We Draw Animals Review and Tutorial

 

I was recently asked by Kathleen Wilson of  We Draw Animals to share a tutorial and a little bit about her great website. This website is a neat place to learn all about different animals and how to draw them. They have taken the time to include interesting information about each animal. There are over 500 different animals!

My girls have recently developed a love of My Little Ponies. When Kathleen asked which animal I would like her to make the tutorial of, I picked a pony. I thought it would be neat to take her original design and add some fun pony accents. You could add some wings or a unicorn horn to make it look like your favorite pony!

 

This website would be an educational place to check out for Art or Science classes. There is even a section about plants.

Have some fun this week drawing and learning on We Draw Animals!

Summer School is in Session!

We finally finished our official 180 days of school!

 I felt like a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. Our portfolio is all ready to be evaluated and seen by our school district. To celebrate finishing school we went out for ice cream!

 

 

At the Boo Boo Princess Charm School for Girls we take a break from Math and Language Arts for the Summer. Those are the two subjects that Pie Pie does not like. We don't take a break from school all together. We do fun projects and LOTS of reading!

We have been currently working on some art projects from the fabulous book Art in Action 1 by Maja Pitamic. In the book you get to learn a little about the artists and then make your own project based on their work. If you are interested in making any of these projects all of them are explained in the book. 

 Our first projects are inspired by Matisse. These are pictures with lots of colors and color tones.

 

 

 

 

 

The second style is inspired by Seurat. These are dot paintings made by spattering paint with toothbrushes.

 

 

 

 

The third style is based on Lipunja which uses Earth pigments and texture.

 

 

 

Pants also did her own take on art with her pet shops and paint!

 

 

Messy, but fun!





The Tiger

By: Pie Pie Edgar

 

Tiny tummies grumble.

Mommy hears them.

It's time to hunt.

She smells gazelle.

She is silent.

Then a powerful pounce.

She drags it to the babies.

Munch, crunch lunch!



Giraffe from the Planet Neptune

We finally got some Sculpey Clay.

 I have wanted to do this art project since before Christmas!

 I was inspired by a Nativity set made out of clay by a blogger around that time. My future goal is to make the whole nativity. Here is the tutorial post from the great crafty blog Then she Made. In my post we wanted to make our own creations, but we used her post as a guide through the process and it was very helpful.

Here is our whole zoo of animals, along with the zoo keeper!

 

Here is the giraffe from Neptune!

Pants' Mole and Bunny joined the giraffe for this picture.

We learned that you shouldn't make the necks on your creatures quite so long. We had to give the giraffe a scarf to help his neck stay in place. We are learning as we craft.

 

 

Here is a close up of the mole Pants made.

 

 

Here is our cute bunny. I think the color looks like bubble gum!

 

 

Pants showing off her buddies!

 

 

Here is Pie Pie's masterpiece: A hippo from Jupiter! She added a very pretty bow.

 

 

We had lots of fun playing with this clay!

It is also relaxing working with the clay, so if you need a break from daily school life get some Sculpey clay and start creating!

Craft Support for the Less Than Crafty

I am one of the less than crafty Moms.

 I admit it.

 I need a craft that is easy to do and doesn't take a lot of supplies to get the craft done. I like the craft to mostly be done by the child. I don't mind a mess as long as you get to have fun in the process!

Pie Pie recently went to an event where she made a craft that is for Moms just like me! It is very simple and my kids liked it.

 

A Zebra made by Pie Pie.

 

You only need a few supplies to get the craft put together.

1. card stock

2. clothespins (the ones with the springs in them)

3. scissors

4. markers

 

You start by drawing an animal shape onto the card stock. You want to leave off any part where you want to use a clothespin. Then you cut out the shape and draw on animal details. Don't forget the clothespins! They need faces and colors too.

 

Animals made by Pants.

 

Your child can use their imagination to make whatever animal they would like. We used a clothespin to make the neck of a giraffe, clothespins for ears of a rabbit and/or a clothespin for a trunk of an elephant! These can be used for almost any study where animals are involved. I am planning on making these the next time I teach children's church!

 

 

I do not know who came up with this nifty craft, but it was not me. I just wanted to pass along the fun to all the other Moms out there who needed a little craftiness!

 



Art Class is (ALWAYS) in Session

Pants has been drawing a LOT lately. I decided it was time to get some more pictures of her artwork and share them on the blog. I also just did a post exclusively about Pie Pie, so I have to even things up for them!

This is a picture of a creature Pants has been very fond of drawing recently. It is a Roadrunner! I love the very colorful beak. There is also a ghost and a turtle. The roadrunner sees a BIG shadow and he is scared.

 

This is another picture of a roadrunner and a turtle. There is a mole too. They are planning a birthday party for butterfly. All of the little circles are the speech bubbles of them talking.

 

I saved the best for last! This is a picture of our family. I love the way she draws Daddy's hat and my long legs. We also are apparently very smiley and lovey.

 

I'm sure there will be more drawing soon!

The ARTistry of Pants

Pants loves to draw and she is very detailed about her drawings. She is also a bit excessive. They are everywhere! I go through them occasionally and take pictures of our favorite ones!

