This is a picture of a crocodile with a broken leg and the letter "U". How wonderful to be able to draw something, stand back, and decide what it is! Talk about artistic liberties! I was reading the Savvy Source newsletter yesterday and it is all about art this month. They had many simple ideas to introduce art to your child that do not necessarily include a big production or mess! (Yes, Emily, I have let Fischer paint with real paint before! But, only once.). Personally I hate paint, markers and crayons - they can all be easily eaten and they all easily draw on non-paper surfaces! But there are others things you can use for art like pipe cleaners (no mess), painting with water (have you tried taking a bunch of paintbrushes and sponges and letting your kids go to town "painting" the sidewalk, driveway and house?), or what about those foamy stickers? I know that Wanda's little almost 2-year-old sat and put stickers on paper for almost an hour all by herself! By the way, I've heard about peeling the stickers off and sticking them to a rubbery
placemat so that they can easily be stuck and
re-stuck for lots of sticker fun for a toddler. I'd need to try that approach with
Fisch, because he has a really hard time getting the paper backing off the stickers by himself.
So the
Savvy Source was talking about their top 10 artists to introduce your toddler to. I really thought that they would be talking about children's illustrators.... but no, they were talking about classic artists.
Thinking about art in the lives of our little ones this week, we asked
ourselves: if we were to make a list of the ten best artists to introduce to our
preschoolers, who would be on it? Which artists would capture our little ones'
imaginations, make them curious, inspire them, make them laugh, puzzle, wonder?
They list artists such as Raphael, Degas, Matisse, and O'Keefe (who by the way is totally a Kappa Delta sister of mine). Honestly I hadn't thought to introduce Fisch to these types of artists yet. I was thinking I was doing pretty good to have colored pencils handy all of the time! We'll definitely be browsing the library for some great art books. I'll let you know if I find any gems, and please let me know if you have any favorites too!
While we are on the subject of creating art, I have a few products that I'd like to mention.
Emily bought Fisch some super-fabulous colored pencils, they are chunky, and when you write with them the color is bright and smooth. They are Crayola Write Start.
Also as I was reading the Savvy Source and a few other sites, I came across Squiggles. It is a giant drawing pad with lots of drawing starters, like designing t-shirts. It looked really fun! I don't think it would be right for Fisch at this point, but older kiddos would probably have a blast! The Scribbles book might be a fun one to try with him.
Another drawing pad is the Doodles at Dinner: 36 Tear-Off Placemats by Deborah Zemke tear-off placemats. How perfect, especially for theose restaurants that don't have paper placemats! These placemats even have different skills to practice like writing and numbers and what not.
1 comment:
Cool ideas! I just found the crayons I've been wanting for Nicky. They're washable and they're triangular- so they won't roll off the table constantly. (They're supposed to help with their writing grip, but mostly I just am tired off picking them up.)
Also, over the weekend we were talking about those "paint with water" coloring books. They have the dots of watercolor right on the pages and kids just need a wet paintbrush to paint. Nicky is very squeamish about touching paint, so this sounds perfect! I'm sure I can find some in a store somewhere. They're kind of pricey on Amazon I think.
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