Creating A Home Art Corner

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 What would happen if you provided an art corner for your children and supplied them with objects found around your home and in the great outdoors?  What if you read to them every day and took them to the library and provided a literacy-rich environment?  Listen to the words of Caldecott Award winning children’s illustrator, Lois Ehlert, tell us about her childhood experience as described in “The Scraps Book: Notes From a Colorful Life.”

  “When I was little, I read all the books on the library shelf, and I thought maybe someday I could make a book. I was lucky. I grew up with parents who made things with their hands.  Mom loved to sew.  She had colorful fabric scraps, buttons, lace, ribbons and many scissors that she shared with me.  Dad had a basement workshop.  He gave me wood scraps and taught me how to paint, saw and pound nails.  So I had wonderful art supplies and tools close at hand.  In a small corner of my house, Dad set up a folding table for me.  It was my spot to work and dream.

 Ehlert goes on to tell how she created a love of art but not for books right away.  She knew that it takes time to develop dreams. 

Easy Ideas

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She finds her book ideas and inspiration from the world around her.  For example, shopping for fruits and vegetables gave her the idea for her book, “Eat  She planted a spring garden for her mother using red, orange, yellow, blue and purple flowers. The result was the book “Planting a Rainbow.”  Children could pick and dry flowers to make a rainbow garden picture for you.

ing the Alphabet.” Your children could eat their way through the alphabet for fun.

  “The Scraps Book.” provides several other sources of inspiration including her ice fishing decoy. Your children could make little bird, or other animal decoys with nature scraps or wood glued together and painted.

  Ehlert tells about her art technique called collage.    She describes it as very messy but “when ideas are flowing, I keep working.”  She uses a variety of tools to create texture, including spatter painting with a toothbrush and rubbing a crayon over a grater.  She adds objects close at hand such as toys, food, pinecones, seashells or bottle caps.  The many colorful photographs in the book show the results and give children ideas for their own projects.

Creative Focus

  Why is this important to children?  Creativity focuses on process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery.  Creative children learn to think and solve problems for themselves.  They learn not to fear mistakes and feel free to invent, create and find new ways to do things – all valuable and much-needed skills in today’s world. 

Photos: Fran Darling fdarling fotos

More Ideas and Activities... See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. For more help to prepare young children for success in school see the authors’ web site: www.grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest.

Making Wind Chimes With Kids

Are you looking for a windy day project for your young children?  Create your own beaded wind chimes to teach patterns, design, and color. Provide fine motor skill practice and another opportunity for conversation.

   To design wind chimes help children create a hole in the center of a cottage cheese or margarine plastic lid with a paper punch. Make eight to ten more holes evenly spaced around the outer edge. Help children cut a 12 inch piece of string for each outer hole and a 14 inch piece of string for the center hole. Wrap a piece of tape around one end of each string to make it easier to thread the beads and tie a large bead onto the end of the other string pieces.

Art and Talking

  Have an assortment of multi-colored beads and small brass bells available. Your children can experiment with color, size, texture and design as they arrange beads and bells on the strings. Carry on a conversation about the choices they make. You may cut several colorful plastic straws into ½ -1 inch pieces to use as spacers between the bells and beads.  Leave at least 2 inches on the top of each piece of string.  Pull the taped end of each beaded string through a hole in the lid. Tie a big knot on the top to keep the string from sliding through. 

  Place one large bead on the 14- inch string and thread it through the center hole in the lid.  The bead will be on the underside of the lid to keep the string in place.  This is the string you will use to hang the chimes.  Find a sheltered spot outside or inside near a window.  Enjoy the melody!   Extend the activity by making additional wind chimes out of driftwood, seashells, spoons, or recycled items.

Wind Science

  As you are working, talk with your children about the wind. What is it?  What makes it blow? Has there been strong wind lately? Wind is moving air.  When warm air rises, cool air moves in and takes it place.  This moving air makes the wind blow.

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  Before dressing in the morning check trees and flags for signs of wind. Go outside and feel the wind, dance with the wind and see what moves with the wind.  Paint a picture or write a poem to describe your experience.  Then go to the library and look for books about wind.  In his book, “Like a Windy Day,” beloved children’s author, Frank Asch, sends a young girl soaring, tumbling and twirling on her own exciting windy day adventure.   Renee Schwarz offers other wind-powered crafts in her book, “Wind Chimes and Whirligigs.”

Photos: Fran Darling,  fdarling fotos

More Ideas and Activities... See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. For more help to prepare young children for success in school see the authors’ web site: www.grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest.

Childcare: Who's in Charge?

  As midsummer inevitably arrives along with the back-to-school sales, thoughts turn to the classroom and whether or not the children are “ready” for school.  Adults wonder about the many issues that can derail the process of “readiness”.  Consider this example:

  Grandma was staying with four-year-old Theodore. When Grandma told him it was bedtime, his reaction was, “You are not the boss of me.” So the issue of family hierarchy intrudes into the blissful world of grand parenting. What relevance does the issue of “who’s in charge” have to do with helping children to be successful in school?

  Over the years family therapists have learned that healthy families function best when the hierarchy is the usual one with the parents in charge and the grandparents in an advisory role. Teachers also have found this hierarchy, with the teacher in charge, is the organization most likely to build a highly effective classroom environment.  When the roles are reversed and children are “in charge,” most of us know all too well that soon children will be “out of control.” Therapists know all too well how unhappy children are when they are “out of control”.  In fact, research has shown that when this role reversal exists, it is difficult, if not impossible, for children to feel nurtured and secure.

Clear Rules

  Most of us can remember seeing children in a store throwing tantrums in order to get a toy or a treat, and that sinking feeling when the adult “gives in”.  Likewise, imagine a classroom where behavioral expectations are neither clear, nor reinforced, and the teacher loses “control” of the class.  Highly effective classrooms, like highly effective families, start with establishing “who’s in charge.”  Establishing expectations, rules and routines, allow teachers, parents, and caregivers, to create healthy environments conducive to learning.

  Let’s get back to the example of Theodore challenging the authority of his grandmother.  One way to handle this situation might be to explain that “Yes, you’re right.   Mommy and Daddy are the “boss.”  But they told me that I am the “boss” while they’re gone, and you will tell me their rules and what you like to do at bedtime.” Typically, four-year-olds LOVE rules and are happy to tell you what they are!

  As teachers return to classrooms, they hope to find children who can adjust to expectations that are conducive to learning.  Generally, children who experience the hierarchy with parents and other caring adults in an EXECUTIVE role are better able to meet those expectations and more likely to feel successful in school.

  Guest writers are Kay Kurz, a middle school teacher of 25 years and Phyllis Stien, author, “Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain: Neurologically based interventions for troubled children.”   She has over 30 years of experience as a child and family therapist, infant mental health and child development specialist, consultant, and educator, presenting training courses on the psychology and biology of child development, behavior problems, childhood disorders, and childhood maltreatment.

 Photos: Child Pushing Grandmother  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Child_pushing_grandmother_on_plastic_tricycle.jpg

cscott2006 at http://flickr.com/photos/46242866@N00/5325050252

US Children_Story Time http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Story_Time.jpg

daveparker at http://flickr.com/photos/92155448@N00/1299391810

More Ideas and Activities... See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. For more help to prepare young children for success in school see the authors’ web site: www.grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest.