Tissue paper cat collage

Based on the book "There are Cats In This Book" by Vivanne Schwartz. We used red and blue tissue paper to create a collage background. We used a mixture of glue and water and a paint brush to apply a layer of glue and water to the white paper background then brushed another layer on top. We created the collage tissue paper backgrounds and then drew cats from yellow construction paper to glue with a glue stick on top of the tissue paper background. You can add two or three cats if you like and in the children's drawings of the cats you will get great variation. Below is a you tube video clips of this awesome interactive pop up book.This book is great fun to read to a young child.This is also a great way to review primary colors.

The drawing with a hole in it

I was at my local library looking for books for the children's classes I was teaching and I came across "The Book with a Hole In It."  by Herve Tullet. Just by looking at the spine alone  I was intrigued. This book is full on scenarios that all revolve around the hole in the book. On each double spread image there is a question for the reader as to what they want to but in the hole. You can throw balls of paper through a "basketball hoop" or make your face "whats for dinner." I not only really enjoyed reading this book to my young 3-5 year old students and letting them interact with it. I also enjoyed sharing it with older students and having them created their own drawing with a hole in it. We folded large poster sized white drawing paper in half then using scissors I had older students,7-9 cut a hole in the paper then draw a scene around it when they were done kids put their faces in the hole. One girl made a dog with the hole in the dog's face with grass and a yard around it another made the hole be the top of a lollipop and the rest of the paper was a lollipop stand selling the candy.

Here I am with an example I modeled after my dog.

Art projects based on children's books

 I just finished a parent and child class at the art gallery. I prepared several projects based on Children's books. The first project I would like to share is a project based on Eric Carle’s “The Grouchy Lady Bug”

We used ceramic clay to make pinch pots and flipped them over then added a small mound of clay for the heads. We poked two holes in the hole with a pencil in order to hot glue wire antennae into them later. We used white oil pastels to draw leaves onto white paper and then brushed green water color onto them.

When the bugs were finished being fired we painted them with acrylic paints in two steps body and head then dots when the under coat of red dried. We cut the leaves and trimmed them up and glued them onto foam core board with tacky glue. After hot gluing the antennae on  I used a caulking adhesive glue to attach the ceramic bugs to the foam core board.