Arty Farty Artwork

One of my resolutions for the year is to have a more structured home programme for the girls. For most part of 2010 I was 1) nauseous from my morning sickness, 2) achy because of the pregnancy 3) tired -my energy levels were at an all time low, 4) recovering from my delivery. We did stuff (now what did we do?) but largely on an ad hoc basis according to how I felt for the day.

This year, I decided to have a weekly schedule of after-school activities. Monday-Art or something crafty (what I enjoy doing). Wednesday-Science and Math (what I need to get the kids interested in because we don't do much of that), Friday-Baking or outings. And chinese every morning. (I think the girls have so much to catch up on because we don't speak it enough). I bought two great books on Amazon with lots of ideas so that I don't have to do my research online the night before. I just need to choose something in the book and follow the lesson plan.

We started with our first "formal" art lesson last monday: An introduction to the LINE. Adapted from a book called ART for the very young. What I did was cut up a whole lot of strips of different lengths and get Ellie and Caitlin start looking at what lines can do. The first exercise was to drop the strips of black paper all over and glue them down- let the lines become something. Caitlin wanted me to help her make a fish with the lines, and contributed the seaweed. Her next piece was titled "happy" because the lines "make me happy".

Ellie couldn't get past the desire to make her lines resemble something. Just drop the lines and let them decide what to be, I told Ellie. The end result was pretty interesting even if the most "random" drops were deliberate.

Last Wednesday, we experimented food colouring in a science lesson about with diffusion. Ellis's more calculated piece and Caitlin's more random one.

And yesterday, our 2nd Art lesson. Still on the subject on the LiNe. Using scotch tape to explore lines created in the negative space. Both girls loved the scotch-taping.

Caitlin's piece. (I had to fill in the orange background). She couldn't sit to finish her piece.  I thought she did a good job with the one horizontal line tying up the vertical ones.

Ellie's piece. Titled "Rainbow floor". "I want the floor in my room to look like this". Drawing is one thing Ellie will sit down for- no matter how long it takes.