Pinata making!

I must say I was worried about this workshop…we have never made Pinatas at Lola…and it seemed like a lot of work…but this was definitely the BEST workshop ever!!

For a start we pre made the Papier Mache balloons for the children…this made SUCH a difference in the ease of the project…Once they had their Papier Mache ball, they decided what animal they wanted to make, and added on recycled materials (toilet rolls, cardboard, foil) to finish off their creatures. We stuck these on with the glue gun. There was a variety of elephants, butterflies, bees, pigs and even a giraffe!

After the body was built the kids painted their whole animal in acrylic paint mixed with a bit of liquid glue…

And then the fun began! The children (and their very helpful mums) started to stick on layers of strips of tissue paper. We pre cut the strips and the kids cut them up with lots of slits and then stuck them on in layers ALL OVER their Pinatas…this took a while and we did need a nice snack break in the middle!

Then came the best bit for the kids (little and large!)…We filled the Pinata (we had left a hole to one side where we popped the balloon) with lots of chocolates and sweets, and put them out to dry!

I must say ours was so pretty, we just couldn’t break it! Instead we shook out the goodies and hung it from Isabel’s ceiling as a “lamp”!

Printing with Toddlers

This year at Lola we are just multiplying Toddlers…!! We started off in September with about 8…and now we have close to 50 toddlers getting messy with us each week!

It is a perfect age for discovering the tactile aspects of art, and developing fine motor skills, ideas of color, shape and medium. It is also very very messy!

This week we looked at different ways of printing.

PRINTING WITH BUBBLE WRAP, a sea full of fishes: We used small pieces of bubble wrap and blue and green paint to create a sea background, onto which we printed red fish with a fish stamp.

PRINTING WITH BOTTLES AND LEGOS, a discovery of shapes: We printed circles, dots, squares and rectangles using the bottoms of plastic bottles and legos dipped into plates of paint.

PRINTING WITH SHAVING CREAM ON THE TABLE TOP, an experiment with marbling: The children finger/hand painted straight onto the table, then drew in shapes with a Q-tip, and then printed their design off the table with a piece of paper. Then we added shaving cream to the mix!! This time, the paint mixed with the shaving cream created marbleized printed effects.

PRINTING WITH CD’S, a rainbow effect: We added blobs of color paint onto old music CD’s, and the children then twisted them around on their paper to get their very own rainbow circles!

PRINTING WITH WATER PAINT AND STRETCH FILM, marble printing part 2: The children painted on paper with very watery liquid water paint, then placed on top a pieces of stretch film which they massaged about to get the right look. We left it to dry, and then took off the stretch film to get a beautiful pale marbleized effect.

The importance of Art

Karl Lagerfeld at the Saatchi Gallery in London

I was recently sent a video from a friend entitled “Can Painting improve your grades?” , part of a fascinating series of programs organized by the BBC called “Power of Art”. It reminded me of the many inspiring articles and talks which stress the importance of the arts for our children in an education system which puts creativity way down the list of ‘priorities’…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21890033

This of course also brings to mind Ken Robinson’s TED talk of 2006 which inspired over 4 million people who downloaded his unmistakable humor, ideas and insight into our education systems and the importance of creativity for the future…Please please do watch this again…As in the past 7 odd years, I am unsure how much has really changed.

Monster masks @ Lola!

I really do believe we need to understand more and more the importance of the Arts and Culture, not as mentioned, to create “Artists” as such (although that is always a plus!), but in order to help create balanced well adjusted open minded children who can face all of the unknowns ahead of them…For one thing is for sure, a simple University degree will no longer be enough…

Isabel “sketching” at the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts…

From this I was also inspired by a post on Design Mom, entitled “Save the Arts“, which talks about Dana Gioia’s Stanford graduation address on the decline of the arts in modern culture…Food for thought!

Happy reading and watching…

Monet studies by 4-5 year olds @ Lola

 

Spring and Easter activities @ Lola

Look what we’ve been up to..The weather may not be getting the message, but we are shouting Spring loud and clear @ Lola!

We popped into the florist…roses, tulips and peonies…and on the tree next to us the magnolia are looking beautiful!

 

From all these flowers we were inspired to change our decoration and window stickers @ Lola…

 

And to look at the picture book “Planting a Rainbow” by Lois Ehlert…We made some beautiful growing ceramic tiles to take home and use as hot plates!

 

We also hosted a few Spring themed parties this month…An Easter egg hunt party where we painted eggs and covered them with glitter, made Easter crowns and Easter egg cups…

 

And a Spring fairy party where the children cooked pizza and prepared marsh mellow kebabs!

 

We also went wild on canvas…I brought in bunches of flowers and we were inspired to mix colors and shade with our fingers and experiment with texture…

Painting this month @ Lola!

We had a crazy filled month full of workshops, parties and classes, all with a spotlight on painting…

The older kids tried out some oil painting! So much fun and such a versatile messy medium…I had missed it!

We also got some new easels and had some fun with big canvases and lots of acrylics… The theme was Georgia O’Keefe inspired flowers.

The toddlers went about their usual finger painting way!

And of course, we painted on the walls!

Valentine ideas for children

LOVE….what a perfect excuse to teach children about this wonderful feeling, but via the actually quite cheesy Valentine’s day?!

In terms of artists, Jim Dine and his heart paintings, Klimt and his famous golden Kiss, and LOVE prints are going to help the children put this theme into a context of actual art history…

Gustav Klimt – The Kiss

Jim Dine

LOVE print

There is an absolute wealth of fantastic Valentine’s arts and crafts on the net, and we have been inspired by these below to create some love filled pieces of work for our family and friends this week.

