Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Decorating Walking Sticks

Thursday, November 1st, 2012

decorating-walking-sticksDecorating walking sticks is a fun art activity, especially if your children enjoy nature hikes. Find some walking sticks in a forested area. You can paint the sticks whatever color you want and add embellishments like leather, feathers, twine, ribbon, leaves, and other fun items.

One of my sons painted his stick like a poisonous snake, with red, black, and gold, following the adage “red on yellow, kill a fellow.” He added gold ribbon to jazz up his walking stick.

Another son wanted camouflage, so he painted with two different shades of green, making blobs on the stick. This is easier to do if you paint the stick completely in one color of green, then let it dry. At that point, you can add blobs of another shade of green. This son tied some silk autumn leaves to the top of his walking stick.

My oldest son likes blues and grays, and he did a striped pattern, using leather embellishments along the way. He tied black feathers to the top of his stick.

My daughter loves pink, so she decorated her stick in a girly way. She tied pink and yellow feathers to the top, after having used these colors in her paint and ribbon. We attached most of the items with hot glue.

Watch the video demonstration to get more ideas for decorating walking sticks:

Pottery Wheel Video Controversial?

Monday, October 29th, 2012

With my Kid’s Pottery Wheel video getting over 16,000 views, you would think that people liked it. After all, I stated lots of helpful tips on how to successfully make pottery on a toy pottery wheel. But I’ve had lots of people hit “dislike”on the video because they hate toy pottery wheels in general. Hello, people. You are rating the video, not rating the topic in general. Who would have thought that I would get so many vicious remarks, some of which I had to delete? Who on earth would “dislike” some sweet children making pottery? And why cuss at me about it?

I’ve gotten pretty much an equal amount of likes and dislikes on my video, indicating that it’s a controversial issue. I agree with the people that say that toy pottery wheels are lousy. A lady e-mailed me a few days ago about what brand I recommended. I told her, “Since I recorded the pottery wheel video 2 years ago, I don’t own the pottery wheel any more, and I don’t know the brand. Sorry about that. In my opinion, all toy pottery wheels are the same.”

She e-mailed me back again, insisting that I tell her the brand. She said that all the reviews on toy pottery wheels were bad. I almost just copied and pasted my previous e-mail, since I had already told her that I didn’t know the brand. Instead, I just took a deep breath and wrote: “I agree that all toy pottery wheels are lousy. If the person using it is angry or impatient, they will not have success. You need to be gentle with it, and using the tips in the video, you can have success, even when you use a lousy toy pottery wheel. Like I said, in my opinion they are all the same. Most people can’t afford an extremely expensive real pottery wheel, so I show people how to use a lousy toy pottery wheel effectively.”

I’ve gotten a similar reaction to my YouTube video “A Typical Homeschool Day,” with people hitting “dislike” because they dislike homeschooling. At least the “likes” far outweigh the “dislikes”–32 “likes” and 4 “dislikes” out of almost 10,000 hits. I’ve gotten 51 comments, including an atheist who was angry with me that I teach my children the Bible. I answered him, and then he was just picking a fight and I was tired, so I asked my husband to deal with him.

At least in “Bible Costume in Five Minutes” (over 15,000 hits), only two people hated my Bible costume demonstration, while 41 people said they “liked” it. And nobody has said anything vicious about my Bible costume. Nobody is cussing at me over it. So that’s good.

Shadow Puppets Behind a Sheet

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

shadow-puppetsI tied a rope to two trees and hung up a white bed sheet. The sun shone through the sheet, so the kids started doing pantomime and shadow puppets with their fingers. This was a completely unexpected activity, since I hung up the sheet for the kids to do a painting. (You can see what they painted here.)

You can also do shadow puppets on a white wall while projecting a bright light toward the wall in a dark room. Slide projectors without a slide in them work especially well. The children combine their fingers into different shapes to make animals and objects. You can even play a game of charades by silently acting out a shadow puppet and trying to get the other people to guess what object you are making. Shadow puppets are great fun!

Glow-in-the-Dark Chalk

Monday, August 27th, 2012

glow-in-the-dark-chalk

For my daughter’s birthday, she received a kit of glow-in-the-dark chalk. It was super easy to make. All you had to do was shake the glow powder and chalk powder in a small container, add a small amount of water, and pour it into a mold. The box said that the chalk would harden in half an hour, but it was not hard whatsoever within that time frame. It was more like an hour, and even then, the chalk was sort of soft and had to be handled carefully to not crumble in your hands.

But it worked. The chalk (especially the yellow and green) glowed in the dark as my children drew pictures all over the driveway one night. It was super fun. The red and blue glowed a little bit, not nearly as much as the yellow and green. This is definitely an activity worth doing with your children, since my kids kept squealing with joy as we were adding more and more details to our glow-in-the-dark chalk masterpieces.