An Easy Paper Plate Sea Gull Craft

Today I am sharing a quick craft we did at our local library. Every Thursday they have a free craft and Hazel loves to go and do it. This week's craft was a simple paper plate sea gull craft. To make the sea gull you need to cut the head and neck by making a somewhat squiggly line on each side of the middle. Draw it on first to get the shape you want. I also rounded the head on mine a bit. Then you fold the wings down and add eyes (either googly or drawn), beak (red or orange paper or draw it on) and feet (yellow paper). Then if you want you can add decorations like eye lashes or color to the wings and body.

Hazel's Sea Gull

I helped Hazel with the cutting since she is not confident at cutting yet. I also cut out the feet and beaks for her. She did the rest. 

My Sea Gull

I used the markers that were out to decorate a bit more. It seemed like the perfect craft since we had been taking a closer look at sea creatures and lately we have been reading about birds.

For more ideas on Ocean Life and Birds check out:

• Shark Exploration
• Cinderella Penguin
• Wild and Free: Dolphins, Whales and Manatees
• Jellyfish Exploration
• Trip to Boston
• Ocean Pinterest Board
• Paper Plate Ducks 
• Needle Felted Birds 
• Bird Nest Crafts 
• Peg Doll Birds 
• Pine Cone Swans 
• Birds for Our Homemade Nests 
• Bird Nest Treats 
• Gift for the Birds 
• Pine Cone Ducks
• Simple Bird Nest Crafts (scroll to bottom of post) 
• Birds Pinterest Board 

Color Explorations: Color Wheel, Color Mixing & More!

Our color explorations have continued. This time we used a wonderful DVD, Drawing for All: Volume 5: Exploring Colors by Tina Cintron , a great book of experiments, Color by Ellen Lawerence, and a fun musical CD, Color Wheel Cartwheel by Laura Freeman.

 

The DVD first begins with drawing a color wheel. Tina Cintron gives simple steps to make your own.You start with a circle (we traced ours) and then number the circle like a clock. Then you connect the numbers 12 and 6, 2 and 8, and 4 and 10. Then you start making the first wedge yellow, skip one and make it red and then skip one and make it blue. She explains these are the primary colors.

Next she adds the secondary colors. She does an excellent job explaining secondary as well as intermediate or tertiary colors.

Hazel and I each made one and then I made a second one to discuss the warm and cool colors only because we had previewed the DVD earlier and I knew it was coming up.

Hazel's Color Wheel

My Color Wheel

In the second color wheel, she discusses complementary colors and what makes them complementary and what it means. Then she goes into warm and cool colors. I did the writing on all the color wheels since Hazel is still learning to write and read.  She also talked about the colors mixing together to make what is called neutral grey, but what she refers to as icky brown.

She also discusses the difference between photography and light colors versus paint, pencil or crayon colors. The primary colors in lights and photography being magenta, cyan and yellow (think of your printer). If these three lights combine they make white. She also talked about a prism and the spectrum (rainbow).  Next she drew pictures with warm colors only. We attempted this picture as well. Our leaves did not look nearly as good.

Hazel's Warm Color Drawing

My Warm Color Drawing

Next she made a picture of mountains and water with only cool colors. We tried this as well.

The next day we looked at the experiments in Color by Ellen Lawrence. The first one we did was to make a rainbow by shining a flashlight through a glass of water. I did not get any pictures of this since we had trouble getting the rainbow. The next experiment was about mixing colors and I have seen it on-line recently including being shared by From ABCs to ACTs: Preschool Science: A Color Mixing Experiment at a recent Sharing Saturday.

The book said to watch closely, but Hazel did not have the patience for this. It takes quite awhile for it to happen, so we let it sit and did some more experiments. The next one involved paper towels as well. You cut a paper towel so it will fit in a baking sheet and then draw dots of color on one end. Tape the paper towel to pan and then slowly add water so it just touches the bottom of the paper towel.

The colors spread out and the ones that have multiple colors in them separate, so you can see some of the colors that make them up.

Our final experiment involved a walk outside. We had to gather leaves of different shades of green. Then we looked at the shades and tried to mix green paint with white and black to make the shade. We found we had to add yellow for some.

 
Then Hazel wanted to paint the leaves that we tried to match with the color we made. Finally she wanted to make a shades of green painting. We have a few more experiments from this book to try still, but we have been loving it. Plus we have more books with color experiments. Stay tuned!!

We have also been loving the music on Laura Freeman's Color Wheel Cartwheel CD. It includes ways to say rainbow and the colors in many different languages and then a song about each color and finally a song about the rainbow of colors. It is very fun!!

