Color Explorations: Painting

A few things happened in my life recently to bring me to start exploring color again with Hazel. The first is I went to see the Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts with my mom. The exhibit really focused on how the colors played with one another and I thought it would be neat to take Hazel to see it. It will still be there when she is out of school, so we will be going. I found it so interesting to see the movement in some of them. Here are a few of my favorites.

Then last week I went to a paint party. Have you been to one of them yet? I had actually planned this one as a fundraiser for my church. We met at a local restaurant and had dinner first and then joined the instructor in the back room of the restaurant for our paint lesson.We chose to use an instructor from North Shore Paint Party and I picked the sunset from her gallery. She gave us only five colors of paints to make our sunset paintings--red, blue, yellow, white and black. Hazel was rather jealous that I was going to this and when I saw all the paint mixing to get the colors you want, I knew I would have to try it with her. Since I was not completely happy with the colors in my painting, I decided to try again with Hazel. I learned when you are happy with the color or pretty happy with it to stop. If you keep painting it will eventually get muddy and dark. It was amazing to see all the different versions of the painting at the party.

My Paint Party Painting

Since I had some acrylics, brushes and canvases, we tried it the next day. Since the weather was gorgeous we painted outside. I however did not have the correct acrylics and should have bought artist acrylics and not the little bottles I had. Oh, well. We had fun and love our new paintings. For supplies you need red, yellow, blue, black and white paint, three brushes (large, medium and small), a canvas (we used 16" x 20"), a cup of water, a paper plate for your palette, and paper towels. Oh, and an easel.

You give each painter a paper plate with a spot of each color on it and three brushes. They can mix colors on their plate. We started in the upper left corner with blue for the sky. Then we mixed other colors. In the class the instructions were to mix green, but I tried purple at home instead.

I made the mistake of not showing Hazel how to do the strokes to fill in the area, so hers was blotchy at first. I painted a yellow horizon line on hers so she would know where the sunset ended and we talked about the colors to use for the sunset.

When we both had finished our skies we stopped and looked at each others. At this point Hazel had a bit of a meltdown since she liked mine better than hers and she decided she would never be able to paint well. I showed her the stroke and helped her achieve more of a sky like mine.

My Sky

Then we started on the water. The water is a bit easier since it is mostly blue. I helped her a bit more than I normally would have but that was because of her mood. I also did her trees for her since she was sure she would not be able to do them.

Hazel's Sunset Painting

My Sunset Painting

I added a lighthouse to mine for Steve. He loves lighthouses. We have both paintings hanging up now. Hazel has hers in her room. She still wanted to paint so we grabbed more canvases. She really wanted to make grey paint. Our paper plates looked like this in the end. You can also use the water to help mix the colors a bit on the canvas, but this worked better with the other acrylics.

Hazel's Second Painting

I did not help at all with her second painting. While she did this I painted her a flower for her room.

We have been reading books on color as well. Our favorite has been A Color Sampler by Kathleen Westray. Hazel is really enjoying learning more about colors. She already knew her primary and secondary colors. Now we have been exploring with other things like tints and shades.

I will share more of our color explorations soon. For more experiments with color check out:

• Book Inspired Painting
• The Colors of Us
• The Colors in Nature
• Luka's Quilt
• Dying Yarn with Fruit and Vegetables Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Outside Water Play
• Picture a Tree
• Mixing Colors
• Brown at the Zoo

Flamingo Friday--Fish and Flamingo: A wonderful story of an unusual friendship

Today I am going to share a book Hazel and I have been enjoying. It is a tale of an unusual friendship between a flamingo and a fish. The book is called the Fish and Flamingo and is written by Nancy White Carlstrom. The two became friends and talked every day about their lives. One day the flamingo tells the fist about flying at sunrise and the beautiful pink sky. The fish tells the flamingo about coming to the surface of the water at night time and seeing the glowing stars. Each wishes to show their friend the beauty they have seen, but do not know how to do it since the friend is not awake at the correct time.

One day the flamingo tells the fish that she will be leaving with her flock the next day. She tells him to be at the same spot at the same time the next day since she will be flying overhead and will wave to him. The fish is so excited and he tells all his friends and has them come with him. 

At the time the flamingo flies over with her flock, the fish and his friends look up and see a pink sky. The fish thinks that his friend has found a way to show him the sunrise and finds it so beautiful. The flamingo looks down and sees many fish and as the sun comes out the silver on each fish sparkles and the flamingo thinks the fish is giving her the gift of seeing the stars. 

Neither friend knows that they have given their gift to one another, but they both feel so honored that the other has.

