Desert Window

I failed to get pictures of the children making these, but here are a few of the final products.  

The light looks beautiful through the warm colors!

Paper Mâché Cactus

I made these little potted cactus with over 20 4-6 yr. old children during our afternoon summer camp program.  I won't lie, the paper mâché part was mostly one on one.  Sometimes, I could do two kids at once.  But it really helped if you could hold the ballon while they apply the goopy newspaper. This made it time consuming.  

But worth it!  

I mean look how cute they are!!!

I use liquid starch for my adhesive.  I find it easiest and it dries hard.  

Water balloons are the perfect size for these.

After covering the balloon with newspaper, we covered it in green tissue paper.  Dark green covered the best, while the light green needed a lot more layers.

It also help if you could hold the balloon while the kids applied the tissue.  You didn't need to soak the tissue in starch.  If you just apply it to the balloon it will be fine.  Add starch on top, if needed, to smooth it down.

Let dry overnight, then poke toothpicks though.

We made a small tissue paper flower for the top.  

I also went and added a dab of glue around each toothpick to hold them in place.  They had a tendency to go right through and fall inside.

I took a lot of pictures, because they were just so adorable!

Eric Carle Inspired Fish

Here are some fish we made from painting paper in different colors and then cutting it up.  Inspired by Eric Carle.

We used a bunch of different instruments to color sheets of paper.  Then I cut them into scales.

Children picked a color to stamp a head. After it dried I cut of the body.

Then the children collage on the scales.  I showed them pictures of actual fish scales and how they overlapped. But didn't push that concept, and let them put them on however they wanted.

Hedgehog Pencil Holder

Since I don't have access to a kiln at the moment, I used this recipe for an air drying clay.

I found 1 batch made two hedgehogs.

Baking Soda Clay Recipe (courtesy of Mudworks, by MaryAnn F. Kohl, who calls it Play Clay)

1. mix 1 cup baking soda and 1/2 cup cornstarch in a saucepan

2. add 2/3 cup warm water and stir until smooth

3. over medium heat, boil and stir until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes

4. put on a board to cool some, knead it and play away!

5. modeled figures will air dry very quickly and are pure white in color.

Hedgehog Pencil Holders

I added brown color to my dough, but when it dried the color didn't come out well. Therefore, we ended up painting  over them.

Short pencils work best.  At first I bought regular pencils and cut them in half.  That was a lot of work cutting and sharpening all those pencils!  We made over 22 hedgehogs and each one contained 6 pencils.  Eventually, I got lazy and splurged and bought short pencils.  

So. Much. Easier.

Poke the pencils through and let it dry with the pencils in place.  (Also a perfect time to sneak in some one-to-one correspondence and basic math!) 

I took the colored pencils out the following day, so that they would dry more thoroughly.  Also, keep in mind that the holes may shrink a little.  Wiggling them a little to make the holes slightly bigger helps.

Then paint!  We added our eyes on afterwards, using black beans.

Cute!

Potted Hanging Saguaro

Thought this little guy came out super cute!  Here's a little picture tutorial of how I made this one.  It took a little over an hour to make.

Then I just sewed them together using a blanket stitch and stuffed it.

Glued him into a pot and made a very simple mini hanger.  

Voila!

Art Auction 2016

A few pictures from this year's Fun'rasier.

Our Raccoon Class: 

Plate of Hands

It was a miracle this plate came out of the kiln with all of its digits!  We actually did not put this plate in the auction, but decided to give it as an end of year gift to our director.

Collection of Hearts.

We were missing one child's heart, so we left an empty space in the bottom corner, and when it was fired we gave the heart along with some glue to the winning families.

We used leaves and stamps to make the imprints on the hearts and cut them out with different sized cookie cutters. 

We glazed them in several different shades of red.

Hearts of butterflies

The Hiboux Class:

Two framed owls.  One made from a collage of painted paper, one from finger prints. 

A beautiful bird mobile made from the teacher's drawings.

Dot paintings.

Elephant Class

My mosaic hopscotch.

Fairy Garden, which included a rock I painted to look like a pond.

Elephant basket.

Wild Thing Class

The Wild Things also made some beautiful books.  They were printed in sepia and had the children inside a picture frames.

Giraffe Class

Giraffe related basket, that well ...oops, I forgot to get a picture of.  And I thought I was doing so well?!

The Dot book and canvas painting.

Monkey Class

Tiles with sharpie and watercolors.

Cooking basket, with recipe book of all the cooking they have made over the year.

Afternoon Class

Potted garden.

I think the afternoon class also has a basket, that yep, I forgot to photograph. 

In my defense, it was quite a hectic day!