For more on color explorations, check out:

• Color Explorations: Painting
• Book Inspired Painting
• The Colors of Us
• The Colors in Nature
• Luka's Quilt
• Dying Yarn with Fruit and Vegetables Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Outside Water Play
• Picture a Tree
• Mixing Colors
• Brown at the Zoo
• Color Experiment Pinterest Board

Color Explorations: Painting

A few things happened in my life recently to bring me to start exploring color again with Hazel. The first is I went to see the Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts with my mom. The exhibit really focused on how the colors played with one another and I thought it would be neat to take Hazel to see it. It will still be there when she is out of school, so we will be going. I found it so interesting to see the movement in some of them. Here are a few of my favorites.

Then last week I went to a paint party. Have you been to one of them yet? I had actually planned this one as a fundraiser for my church. We met at a local restaurant and had dinner first and then joined the instructor in the back room of the restaurant for our paint lesson.We chose to use an instructor from North Shore Paint Party and I picked the sunset from her gallery. She gave us only five colors of paints to make our sunset paintings--red, blue, yellow, white and black. Hazel was rather jealous that I was going to this and when I saw all the paint mixing to get the colors you want, I knew I would have to try it with her. Since I was not completely happy with the colors in my painting, I decided to try again with Hazel. I learned when you are happy with the color or pretty happy with it to stop. If you keep painting it will eventually get muddy and dark. It was amazing to see all the different versions of the painting at the party.

My Paint Party Painting

Since I had some acrylics, brushes and canvases, we tried it the next day. Since the weather was gorgeous we painted outside. I however did not have the correct acrylics and should have bought artist acrylics and not the little bottles I had. Oh, well. We had fun and love our new paintings. For supplies you need red, yellow, blue, black and white paint, three brushes (large, medium and small), a canvas (we used 16" x 20"), a cup of water, a paper plate for your palette, and paper towels. Oh, and an easel.

You give each painter a paper plate with a spot of each color on it and three brushes. They can mix colors on their plate. We started in the upper left corner with blue for the sky. Then we mixed other colors. In the class the instructions were to mix green, but I tried purple at home instead.

I made the mistake of not showing Hazel how to do the strokes to fill in the area, so hers was blotchy at first. I painted a yellow horizon line on hers so she would know where the sunset ended and we talked about the colors to use for the sunset.

When we both had finished our skies we stopped and looked at each others. At this point Hazel had a bit of a meltdown since she liked mine better than hers and she decided she would never be able to paint well. I showed her the stroke and helped her achieve more of a sky like mine.

My Sky

Then we started on the water. The water is a bit easier since it is mostly blue. I helped her a bit more than I normally would have but that was because of her mood. I also did her trees for her since she was sure she would not be able to do them.

Hazel's Sunset Painting

My Sunset Painting

I added a lighthouse to mine for Steve. He loves lighthouses. We have both paintings hanging up now. Hazel has hers in her room. She still wanted to paint so we grabbed more canvases. She really wanted to make grey paint. Our paper plates looked like this in the end. You can also use the water to help mix the colors a bit on the canvas, but this worked better with the other acrylics.

Hazel's Second Painting

I did not help at all with her second painting. While she did this I painted her a flower for her room.

We have been reading books on color as well. Our favorite has been A Color Sampler by Kathleen Westray. Hazel is really enjoying learning more about colors. She already knew her primary and secondary colors. Now we have been exploring with other things like tints and shades.

I will share more of our color explorations soon. For more experiments with color check out:

• Book Inspired Painting
• The Colors of Us
• The Colors in Nature
• Luka's Quilt
• Dying Yarn with Fruit and Vegetables Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Outside Water Play
• Picture a Tree
• Mixing Colors
• Brown at the Zoo

DIY Mickey and Minnie Mouse Ears and Free Printable Party Signs

Our next craft for the Minnie Mouse themed upcoming party is ears of course. I tried to make ears last year before we went to Disney World. However they came out floppy. I decided to go back and figure out what I did wrong. I followed the tutorial at The Suburban Mom: How to Make Mickey Minnie Mouse Ears for a Party. She provides a free downloadable pattern. I used this pattern with some adjustments. I found the space between the two circles was too big for the size headband I used. I folded my pattern a bit to shrink it. This definitely helped in getting them to stand up. I also used the foam this time. I used two pieces of sticky foam and I used my 3-inch punch to make the circles instead of her pattern (which is a 3-inch circle).

Virtual Book Club for Kids: Yoo-Hoo Ladybug! by Mem Fox

The author this month for Virtual Book Club for Kids is Mem Fox. Now Mem Fox has many wonderful books, so it was hard to choose one, but since this year we hatched ladybugs and have been focusing a bit on them, I thought Yoo-Hoo Ladybug! was the perfect one to share. Plus the bonus that Hazel LOVES reading it. Of course she also LOVES looking for the hidden ladybug on the pages.