Summer Art Program- Willow

For the second week of our summer art program, I read the book Willow by Denise Brennan-Nelson, Rosemarie Nelson and Cyd Moore to the children. This book is a great book for talking about creativity!

All of the students in art class are taught to draw everything exactly alike. However,  Willow, paints what she sees when she closes her eyes. The unimaginative art teacher does not like Willow's way of looking at things. At Christmas the only gift Miss Hawthorn receives is from Willow. Willow gives her art teacher her beloved sketchbook, which begins a change in the unhappy teacher. When the children come back to school in January, they discover an art room and an art teacher who have gone through an extreme transformation!

The projects for this book focused on imagination and creativity! The 2-5 year old group created name creatures. The caregivers helped them fold their paper in half and write their names with a soft-leaded pencil. Then rubbed them so that they could transfer their name onto the other half of the paper, creating a mirror image of their name.

One they had this, the kids took over creating their creatures. They used markers, colored pencils, crayons to color them in.

Since the little ones love to glue, I put out a variety of feathers, sequins, precut paper and glue bottles and let them go for it- decorating their creatures the way they wanted.

The 6 and 7 year olds did personal silhouettes. They had a choice of whether they actually wanted to trace their own silhouette or use a precut doll shape (it was pretty much 50/50 on this). They cut them out and glued them onto colored construction paper.

Then they used a variety of materials to glue onto the silhouettes to describe themselves.

They could also use markers, crayons and pencils to draw things that told about themselves.

This was probably my favorite project all summer!!! Shoe sculptures! A friend of mine called everyone in her neighborhood and they cleaned out their closets for this project- Thank you!!!!

The 8 and up group took a shoe and reimagined it, creating a unique sculpture.

For this, I had cardboard cut for them to use as a base. I had felt, tissue paper, scrapbooking paper, silk flowers (from the dollar store), Mardi Gras beads, Popsicle sticks, etc.

Pretty much anything you can think of would work. I walked around the dollar store and filled up a basket with random things.

I had lots of Tacky Glue, but I also had some glue guns handy, too. We had high school volunteers and caregivers that were available to help with the glue guns.

I found all 3 of these lessons on Artsonia. The shoe sculptures were geared towards middle or high school, but my 8 and up group did really well with it and came up with some great ideas!!! The lobster was my favorite. This little boy had just gone to Galveston for the weekend. He had been crabbing and began his sculpture as a crab. As he progressed, he noticed that it was too long, so it morphed into a lobster. Life experiences! Pin It