Formula 1 in Glitter Glue!!!!!!

Today, Riley and I were sat at the kitchen table when he asked to do glitter glue.  Never one to miss an opportunity for art, I happily got the supplies out and just let him go for it. 

He started off blobbing different colours on to his page like he usually does, but after he'd done 7 or 8 different colours he started tracing his finger around the page.  To start with he went in between the blobs really carefully, then he started making car sounds to go with his tracing.

After a while he started going through the blobs of glitter glue, mixing them all together and leaving void marks with his fingers, and then he suddenly announced 'Its Formula 1!'  He was at it for ages, driving his finger around, making a track.  It was wonderful - totally process led.  And what made him think of formula 1, I have no idea (we follow it, but the season ended months ago.)

So anyway, here is Riley's interpretation of Formula 1, in the medium of glitter glue.....

Miss F having a paint!

It was her first go with a paintbrush - she's turning into quite the little artist!  She's just fascinated with everything creative (hooray, hooray, hooray!!!!!).  It was just a splat and daub session today, so no finished piece pictures, just a note that, as ever, she had SO much fun.

Btw, the bleeding tissue paper art that I did with Riley was half success, half disaster.  When we peeled the dried tissue paper off the first one the next day it wasn't as good as we'd hoped.  In fact, it looked better before the tissue paper came off, so we left the other two with the tissue paper on!  My advice to anyone wanting to try it is to use different colours (eg. red and blue, or green and purple) rather than shades of the same colour so it stands out.  Or do a monochromatic scheme but use it for a background and stick something else over the top of it.  Have fun!!!

Bleeding Tissue Paper Valentines Art

Today Riley and I did some bleeding tissue paper art.  I've seen it done a couple of times, but I've never done it so it was a bit of an experiment!  And at this time of year, what else could we do but a pink, heart-y creation.  I cut out some little hearts and strips of tissue paper in different pinks and reds as Riley still can't use scissors.  Then he used a sponge to wet his piece of paper - this was apparently the best bit!

Once its nice and wet you place the tissue paper on it - it doesn't have to be neat, in fact when I've seen it done if its a bit messy and crumply the finished result looks better - and then you dab more water over it.

Riley thought it was great, and its minimal mess too - just mopping up splashed water.  We've left them to dry overnight.  In theory we'll take the tissue paper off tomorrow and it'll have left a colourful print.  I'll post photos of the finished result.  For now though, here's the pieces drying - so pretty!  (And can you believe he did 3?!  That's what splashing about with water does!!)

Dinosaur Sticky-Backed-Plastic Collage

I love doing sticky-backed-plastic collages - they're so easy and mess free, just tape a piece of the plastic down, peel off the backing and let your kid go crazy.  And my favourite thing to stick on?  Pictures cut out from used wrapping paper.  It takes a bit of time to cut them out if you don't have a kid that is great with scissors, but Riley has so much fun doing them.

Anyway, we had some dinosaur wrapping paper left over from Riley's birthday so I cut out the dinos and some leaves from some green tissue paper to make it look jungle-y and that was it.  As its so foolproof I decided to let Freya have a go for the first time - she loved it.

And here's Riley too....

To be honest, Riley wasn't into it that much today - he seemed to see it as a time-trial and piled all his bits on in the centre as quick as possible.  He literally did it for 2 minutes, then announced "No more dinosaurs."  But Freya sat there for ages and she only put one piece on back-to-front (and she tried to change it afterwards) which I think is pretty good for a first attempt!  Here's the finished ones.....

Riley's:

And Freya's:

Masking Tape 'Batik'

Today I tried to do masking tape 'batik' with Riley.  He didn't really get it, though he did have fun using sticky tape and slopping paint about.

Hopefully he'll remember what we did next time we try (our session was cut short by Freya waking up from a nap and screaming the place down) and it'll be a bit more successful.  And it all adds to experience!  Anyway, here's the finished piece:

Chalks and Peppa Pig!

The other day I let Freya have a go with the chalks - she's so excited every time I give her new art materials!  I gave her black card, which is totally new to her, and coloured chalks, and then she decided to add a few Peppa Pig stickers (which in theory were hers, but Riley used most of them a few days ago when he had an arty moment so there weren't too many left!).  It was all a bit dusty and smudgy, but she had lots of fun.

Finished picture......

I've got a few good ideas up my sleeve for her to try in the coming weeks.  I can't wait to see what she does with them!