Martha Stewart Crayon Ironed Window hearts

Parents Valentine card idea

Meet the Dubiens fingerprint heart tree

Oh Crafts heart garland

You are my Fave newspaper and waterpaint hearts

Prudent Baby toilet roll heart prints

Use your Coloured Pencils Kandinsky inspired hearts

And here are some of our favorites from Lola…

Handprint Hearts

Beaded Heart Boxes

Heart shaped Brownies

Fabric Heart cards

Bath Love Tea bags with heart shaped post it messages

Finger print heart designs

Pasta, foil and candy filled heart necklaces

 

Sculpture for Toddlers, Pre schoolers and above!

This week we looked at sculpture with the children @ Lola, but in a much more free flowing way! This time I gave them the materials, and took a big step back and watched what THEY came up with! It was so much fun, and it reminded me how important it is to allow children time to explore materials independantly.

Check out what they (or some eager parents..!) came up with below.

With most of the kids this week we made oily salt dough (one cup of salt, one cup of water, 3 cups of flour and as much oil as you think necessary, about one tablespoon). I then gave them a piece of cardboard, white glue and a whole lot of materials, from pasta and beans, to pompoms, straws, sticks, glitter and wine bottle corks….Look what happened!

With the Toddlers we also had some time to play with these cool and very plastic build your own city blocks, and then, this being Lola, we printed with them too!

I gave the older children plastic electric wire (taped at the edges) and lots of different colored electric wire and silver sticky tape, a piece of cardboard…some straws…and Voila!

A few Monet ideas for children

With the exhibition at the Sabanci Museum, we all went a bit overboard with Monet this month! Here are some of the things we created:

The Toddlers used paper tape to create bridges and then sponge painted on top. When they removed the tape, ta da!

Kinderart children also painted their bridge, and used bubble wrap print instead of sponge painting.

The older kids created dreamy canvas versions of Monet’s bridge in acrylic paint.

The Toddlers created water lilies from cupcake cases, glitter, tissue paper and finger painting a water background.

Kinderart cut up foam paper cups, painted them, filled them with glitter, and stuck them onto a bubble print water background.

The older kids used tissue paper to collage a water background, onto which they painted and stuck lily pads, and waterlilies themselves from painted cupcake cases and sequins.

The oldest kids created 3D Monet water lily creations of their own.

As always, glitter was crucial!

Winter Wonderland – Winter art for kids

Hello and Happy New Year!

It is snowing here in Istanbul today, and we have been inspired @ Lola to create Wintery Art, from beaded owls and Nutcrackers, to penguin collages and snow covered cottages…see what we did below!

Beginning with the theme of Winter animals we created beaded wood owls, by using a whole lot of beads and buttons of different styles and sizes, masses of white glue and these really sweet wood owl cut outs I found at the art shop:

We also thought it would be great to do something with foxes, so turned a basic fox design into a styrofoam fox print base by cutting into our drawing with a pencil on the styrofoam, and then painting in a whole lot of different color mixes:

Penguin collages were our next activity. We cut out icebergs and snow dunes from white paper, icicles and snowflakes, and stuck them onto a black background. Onto this we stuck a variety of different sized penguins, pine trees and even some glitter to give a starry night effect:

Check out this beautiful painted Cardinal activity too! We talked about this winter bird, looked at some photos and pictures of it, then drew it together in pencil. The children then followed the lines in black marker and then painted it bright red colors:

It’s not winter without the Nutcracker, and inspired by the beautiful street decorations in Nisantasi during Christmas we painted (Micheal Jackson look alike!) Nutcrackers in acrylics, while of course listening to Tchaikovsky:

This led us to want to create some magical Winter wonderland cottages. We “papier mache’ed” some old boxes with old book pages and then covered them in much glitter glue and added shiny gold or silver cardboard roofs. We stuck these onto cardboard “yards” and covered these and the houses themselves with snow made from cotton wool, white cupcake cases and tissue paper. We finally added 3D trees made from white and glitter painted pine cones and 3D cardboard covered pine trees covered in green tissue paper and sequins:

 

Countdown calendars

It’s that time of the year again…This year we had been collecting a whole lot of matchboxes and mini smartie boxes as we were inspired to do this…!

It is always tricky to do these calendars, as you always have to do 24 of whatever it is! But considering, and with the use of a lot of double sided tape, this went quite smoothly!

First we stuck the rows of boxes together with double sided tape, and then stuck the rows one on top of the other

We stuck lots of different fabrics, papers and stickers onto the boxes.

Be careful not to stick the doors shut!

A great fine motors exercise!

I repeat…a LOT of double sided tape!

We used a lot of different (shiny) materials to decorate…!

Pompoms, felt…

Jewels glitter…

And then we filled it with chocolates and sweets!

Buttons to open the little doors with

Also much to be inspired by on the internet…I think I got a bit carried away this year..! Check out the below:

Fabric Cones by http://www.pickles.no

This was my favorite, but many wonderful ideas on http://www.plentyofcolour.com

Perfect for Lola on houseofbliss.blogspot.com

A simple, yet beautiful, alternative to chocolate on lovenordic.blogspot.com

Something simple to do at home with the kids at yarn-ing.blogspot.com

Too pretty! on sohappykids.blogspot.fr

A great way to recycle old socks! as always, the inspiring Martha Stewart