For this book, we tried out soft pastels. Hazel immediately drew a sun and I suggested we draw the sunrise. She and I added pink and smudged it all together. Then I worked on the ocean. I made it blue and then added some silver. The silver did not shine enough, so we added some glitter glue to be the fish showing the flamingos the stars. I loved how it came out and how well it goes with the story.

Song Inspired Activities

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Today I am going to share some activities we have come up with to go with Daria's song, Beautiful Rainbow World. I considered doing some rainbow crafts, but since we did them at the beginning of each spring, I thought we would go a different route. The song itself refers to the rainbow of skin color that makes the world beautiful, but since we have already done some skin color activities, I thought we would focus on the idea of the world being colorful. Our first idea was to look at food. We started with fruit and arranged a rainbow of them. 

We talked about vegetables, but never got them all together for it. 

Next we went for a walk in our neighborhood and looked for flowers and plants in the rainbow colors. We found that one of our neighbors had all the colors in one garden (see the above picture) and we found many more of the colors throughout our neighborhood.

Our next activity we tend to play when we are driving or out and waiting near a street. We look for all the colors of rainbows in cars and trucks. Purple is by far the hardest to find followed by orange and yellow. We have however found all the colors on at least three occasions. I however did not take pictures. Sorry!

Finally on another walk around our neighborhood, I gave Hazel a sheet to record the flower colors she saw. I gave her rainbow smiley face stickers and she had a blast. The red filled up the quickest followed by the yellow. Then I think she started just filling up the columns for blue and purple at the end. My plan was to use the graph for some of the other ideas we have had--cars, fruit, food, birds, etc. We just haven't done them again. If you are interested in a blank copy of this graph you can download it here.

I hope you enjoy the beautiful rainbow world we live on each day!!

Focus on the Nativity

This year one of my goals is to really focus on the true meaning of Christmas. I feel our society is so much turned away from the religious side of Christmas and more into the commercialism and the receiving. I do not want to bring Hazel up this way. I want her to understand why we celebrate Christmas and why it is a special day. So I have been on the look-out for ways to do this. 

Teddy Bear Picnic Activities

Yesterday I shared our food preparation for our Teddy Bear Picnic. Today I'm going to share some of our activities. 

As the children arrived we gave them a teddy bear frame to color. I found this great picture at Twisty Noodle. I resized it and put two on a page and then added Teddy Bear Picnic 2012 onto it. I Mod Podged it to cardboard and cut them out and cut out a circle for the face so we can add the kids' pictures. My plan was to Mod Podge over their coloring, but none of them really finished them. Then I planned to add a magnet to the back.

We also had music playing. I burned a CD with any song I could find that mentioned teddy bear or just bear. Most of them came from Teddy Bear Tunes by Georgiana Stewart, and then we used some from The Wiggles (Let's Wiggle, Racing to the Rainbow, Pop Go The Wiggles, Go Bananas! and Hot Potatoes: The Best Of The Wiggles albums),The Countdown Kids; 150 Fun Songs For Kids (Disc 3), David Polansky's Animal Alphabet Songs, and VeggieTales' 25 Favorite Toddler Songs! We had these songs playing but we also used them for some games.

Another activity was to decorate teddy bear sugar cookies. The kids had a great time with this. I shared this yesterday as well. The decorated cookies above are Hazel's. We also dropped those capsules that melt into sponge animals into cups of hot water. Each one was a different teddy bear sponge. Each child got to do four.

Then the kids sat in a circle (a few of us moms also did since we only had three kids) and we played Teddy Bear to the Wonder Ball game. (If you do not know the Wonder Ball Game you can check it out here.) We changed a few words and used a slightly different wording of it to be:

Teddy Bear (to Wonder Ball pass teddy bear around circle)

The teddy bear, goes round and round
To pass it quickly, you are bound
If you’re the one, to hold it last
The game for you has surely past, and you are out
O-U-T spells OUT!

And we passed a teddy bear around. The person who won the game got to keep the teddy bear. I had bought it at Ocean State Job Lot for $3 or $4.

Next we played Pin the Tail on the Teddy. I hand drew a teddy bear in a sideways position and penciled in his tail. We blindfolded the kids or had them close their eyes (the younger ones did not like being blindfolded) and spun them around and had them tape tails onto the poster. I had written their names on a tail. Hazel won this one! She already got her prize which was this purple teddy sippy cup.

Then we played a game of Musical Teddy Bears. Everyone brought a teddy bear to the circle and placed them in the middle and then we removed one. I played music and had the kids walk around the blanket. When the music stopped they had to grab a bear (it did not have to be their own). If they did not get a bear, they were out. The person who won this one got the same sippy cup Hazel did. I found them at CVS Pharmacy.

It worked out that each child won one game. I love when it works out that way. Then we gave each child felt pieces to put together a two-dimensional teddy. They each got two colors of bows and could make boy or girl teddy bears. Each child also got two teddy clips.