Fingerpainting with Freya

Today was Freya's first ever go with paints.  She seems so into art at the moment, I just had to let her loose when Riley wasn't around (I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with the mess 2 of them would make at once!)  I think she liked it.

So those are the cute photos of her painting happily......  And here's one of her after she painted herself:

Aaaaaargh!  She's still got paint in her ear now!!!  I'm not entirely sure how to get it out!  Anyway, here it is - Freya's first ever painting:

Getting back in the swing of things

Isn't it funny how the holidays completely disrupt your routine - or is it just our house?  I'm barely organised still.  Anyway, though I have great plans for the weeks to come (doesn't everyone in the first few weeks of January?!) none were suitable for today, so we did some basic drawing - Freya with crayons and colouring pencils, Riley with felt tip markers.

Apparently colouring pencils are tasty!!!  I'm so pleased - Freya is very into art.  She spent weeks climbing up on to the kitchen table, which drove me absolutely crazy, until I realised she was just trying to get to the crayons, bless her.  How cute is that?  Riley is rather take-it-or-leave-it with art most of the time, so I encourage him as much as I can, and try to provide varied and interesting projects for him, but Freya actually goes looking for art supplies.  (She keeps pointing to the glue on the shelf at the moment - not sure I'm ready for that chaos!)  I hope she continues loving it.  I don't think I've shown you any of Freya's 'finished' scribbles yet, but I thought I would today as in the last few days she's changed from back and forth scribbles to round and round ones.  She's very pleased with herself.  Here it is:

And here's one of Riley's:

Dot Markers

I've been reading a lot on the web recently about do-a-dot markers, so I thought I'd try them with Riley, particularly after his dotty picture the other day.  I couldn't find the ones I'd seen online so I just bought bingo dabbers.  Riley thinks they're great.  He did a lovely dotty picture again (with more counting - the kid's obsessed with numbers!).

It started out with nice, neat dots, but then he discovered that as they were very full of ink, if he 'dotted' with more force it created a lovely splat shape.  Here it is:

I have no idea if its supposed to be something!  Afterwards we did some sensory play with Crazy Soap.  They both loved it (to the point I had to stop them redecorating the house with it!)  For those of you that don't know, Crazy Soap is a less messy, more interesting version of shaving foam!  Its the strangest stuff - it holds it's foaminess and sticks to itself, so you can model it into vague shapes, and its kind of floaty and light, not gloopy.  Best of all, it doesn't stick to you!  We had so much fun with it I forgot to take many photos, and the ones I did take aren't very good.  Here's the best of a bad bunch!

Riley does not like chalk!!!!!

So, I've kind of given up on the 12 days of Christmas thing - Riley just didn't want to know.  I'm hoping I can get a few vaguely festive art ideas in over the next 2 weeks, but nothing like I had planned.  Today (in the interests of vague festivity) I gave him some chalks and dark paper so he could draw 'snowflakes'.  However he got really cross as the chalk wouldn't go on smoothly.  I don't know if we've just got awful quality chalks or if there's some trick we don't know, but he gave up after 2 minutes as it wouldn't do what he wanted.  So I gave him some markers and used a trick I saw on the Artful Parent ages ago where you cut a shape out of the paper to encourage creativity.  He did one weird face (the photos came out all blurry - don't know why), and this dot creation:

He counted each dot as he did it - right up to 114!  While he was doing this I gave Freya some paper and crayons, though at the moment she's obsessed with taking the crayons out of the pouch and then putting them back in.  The few marks she made she was very impressed with though!

12 Days of Christmas Arts and Crafts - Day 1

So here is our 1st Christmas art project from our '12 Days of Christmas Arts and Crafts' thing we're doing.  Its sadly unfinished as Riley wasn't that keen on doing art today so he gave up pretty quickly.  Fortunately its a fairly quick project. 

Its a paper wreath.

I simply cut a ring out of sticky-backed plastic (using two different sized plates as a guide) and masking taped it down, then I gave Riley paper triangles (for that pointy 'fir' looks) in as many different green papers as I could find.  There's 2 different shades of green printer paper, 2 different tissue papers, some green foil sweetie wrappers and bits of a plastic nappy packet!  I wished I'd had some green fabric too, but my stash is lacking in the green department.  He stuck them down randomly - I just told him to cover the sticky!

After he gave up I added a few extra triangles to fill in the gaps (I'm sure he won't mind!) and stuck the whole thing to a matching cardboard ring cut from a cereal packet to give it some rigidity.  Hopefully tomorrow we'll stick a few red sequins on for 'berries' and then its going on our living room door.  Watch this space for the finished pics!

