter.  Gotta love 2nd and 3rd graders.







Sculpting with clay was a huge success.  The kids loved getting their hands all dirty and gross.  Here are a few birds:









And my favorite craft?  Pinecone owls, of course!









Aren't they adorable!?!  Such creative geniuses I had last week!

15 June 2011

summer camp fun!

As promised, here is a peek at what we have done so far this week at camp.  The theme was Wild About Art, and I had lovely little just-finished-second-and-third graders.

My favorite craft we have done thus far is a braided snake, complete with googly eyes.  I found instructions for this craft here.








Aren't they darling??

Another fave is the dried bean mosaics that I drew inspiration for from this site.  This one was a wee bit messy, so we headed to the great outdoors (in the 100 degree weather) for this craft.  I found that using a dixie cup with white glue and a popsicle stick for spreading said glue worked best.  Also, use a heavy weight paper.  A few in progress:





And some completed masterpieces:








We also made some super cute turtles that I found on this site.  These turned out to be rather complicated for this group's clumsy little fingers, but here are a few that still came out adorable:



We tried making pictures out of melted crayon wax.  The idea was to squeeze some crayon wax onto a paper from a plastic baggie in the shape of a bug or reptile and let it harden.  Then, you could pull the creature off the paper and have a cute wax friend.  But, the crayons hardened too fast, so we decided to imitate the great abstract painters using the melted wax and spoons.


We then poured the leftover wax into an ice cube tray and made new crayons!



We also attempted to make paper.  This was a time consuming activity that was not really worth it.  We put shredded paper and water in a blender and blendered it until it was good and mushy.  Then we pressed it into screens to dry (which took for. ev. ver.).  Most of them turned out horrid.  Here is our one good one:


And, of course, there must be painting at an art camp!  We took a stroll down the nature trail until we came across this lovely scene:

 
It is difficult to see in this picture, but there is a lovely view of a large group of cypress trees, complete with knees, in front of my hardworking little darlings.  Here is their interpretation of that scene:





Still to come this week: paper mache nests, animal track molds, finger puppets, and origami!