The kids of course also played tag and on the swings. They had a great time! 

We had a few more activities to do, but didn't get to them. One is the Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Turn Around Dance. There are several different versions on-line. A couple can be found at Can Teach with some other teddy bear songs/poems. Songs for Teaching has Jack Hartmann's version. I also had a couple of books including Michael Hague's Illustrated The Teddy Bear Picnic by Jimmy Kennedy. There are so many great teddy bear books out there that there a lot from which to choose.

So now I need to start planning our butterfly party. Stay tuned for what we do at that.

Play Dough Day 2 And Mixing Colors with Ice

This morning when we got up, Hazel asked to play with her play dough again (click here to see yesterday or day one of our play dough pledge play). I had put most of it in the refrigerator since I knew the Jello play dough had to be kept in it. I had left the cloud dough out. The oatmeal play dough was hard to work with after being in the refrigerator. It may be because I made it a bit dry since I didn't want it to be so sticky. First we played with the cloud dough. (I think I could have used more oil in this recipe.)

Pasta Salad & Egg Shells

Our Dinner

Hazel and I made some pasta salad last night. This is a fun recipe since Hazel can chop most of the vegetables we like in it. I love having it since it makes such a great lunch afterwards. I cooked up a pound of whole wheat fusilli pasta (I love Trader Joe's brand) and let it cool. I prepared the vegetables for Hazel. 

She chopped zucchini, red pepper, carrots, and cucumbers. I also chopped celery (her chopper isn't quite sharp enough to deal with the strings), grape tomatoes, snap peas and fresh oregano. 

Then we add the juice of one lemon and some olive oil and some feta cheese (I use the fat free version) and a little ground pepper. Then mix it all together! You get a yummy dish either a side or main dish which is perfect for the hot weather! We had it last night with chicken breasts (and I have been known to cut up the chicken and put it right into the pasta salad as well). One of my favorite things about this recipe is you can use the vegetables you and your family like or whatever you need to use up in your refrigerator.

Another fun craft we did recently was egg shell mosaics. I saved the shells from the first dozen eggs I bought at Drumlin Farm. Hazel has been asking to make Easter eggs again. We have some Easter egg dyes floating around so I figured we could make an Easter egg mosaic. I know I saw someone's on-line, but cannot remember where I saw it now. Sorry!! (If you know, please let me know!!)

We of course started by dyeing the egg shells--well at least the white and brown egg shells. We left the blue ones blue. This of course was very exciting to Hazel and she managed to make a huge mess spilling dye everywhere twice. I did my best not to lose my patience, but was not completely successful.

Shells Drying

Then once the shells were dry we took them outside with some paper and glue. I put glue down in the shape of a flower and Hazel wanted a sun on it so I added that. Then we started breaking the egg shells and putting them on.

Then Hazel added some glue to be grass and something else.

Then she finished it up. She enjoyed this activity but her favorite part was dyeing the eggs. It did not come out as neat as I had seen on-line, but again she is three and I let her do what she wants.

Mulitcultural Monday:Skin Color Collage & Picture Books

I've been trying to find some good projects to share with you, but since I have a 3-year-old right now, I also want them to be something she can relate to. Thus I am sharing with you lots of picture books and such. I have lots of ideas of things to do with a group of older kids, but just one, not as much. The first book I want to talk about is a classic that we all know, Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches and Other Stories.

While reading this Saturday morning, Hazel and I took the time to talk about the pictures. Why do the plain belly sneetches look so sad? Do the star bellied ones? Why are the star bellied sneetches so mean to the plain bellied sneetches? These are a few of the questions we discussed and several of them were asked by Hazel. This is a wonderful story showing that looks do not matter. You can equate the stars to so many of the prejudices in our world--skin color, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, etc. For those who do not know the story, the star bellied sneetches think they are the best sneetches and will not talk or associate with the plain bellied sneetches. Along comes a man with a machine to put stars on the plain bellied sneetches for a price. Then he has a machine to take the stars off the original star bellied sneetches for a more expensive price. They spend all of their money and day going in and out of the machines until no one can tell who is who. The man of course leaves with all of their money, but the sneetches realize that there is no difference between them.

The other stories in this book have similar themes or at least themes that teach lessons about differences, stubbornness, etc. The second story is The Zax. There are two zax in this story. One is a south going zax and the other a north going zax. The south going zax never go any direction besides south and the north only goes north. Well they bump into each other and neither is willing to step aside to let the other go, so the world grows around them and they miss out on their lives. Talk about a great story to talk about compromising and getting along. Hazel and I took the time to really discuss this and what was happening in it.