Snowflake Collage

I was going to start our '12 Days of Christmas Art' project today, but our snowy weather was too good an opportunity to miss to do some snow art.  I printed the outline of a snowflake and then gave it to Riley to stick bits on - he had pale blue tissue paper, pale blue printer paper, silver foil, cotton wool and squares cut from a white plastic bag.

I was going to cut it out to make a hanging decoration out of it, but he didn't really get that he should stay inside the lines!  Never mind - the finished picture is beautiful, and is hanging on our kitchen door instead.

He then went on to do a snowy scene with the bits he hadn't used on his snowflake.  It was quite short lived though - he gave up after a couple of minutes.

I did give Freya the same snowflake outline with some crayons while Riley was gluing.  She tipped all the crayons out then decided to eat a bread roll!!!  I guess she wasn't in a creative mood!  However she did get her first ever experience of snow today.  I think she was impressed!!!

A Busy Day

We've done an awful lot today, so I've got two snippets of our lives to show you.  First of all, we made crispie cakes.

As with all our cooking, Riley was very pleased with himself!  And like most pre-schoolers, a good few spoonfuls never made it into the cases and went straight into his mouth!!!

Our second project of the day turned into a bit of an epic, particularly when you consider Riley's normal concentration span.  I decided to let him loose with the glitter glue again after he had so much fun a couple of weeks ago - totally open ended, no finished result in mind.  Well he squirted until the tubes were empty, then mixed it all up with a glue spreader.

Then he started asking for collagey bits - pretty much everything in the box!  Craft foam flowers, pom-poms, sequin confetti stars, foam shapes, little bits of shiny paper and foil, chocolate coin foils - he kept asking for more and more, and they all got squished into the glitter glue until you could hardly see it anymore.  He was at it for ages and thought it was absolutely wonderful.  Here's the finished piece:

And I was very happy to be informed that Mickey Mouse is in the centre of the page!  He's purple and a bit wonky, but once you know he's there you can spot him.  I'm so pleased that Riley's starting to create 'things' under his own steam finally.  I can't wait to see what he'll make next.

Simple Play-doh

Nothing fancy - just your basic squishing!

Faces

There's something I haven't mentioned until now - Riley is Autistic (well, we think - we're still going through the long process to get the official diagnosis, but we're virtually certain).  Fortunately, he's high-functioning, but because of the Autism, he does have a number of developmental delays.  One of these is that he never draws or paints anything.  He's very happy scribbling away and splatting paint about, but if you ever try to ask him what he's drawn/painted he looks at you like you're absolutely crazy.  Until today.

I'd bought some new markers last week, so I decided to get them out today as we don't use pens very often.  I set him up and went to stick some paper down for Freya as she was joining us and within seconds he'd drawn a face.  When I asked him who it was, he laughed and said 'Daddy.'  So I wrote 'Daddy' on the bottom of the paper and gave him some more, and he promptly drew me!  It was wonderful.  He did loads of faces.  He even tried to write a title on one - how cute is that?!  I'm so pleased, I can't tell you.  So here, in celebration, is Riley drawing and several of his 'faces'.

Old-fashioned Potato Printing

Riley was back to doing arty stuff today, and as Freya had a nice long nap we did some good old fashioned potato printing!  I cut one potato in half so it was a circle and trimmed 3 more into a triangle, a square and a star.  He chose the paint colours and off we went!

Of course, after the other day, his hands went straight into the paint!

The star was his favourite - he ended up printing for well over half an hour.  He asked for more paper numerous times, and even told me he wanted different paper at one point.  I love that he's started making these conscious decisions when he's creating something!  Finished piece:

On a completely different note, our Portage worker left us the most beautiful building blocks to play with this week. 

They're wonderful - the centres are made from coloured acrylic, and coloured sand, beads and coloured liquid (with added glitter!) trapped between clear acrylic.  We spent ages building bridges for Riley's car to go under.  And these were some Star Trek style sliding doors Riley created for his car to go through!

I can see we're going to have fun with them all week.  Aren't they great?!

Drawing with Freya

Riley is still not wanting to do any art - though he's been really poorly for the last couple of days, so I don't blame him.  So today I took the opportunity to do some drawing with Freya.  She's really gotten into our magna-doodle in the last week or so and I thought she'd love doing some scribbles with crayons, but she was far more interested in taking the crayons out of their little pouch and then putting them back in!!!

I have ascertained from some rather enthusiastic squeals and pointing that the yellow ones are her favourite!  Who knew?!?!