8.16.2011

Chalk Dust Art

Recently we were playing with sidewalk chalk and I noticed
it  sure does make a lot of dust,
we should play with the dust.
So that's exactly what we did!

I decided to turn this into a color mixing activity as well as a shape activity
Start with the 3 primary colors
make sure you press really hard,
you WANT to make dust,
layer another color on top.
You know
...red and yellow...
...red and blue...
...blue and yellow...
I set out plastic forks, spoons and knives
 for the girls to play with.
Forks made lovely lines in the dust,
just like a zen garden
C's tool of choice was a plastic Play-Doh knife
You can make whatever designs you like
then 
just rake them out and start over again!
The red and yellow weren't mixing well enough in my opinion,
 so I added more yellow
The more you play with the dust,
 the better it mixes together
We experimented with making prints in the raked dust
it makes a really neat 3-dimensional effect
I knew it was time to begin cleaning up when the girls started smearing the chalk
all over themselves
Just wash it all away
The mixed colors really show up when water is added
and since the kids are already going to need a bath
let them splash around a little
:)

8.12.2022

Play-Doh!

I finally got all my art supplies set up!
I'm ecstatic!
The first thing the girls snatched up was the Play-Doh
All the colors are mixed together,
the girls don't seem to mind,
and
the mixed Play-Doh looks like art as is
We started by being "chefs"
I was in charge of breakfast
(I'm kind of a pancake master)
Lexi was in charge of lunch, and Char was in charge of dinner
They collaborated on dessert
We counted and stacked some "cookies"
I cut out some shapes for a matching game
since Lexi is working on shapes
She had more fun poking the shapes than she did matching them
I called out the names every time she poked
so hopefully something sunk in
then
Charlotte hijacked the matching game
Lexi had a lot of fun rolling out the Play-Doh into paper thin sheets
I punched out some Play-Doh to use for stacking
which was short lived because
Lexi kept squishing them all together into a big ball
Charlotte is learning to write her letters
so I rolled out snakes
while
she went with the extrusion method
and
we constructed letters
We made sculptures by just pinching a rolled up ball of Play-Doh
and
of course
we had some time for personal exploration as well
Play-Doh may seem like such a simple thing to play with
but really
the possibilities are endless!