Insects-bugs, butterflies, bees Day 1 @ WB MUD

Today started off raining but that did not phase our artists. We worked on a lot of different kinds of bugs--insects and arachnids--drawing them, gluing them, painting them and examining them. I was lucky over the last week to find a lot of different bugs to put into containers for camp. I know the kids get to look at pictures at school but there is something super fun about looking at real ones. Each camper was given a magnifying glass to use in examining the bugs--butterflies, moths, a moth chrysalis, a beetle, a pair of stink bugs, and a few clay bugs I made up yesterday. We also have a great supply of books from the library to look at and use for reference.
We spent time drawing several of the bugs--trying to make them realistic as possible. The littler campers did fingerprint bugs too. All of them made bug jars from spice jars and pompoms. we will use them this week to store the bugs we catch. We also fashioned bugs from plastic eggs and glitter foam sheets. Kids do like glitter, so much that the dragonflies got a good coat of glitter paint to customize them. Only 2 more days to go.

3D butterflies and bees mixed media page @WBCL

I did a  sample of this page for an online class and thought the kids and parents would have fun with it. I ran off pages made from stamped butterflies and bees that they could coulor or use as is and showed them how to layer them onto the page. Great use for the donated rainbow paper. I also found some foamy stickers to fill in the extra spaces and give the project even more dimension. 

Incredible Insects art mini-camp JR

We started the week off reading books on bugs then making our own books. The kids learned how to keep the books together and add pages. We decorated them liberally on the cover then went inside to decorate them more. we next learned how to made fingerprint bugs which were a lot of fun. Our next project at right was creating a variety of bug--a fat but very cute bug from an egg, a dragonfly from a clothespin and a bottle cap butterfly. Great creations one and all.

 Our next focus was on butterflies so we started by painting them with metallic tempera paints then created glitzy butterfly masks to wear. Before we went out on our bug hunt we decorated our bug collectors making them into bugs with big fluffy heads.

We grabbed our special magnifying glasses and went hunting for bugs in the yard. The glasses include a set of tweezers but most of the kids just scooped the rolly pollies and snail shells up in their fingers. We also found ants and spiders out there.
The kids were excited to be able to take the magnifying glasses home. Great find at Dollar Tree.

Our last day we got into the clay to create a bug house or bee hive for the bees from salt clay over a small flower pot. The Jr. Councellors had stamped out spiders in clay the night before so the campers could paint them. We used tempera cakes to paint them and the made our spiderwebs from construction paper strips and donated embroidery hoops. Turned out really good and most got a bead or two for the bugs that got caught. Lastly we closed with ants on a log but used graham cracker strips instead of celery to put the peanut butter and raisins on top. Must have been good as none were left.

Butterflies & paper mache at 3D art camp day 1

We started this week off with 2 butterfly projects that really turned out well. We had a set of foam butterflies in a kit, a little hard to assemble but in the end a pretty good project. The 2 part butterflies gave us a bit more room to get creative. Students were encouraged to use the books on butterflies as a resource and create the butterflies by drawing, coloring and/or collaging them. Lots of great projects!

Our second project was to make a paper mache bowl from a berry box. This is by far the messiest mache I have ever worked with. We colored it in the mix and had them pat it onto the boxes so they could dry to be decorated on Friday. Lots of ewe..yuck--was heard.


The last project was one of optics using domed glass beads and stickers to examine which color and size magnifies more and if using a spacer alters the image more. They also got to have an old ribbon marble to examine.