Painting Eco-pumpkins at WBCL

This is the first year the library has not had real pumpkins and the paper bag Eco-pumpkins were a hit.  Thanks especially to Katherine Sands, Angel Washington, Mary and Joe Petronis, and Scott Smith for coming out and helping me put this event on for the community. 

Making Monster boxes @WBCL

Monster boxes

This is one of the most fun and versatile of the recycled projects we have done lately. Kleenex boxes are easy to come by and sturdy so are easy for everyone to work with. The idea of a not very scary monster works well too. This project uses a large kleenex box (square ones would work too), styrofoam egg carton cups, construction paper, glue, and chenille stems. They covered the boxes, cut out sharp teeth and added eyes and tongues. We made the tongues curl by wrapping the paper on a pencil. Some got very "far out" on the antennae and eye locations. The younger kids and their parents are really getting into it sometimes. Lots of glue on fingers this week. Next week spiders.

Painting sunflower door hangers

It was time to do a bit of painting and this let everyone produce a great door hanger. It is rare that I lead the group in step by step painting as they are pretty artistic and I like to let them be as creative as possible. But I thought it might be fun to do the sunflower as a group then add a few details as they finished them.  I drew the sunflowers and ran the pattern on the copier so they could focus on the painting. we have had some really TINY sunflowers in the past. They got to learn how to cut out a circle without breaking the edge (most of them did) and how to get a 2 colored center using a Q-tip. 

The art classes are designed for around age 8 but younger kids do well with parents and older kids expand most projects. 

A buggy bug bottle @WBCL

After the film canister projects the next item in the basket to create a project using them was medication bottles. Seems we get a lot of them and they were just the right size for a special bug project. Not just any old bug catching box these, but we turned the bottles into bugs that could hide a bug or two with a twist of the lid. 
I provided a fairly good sized bottle with the tops that turn over so they are easily removed by kids. They then decorated the tops with big pom poms and added fun foam or construction paper wings, chenille stems for antennae and legs or other appendages and of course, eyes--self stick or wiggly. Just the thing to take to the park and catch a few bugs.

Making floppy hats for Diez y Seis celebrations @WBCL

Diez y Seis hats

 This was a great project and a nice way to learn a little history too. We talked about Mexican independence day and the 202nd anniversary then launched into the project.
All it takes is a 24" x 24" piece of wrapping paper, a plastic bowl, some tape, some yarn and a tissue papper flower-which we also made. It was way too hard to form the hats on the kids' heads so a bowl is the perfect form. Some of them actually incorporated the bowl permanently into the hat. The paper is scrunched over the bowl to create a crown for the hat and taped to keep the tucks in place. We then added yarn to serve as the hatband and taped it in place. Some at this point sewed the bowl to the hat with the yarn. Last we made tissue flowers and added those. Great fashion show.

bottle cap bugs @ WBCL

This is truly a recycled art project! The. body of the bug is a colored plastic bottle top and the wings are cut from gallon milk jugs and colored. Paint did not stick reliably to all the lids but crayon did and did well on the wings too so we used plain old fashioned crayon colors. We had some little odds and ends of chenille stems left from other projects which we cut into antenna and used small google eyes to complete the bug. 
Some of the bottle tops were hinged and resulted in movable bees. Interestingly the bugs flew threw the library for about 15 minutes before settling down and going home with their creators.