Paper bag monsters!

This week is half term and I've had such a lovely week I wish we could do it all again! I feel really lucky that although I have been working I'm doing something that I absolutely love, plus I've had lots of time with my two little ones who've been able to come along to work with me when I've been running classes.

This week's Little ARTventurers sessions were titled "Monster Messy Madness" - so called because we made monsters, it was quite messy, and some of the things we had a go at painting with were a bit mad! (bubble wrap and string painting....). One of the activities we did that went down a storm were the paper bag monsters so thought I'd share the idea on here.....it's a quick and easy project that works well for all age groups.

For the monsters I used pre bought white paper bags - however if you don't have one of these you could just sellotape two pieces of paper together leaving one side open.

As there are lots of littlies at my sessions I had pre drawn eyes and cut them out plus pre cut other shapes out of card for noses, mouths, teeth, monster spikes etc. I also provided card and scissors so the older ones could cut out their own monster features!

The children used glue to stick their features onto the bag to make their monster faces. Some were scary, some quite friendly! We then stuffed the bags with rolled up balls of newspaper and then sealed them shut with sellotape. Colour was added with paint - using fingers or sponges to give the monsters spots!

Here's some of the monsters we made......

You could add arms and legs to your paper bag monster too!

Enjoy!

Name art!

Today at the Saturday art club we created some artwork out of our names - it's something I remember doing myself as a child and thought it would be great fun to try with the kids.

The current Saturday class is a large group of children who range widely in age and ability - the youngest are 4 and the oldest are 12 so as you can imagine it's a real challenge to find a project week after week that they can all do, have fun with and gain maximum benefit from! The class is so busy that we've literally run out of chairs - great news that it's so popular and the children are bringing their friends along but it means we really have run  out of space. Therefore from next half term we're splitting the class - some of the older children will move onto an afternoon class which will be more structured and look at different drawing techniques, cartoon drawing etc and the morning class will remain a fun class aimed at the under 10s exploring and experimenting with different materials, mediums and techniques.

Anyway....back to the name art! I chose it for todays class as it is something that can be easily adapted to the differening ages and abilities - the kids really got into the idea and created some great pieces of artwork!

To do this project I gave each child a sheet of a4 white card, pencil, black marker and charcoal. We also had out on the table coloured pens, oil pastels, crayons, and pencils to add colour plus scissors, glue, wiggly eyes and coloured card

We folded the card lengthways and I showed each child how to write their name in joined up writing along the fold - in pencil first and then going over in charcoal. It was a challenge getting all of them to do this in big letters (they have a tendency to want to do tiny detailed drawing and writing!) and to make sure they kept the bottom of their letters along the fold and joined all the letters up. Some with shorter names could do their middle name too.

Once outlined with charcoal we folded the paper, pressed down to make an imprint and then opened the sheet up again. What we had was then an upside down image of the writing on the opposite side of the paper! I got the children to outline both sides with the black marker to make all of the lines bold and black - we then looked at the shapes created and decided what they were going to be! Most children decided that they would make theirs into "name aliens" but some made other creatures or characters, one did a centipede and one made her name into a fountain!

We then added colour using the different things I'd put out for them to use - most of the children added wiggly eyes and then decided to then cut theirs out and mount it on coloured card which was really effective!

I think the finished results look great - can you tell what some of the names are?