Annual ornament making at WBCL

Sparkle everywhere,  tables full of items to paint all grouped together so that everyone could use their imagination and create ornaments. There is a great appeal to making your own ornaments instead of picking out the stuff at the store. 

Every year families flock to the library to participate in this event. Having plentiful volunteers also helps during the event. 
This year was no different. There were small sleds and sleighs, CDs made into wonderful's sparkling hanging ornaments. Colorful plastic balls painted with a variety of items from snowmen to abstracts. And always glitter. There were snowmen and santas and candy canes. There were bears.  there were angels of every type that became decorated exactly the way that each person wanted them to be. 
No one went home with less than five ornaments. This was so much fun!

Lights are the symbols of winter celebrations @WBCL

Have families draw and then create their art is always great. searching symbols of winter I found that all of them included lights or candles. I found some great information on Wikipedia on this one.

I did a sketch in advance of the class of four different symbols for the kids to follow. We did a menorah, a candelabra for Kwanza, an advent wreath , and the luminary bag. We talked about the number of candles and the colors of candles. We also drew a single candle with a flame. The kids did a great job.

Snowman and hot cocoa gift bag @ WBCL

We try to paint at least once a month and this pattern was too cute to pass up. I printed it out on paper then had the kids and their parents paint them. We used crayons for a wax resist on them. They turned out great. We then glued them to white paper bags to make our gift bags. 

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.