Here is some of her latest masterpieces!

She painted this one with her cousin. I believe it is a self portrait and the sun.

This is a drawing of her favorite stuffed animal of the week, Magenta. There is also a happy butterfly.

Say, "Hello!", to Mr. Snowman with the fancy eyelashes. I love his wiggly branch arms! In order to assist in the creating of this particular masterpiece, I was rudely awakened to sharpen her white pencil!

 

This is a beautiful picture of people with a yummy pie. They are standing in a flower garden with some butterflies, a bird and a sun. The butterfly on the left is going down to the flower.

 

 

This is one of my recent favorites! It is a boy picking up the stick to put in the campfire. He is going to sleep in his tent at night.

 

 

I'm sure there will be more to come!

 



Art Lessons

By the time May rolls around we are all tired of "doing school". I'm talking about the ordinary stuff you just have to do everyday. So, I decide I'm ready for some fun! I got a little Art Unit ready. We have History, Reading and actually making some Art!

We started off with some fun books that I could get Pants and Pie Pie interested in easily. We read The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola and Mr. Panda's Painting by Anne Rockwell. These are both authors I know the girls already love. Then Pie Pie and I moved onto Inspirations: Stories About Women Artists by Leslie Sills. This was a wonderful book about four female artists. I would like to share some of the art by these very creative women.

The first woman was Georgia O'Keeffe. She painted beautiful paintings of nature.



Frida Kahlo was next and her paintings were a little dark. I felt it was because she was in a lot of pain most of her life. This was a way she could express her pain.

Alice Neel was the third artist in this book. She tried to paint people the way they were feeling inside. They weren't always pretty, but people aren't always happy.

Our last artist, Faith Ringgold, was not only a painter. She was a quilter who used fabric to tell her stories. The quilts are beyond beautiful!

We read some other books:

Beatrix Potter by Alexander Wallner,

All I See by Cynthia Rylant,

The Usbourne Book Of Art By Rose Dickens,

How Artists Use Color by Paul Flux and

123 I Can Paint by Irene Luxbacher.

123 I Can Paint was actually a step by step book that taught you how to paint all different kinds of pictures.

This one taught you how to mix primary colors to make secondary colors.

This one used different textures to paint a night sky.

I can't leave Pants out. She loved painting just as much as Pie Pie! This was one of her pieces of artwork. The paintings from this book were a little too much for her patience level at this time, but she was fine with doing her own thing. I was fine with it too!

We are moving onto sculpting!

It's Playtime!~Days 17-19

It's time for some more Playtime!



I finally feel like I got most of my brain back! The weather and plants growing outside clogged up my head and made me feel positively yucky. That doesn't mean my writing is going to be any better, but I know you love me anyway!

Day # 17

Play with Trash

Recycling is probably a better way to put it.

On this day we made tissue box houses. I saved some tissue boxes and we cut out doors and windows. Then the girls got to work decorating. The girls used stickers and made or put furniture inside the boxes.

Day # 18

Play with some more Trash!

(I skipped a couple of days in this challenge because I didn't want to do them or I thought they were something my girls would not be interested in doing.)

I came up with the idea to make rockets out of paper towel tubes. The girls decided they wanted to do this day's challenge with my nephew. We were watching him one day so we brought all the supplies over to his house. I helped Pants and him, while Pie Pie worked on her own. They came out pretty neat. The kids all had fun flying them around and driving cars through them.

Day # 19

Sticky Play

We decided to make Sticky Smileys! We ripped up some paper and glued all the pieces into a circle. Then we glued on the eyes and mouth. Pie Pie also added a nose.

I'm not sure why the first one didn't post right. Oh well, you can still see it.

We are still looking for Smileys at our house. Are you?

For more information about Spontaneous Smileys and The Smile A Thon check out this post.

I also have a Giveaway going on right now to enter go here.

We found this Smiley on our porch!

More Play and Smiles to Come!

Nikki

What's Up With My Pants?!

My Pants has been rather bored lately because I have not taken the time to think up fun and educational projects for her to do. We were doing all the "normal" stuff for preschoolers, it just didn't strike her as what she wanted to do. So, that means she drives me and Pie Pie crazy while we do school.

I took some action and saw somewhere in blogland an idea for playing with sand. I remembered I had some colored cornmeal already prepped from a previous project. (It's really easy to make, just put some food coloring in a bowl with the cornmeal and stir until it is your desired color.)

She had fun making letter shapes and digging. While she was playing I read Katy and The Big Snow.

She then pretended a piece of paper was a snow plow and plowed the cornmeal.

Pants also made some fun ladybugs with her fingerprints.

I also copied some fun math games from a book (I unfortunately forgot to write the title down) that Pie Pie and Pants have both been enjoying. They especially like the little critter in Catch The Critter Game. It's a little bit of monkey and frog mixed together.

The last idea I wanted to share today was Cookie Monster Letter Bingo. We each had fun putting our cookies on the correct letter.

This post was brought to you by the letter "F",



which is for flower!

I linked this post up with Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns and Super Readers Book Club.