art and craft syllabus

Hello friends. How have you been ?

Well, me ? I’m exhausted but on cloud 9. Exhausted becoz I am conducting summer craft workshop for students in the day and repeating the activities in the evening with my boys !! Agreed I am crazy about making stuff, but when you have to do repeats of the whole shabang all over a couple of hours later, it really breaks my back.

My students are a lovely 9 year old polite brother and talented sister. It has been such a joy teaching them the many techniques in art. I am especially always happy when I get students who are genuinely interested in learning something, rather than just having a get together.

Here are just some of the projects, they have done with me :

We have been enjoying with some lighter activities too. Some of them are inspired by the talented ladies of blogland. Please feel free to ask any details about the process and recipes used. These are really light and refreshing activities for children, especially beneficial to children, who need the “push” with touch and feel activities and most importantly, they keep them busy for long periods of time.

We began with blowing bubbles ~ who made the largest bubbles and who had the largest bowl of bubbles and finally, who got the most bubbles on his bubble imprint sheet.

We then moved to the shaving cream foam. The boys had a blast with these activities. My boys are 9, 10 and 12. All three of them have dyslexia with the last two, also having ADHD. Playing with foam was especially fun and gave them a sense of freedom. Where generally I dont encourage these kind of messy activities in the dinning room, lest they ruin the rug, I realized, alittle compromise goes a long way. The boys could’nt have enough of the foam fun. And ofcourse, who ever thought there would’nt be a foam fight, does not have boys !Here is sawaab, experimenting with foam patiently. The silence before the storm 🙂

and then all the Real Fun began !

Why are “little boys and gooey/messy stuff”, a deadly combination for moms ? You dont have to answer that question. The picture above is the self explanatory answer. Yep ~ hands, feet, clothes and even Buddy’s glasses had foam on them. But, truth be told, I would repeat this activity with the boys, at the drop of a hat. Thats just how much fun they had. How free they felt to mess up. How closer, I found them to myself. All that fun and laughter was well worth the mess. I really had fun just watching and filming them. It was crazy and hilarious !

The activity was : Mixing acrylics in foam lather and making swirls with a skewer stick to leave imprints on A4.

The next day, we worked with colors. Making circles with cup rims and filling watercolors in. Although we were supposed to stick to primary colors. The boys decided they wanted to fill more colors. so voila … you can see the stunning result.

Next, I wanted to check if the children of a craft savvy mom have anything remotely resembling an artistic gene !! Alas !!

Two lessons later, there is remarkable improvement. Needless to say, there is still room for “alot” of improvements 🙂 But we’re getting there, lots of fun and lots of practise, one day at a time.

Notice how both boys have used the eyebrows and movement of lips to distinguish between happy/sad/angry. Not bad for a first timer.

A few tips, a few ideas and alittle coaching later, a good attempt at making a boy’s portrait. For boys who barely ever paint, I think, it was a good attempt. Besides, Like I always say, art is all about the process, not about the result. If the process was fun, then the result is bound to be remarkable.

Feeling more confident. They all wanted to now, make the change and try out a girl’s portrait. Look at those serious faces and all the hard work going into their projects.

And a little later :

Spectacular !!!!!!!

Not only am I so pleased with the beautiful pictures, all the details they put in, but I’m so glad, I got to spend some time ‘WITH THEM’ out of the computer studio !!! Most importantly, they are enjoying themselves. I hope, you are inspired from some of these pictures and try out some of the activities with your children. Children forget alot of things but they never forget the time spent with them doing something “they” liked, which does become incredibly difficult as we all age.

I’m so happy that you stopped by, my site. I hope to see you here more often. If you’d like to keep in touch with my posts, you can subsribe to my blog in the column on the right.

Please enjoy making and sharing a little joy over the summer period. Come september and we’ll all be hearing the express train whistling again so enjoy what you have now ~ Time !!! and Time with the kids.

Hugs and kisses to all my friends and subsribers.

Naush

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