Weather themed crafts!

This week at Little ARTventurers we did some weather themed activities - a lovely colourful session to brighten up the grey January days!

Firstly we painted some gorgeous brightly coloured rainbows on the floor. Big and bold art activities are always a firm favourite so we used huge pieces of paper for the artwork. I put out plates of paint in all of the colours of the rainbow plus lots of collage bits and pieces - tissue paper, feathers, glue, scissors, card etc. The younger kids loved painting all over their paper and doing handprints, the older children tried painting their rainbows with the right colours and then sticking the collage materials on top as a colour matching exercise.

I think you'll agree these are fab!.....

We made sparkly suncatchers using paper plates and pieces of sticky backed plastic! If you were wanting to try this one at home you'll need

Paper plate

Sticky backed plastic

Tissue paper

Sequins, glitter or other sparkles!

Paint

Some string or thread or something for hanging

I pre cut the centre circles out of the plates and also pre cut circles of sticky backed plastic to a slightly larger size than the cut out hole in the centre of the plate (if that makes sense!). I stuck one circle onto the reverse of the plate so that the centre of the plate was then a sticky area for the kids to work with. They made their suncatchers by sticking tissue paper and sparkles onto the sticky area - no glue needed and lots of fun! When they had finished we stuck the other plastic circle on the top to "seal" it - they then decorated the rest of the suncatcher with paints, paper streamers etc - add a hole and thread with string for hanging and hey presto! A very colourful sparkly suncatcher!

What else did we do for Weather week? We made some rainshakers with cardboard tubes - filled them with lentils and dried spaghetti and decorated them with paints and paper. The children loved making these and we used cellophane paper to seal the contents in at each end which meant that the children could still see inside them. We then used them in our music time at the end of the session!

We also made storm clouds using cotton wool and used paint and collage materials to create some very colourful umbrellas!

A lovely colour filled week to banish those January blues!!



A copy of our January Newsletter!

For those who aren't on our email list here's a copy of our January newsletter :

Hi everyone and happy New Year!

Having eventually washed all of the glitter out of my hair following our super sparkly Christmas sessions,  there are lots of exciting things being planned at ARTventurers HQ for the Spring!

February half term is already hurtling towards us and we’re running two extra special holiday sessions called “Monster Messy Madness”! Paper bag monsters, string painting, puppets, modelling and more….it’s going to be tons of fun and places are already getting booked up.  This is where we’ll be :

Tuesday 14^th Feb  10am – St Johns Church, Ashbrooke

Thursday 16^th Feb 10am – Whitburn Parish Hall, Whitburn

The half term sessions  are £6 per child including all art and craft materials and refreshment for the little ones, sibling discount available. As our Christmas sessions were fully booked please do let me know asap if you want to book a place!

We’re also really excited to be running a regular Little ARTventurers class at Whitburn Parish Hall on Thursday mornings starting next month. It’s a fantastic hall with great access and lots and lots of space for creative fun. We’ll be running two special taster sessions there on Thurs 2^nd and Thurs 9^th Feb – you can book both sessions for the special price of just £8! – and then the new term will commence after Feb half term week. If you would like to join us please let me know and if you could also help spread the word by passing the details on to any friends with little ones who might be interested that would be great!

See you soon – and here’s to a happy, healthy and creative 2012 for us all!

Fiona x

ARTventurers – laugh, explore, create!

www.artventurers.co.uk

Brrrrrrr - frosty pictures!

It is sooooooo cold outside - it was minus 2 when we set out on the school run this morning! But now safely back in the warm I thought I'd share some of the fab frosty pictures the Little ARTventurers created when we did a "Winter" theme recently.

Puffy paint snow

We made our own puffy paint to create our snowy pictures using shaving foam and PVA glue. We squirted the foam and glue onto large plates and mixed it round and round using paintbrushes - this was great fun and the children loved swirling it round and round and making patterns as they mixed.

We then used the paint to paint snowmen - adding paper and card pieces for the features and a sprinkle of glitter for extra sparkle. Some of the children fingerpainted snow falling in the sky

 

Some of the children also used paper doilies, puffy paint and glitter to create these fab snowflakes (using the doilie as a stencil) - how fab would these look cut out and hung up at a window?!)

The puffy paint is great fun for the children to paint with and dries with a great texture to it

Frosty trees

We used cotton wool, paint and a sprinkling of sugar to create frosty tree pictures - the sugar provides a perfect frosty finish!

Handprint mittens

Most little ones love handprint art and it's always lovely to have them to keep as a reminder of how much they've grown! We made some very cute handprint mittens using cut out mitten shapes, card, glitter and paint. Some of the class punched holes in these so they could be hung up at home.

Hope everyone is wrapped up warm today!

x







Hello and belated happy new year!

It's been far too long since I last updated this blog - amongst my numerous NY Resolutions is one to get to grips with blogging and tweeting on a regular basis. I guess it's just a matter of getting myself into a regular routine......any tips are much appreciated!

Christmas at home was manic but fab - my little ones are 4 and 5 (she was 6 at Christmas too) so they are such a great age to really appreciate the magic of it all. And Christmas at ARTventurers was also great - our Christmas sessions were full of fun, glitter and sparkle and some fantastic creations were made!

Looking forward to 2012 my plan for ARTventurers is to hopefully increase the number of Little ARTventurers classes (for 18 months to 5 years) over the course of the year and to also do more work with schools and nurseries, delivering themed art and craft sessions and ceramics courses. I've also really been enjoying the party side of the business - it's such a pleasure to be asked to provide the activities for someone's special day and we've had great fun doing it! Our Pirates and Princess and Build a Bear parties have been especially popular this year.

In the meantime, our Thursday morning is class is on the move - from Washington Arts Centre to Whitburn Parish Hall. As most of our attendees were travelling some distance to the arts centre anyway it seemed more sensible to move the location of the class and the Parish Hall provides a larger space for lots of creative fun! I like to ensure that our classes are fun and interactive with space to move around, create and play - if we've been making rockets we need some space to whizz them around the room! We hope to continue to use the Arts Centre space though for other holiday sessions during the year - our Little Potters class there last summer was a great success.

Half term is not too far around the corner and our school holiday sessions are always very popular. This half term is Monster Messy Madness! We'll be running sessions on Tues 14th Feb at Ashbrooke and Thursday 16th at Whitburn - sessions suitable for age 18months to 7 years (approx). We'll be making paper bag monsters, string painting, modelling and more! To book a space either call 07775911990 or email us mail@artventurers.co.uk

Here's to a happy, healthy and creative 2012 for us all!

Fiona x