The next story, Too Many Daves, Hazel did not seem to like and asked me to stop reading in the middle of it. It is about a mother who named all of her twenty-three sons Dave. Needless to say it is about the confusion of having the same name.

The last story is a story I remember from my own childhood. I remember in kindergarten the class always wanted to listen to it during quiet time. (The teacher had it on an album.) It is What Was I Scared Of? It is a story of a creature (it is Dr. Seuss so I don't know what type of creature it is) that meets a pair of pale green pants with no one inside them one night. The creature then tells of a few more times where he runs into the pants at night. Needless to say the creature is scared of a pair of pants that can walk, ride a bike, etc. In the last instance of them meeting the creature screams for help but then notices the pants are crying and trembling with fear as well. He comforts the pants and then whenever they meet they say hi. Again, a great story for relating how people who are different do not  mean you have to be afraid. Something I need to work on with Hazel a bit more.

Now for a few more books and a project. You may remember a few weeks ago we explored the book The Color of Us by Karen Katz. We played with mixing paints to make the different shades of skin. This project goes right along  with it and could be used with The Color of Us as well as these books.

Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly is about the different shade of skin color. It has different pictures of all different shades and talks about skin like wrapping paper where you cannot tell what is inside a person.

The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler is about how we all have skin and it is yours, but your skin does not make you who you are. You still dream, think, act like you not based on your skin color.

All Kinds of Children by Norma Simon is another book talking about the similarities and differences between children around the world. All children need food and live in houses and have belly buttons. The houses may be different, but everyone lives somewhere. It goes on like that. It is a nice story bringing that we are all people no matter what our differences are.





Now for our simple project. I gave Hazel a bunch of magazines, catalogs and newspaper ads and had her cut out pictures of people of different colors. I helped with some and had to do some trimming on a few. Then we pulled out one of her The Colors of Us paintings to make a collage. I wanted her to glue them over the paint colors we came up with but she did not want to ruin her painting so we glued them on the back.

This gave her great practice in cutting!! Plus recognizing the different shades of people. One of my goals has been to get her comfortable with seeing people of different colors. We tend to have a mostly white community around us, but I want to expose her to the differences so she can be comfortable with anyone.

Do you have any good multicultural/diversity books to share?

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Exploring at the Wildlife Sanctuary and Painting

On Wednesday we had our class at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. We skipped our class at Drumlin Farm this week since Hazel claimed to feel like she was going to throw up on our way there, however half an hour later she wanted lunch. I'm not really sure what happened, but she seems fine now. Anyway, at the Ipswich River Sanctuary we jumped in puddles and chased the other 3-year olds. Oh, and Hazel made a friend and held hands with her on part of our walk. I took a picture of them, but did not get the mother's permission to post it on line, so I won't. After a short walk we went back to the vernal pool to see if we could see some frogs this time. And we did!! We saw two different ones. The first one pictured above was pretty brave with all the kids around. Then one of them got a bit too close and he jumped in the water, but he stayed where we could see him with his eyes out of the water the entire time.

A little ways down we saw a big bull frog. He had different coloring than the first and was sitting on a log (again until someone got a bit too close).

While checking out the second frog, we saw a fast moving turkey (many of the kids missed it by the pool) and one of the kids found a slug. He even stuck his eyes out for us!

Then it was time to go back to the Nature House for our craft. On our way back through the field we saw the turkey again.

Then for our craft we made bird nests out of air-drying clay and grass. Then the instructor gave us a bird for it.

Then we ran some errands and came home. After lunch we finished our fairy garden and did some painting.

We have been reading the book Brown at the Zoo by Christianne C. Jones. It starts by talking about the colors--primary and secondary and that brown is a tertiary color. It then talks about how you can make it. The book goes through all the things that are brown at the zoo. It is in a series of books about colors. We decided to try to make brown in the different color combinations with Hazel's paints. Basically you can mix the three primary colors or you can mix any two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue). We tried to make different shades by mixing the different colors. Some combinations worked better than others, but it may be the proportions we (Hazel) used.

Then she wanted to do some more paintings from The Color of Us. So we mixed yellow, white, black, and red in different proportions to explore the colors we would get. I let Hazel have a bit more control with the mixing this time.

Then we started over with some new mixtures and got this.

Then Hazel wanted to paint with blue. She said these were blueberries, but I thought it could also be pictures from The Dot by Peter Reynolds. We kept saying we were going to make some dot paintings, but never quite got to them.

Then she asked to use watercolors and she came up with the following. I think she had blueberries on the mind!

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday will start tonight and you can visit the wonderful posts shared last week still, and Happy Family Times will end tomorrow, so go link up. And I'm still hosting a link party for Mother's Day gift ideas.


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