Toddler Theme: Art

Those of you that know me personally, know that I like making things.  All kinds of things -- sewing, paper art, digital art, photography, cooking.  I'm probably more of a crafter but I appreciate art & creativity, so Art week is fun for me.  We do art projects all the time, but during this theme week, I focus on some classic art & artists.  A very, very early intro into art appreciation.  The first thing we did this week was look at some famous art examples on the iPad.  Mia decided to stop napping so during afternoon cuddle time one day, we Googled artists like Picasso, Seurat, Mondrian, and Elliot Erwitt and looked through their work.  Mia liked Elliot's photos of dogs a lot.  Like a lot a lot!  Check him out.

Our first art project was a Mondrian-inspired collage.  Squeezing glue is a fine-motor skill that I've been working on with Mia and she surprised me how well she could do this on her own.  All I did was pre-cut squares & rectangles of varying sizes from red, blue, yellow, and white paper.  I did help her place the first piece in a corner so that she would get the idea of what we were doing, but that's it. You can see her finished work in the header picture.

This next art project was perfect as a "here, do this while I make dinner" project.  I made a couple of big open scribbles on plain paper then challenged her to tell me what they were.  My mom used to do this with us in church so that we'd be quiet (I'm on to you, mom!), but it's a really great creativity exercise.  And I always think the results look like Picasso's surrealist works (check out some examples of his work here).  That one on the left, I thought for sure Mia was going to think it looked like a snake but she flipped it over and said it was a mouse.  I added the eye and paw details while she colored it in.  If you want to learn more about Picasso (and other artists too!), check out his page on Artsy.  There you can read a biography, view his works, and also check to see if any of his work is on exhibit near you.  Neat!

We did a little q-tip pointillism for our last masterpiece.  I printed out a couple of artwork coloring sheets (I linked the website below).  The first one was A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat.  I gave her an assortment of paints and a handful of q-tips and showed her how to make dots on a little section.  She worked very meticulously for about 20 minutes and required a second handful of q-tips.

I've been wanting to give Mia a camera for a long time and decided to go for it this week.  I had an old point and shoot laying around so I locked down all of the settings and made sure that the shutter sound effect was turned on.  You gotta have the sound.  Ca-chick!  She took about 200 pictures of her fingers over the lens but surprisingly, she captured some neat ones.  There were a couple of me taking pictures of her little sister.  And my favorite was a picture of her toes and Mater the Tow Truck.  We did also make a trip to one of our local art museums, The Denver Art Museum.  I have to caution that art museums are real tough for toddlers so only do this if yours has lots of fun interactive areas.  The DAM does have plenty, but I got this pouty face every time we had to walk through a gallery to get to the next interactive exhibit.  Sculpture gardens would be a great alternative.

And if your toddler has a little sibling, then you might like this baby "art" project.  Put a few blobs of paint (in our case, glitter paint) in a food storage bag and seal it.  That's it.  Let them squish it around for as long as you can get away with it. 

A summary of all Art week activities with links:

ART PROJECTS: Created a Mondrian-inspired paper collage, Practiced q-tip pointillism (Seurat printable coloring sheet here), Played with a camera, Used our creativity to turn scribbles into Picasso-inspired profiles, Colored masterpiece coloring sheets (check them out here), Made an art gallery installation with all of these art projects

OUTINGS: Visited the Denver Art Museum, Took camera on a nature walk

BOOKS: My Mom Snaps by Kari McGrath, Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, Andy Warhol's Colors by Susan Goldman Rubin, Counting with Wayne Thiebaud also by Susan Goldman Rubin, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

BABY BONUS: Made a food storage bag "painting"

So I was thinking...I really loved seeing the Valentine's week photos many of you posted to my Facebook page.  I'd love to periodically post a Follower Feature with photos of you & your kids doing the toddler themes.  If you'd like to share a photo, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or even use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).