The Creative Family

I grew up in a house where paper, crayons, and watercolor paints were always plentiful and creativity was encouraged. So, I try to encourage Little Man to be creative, and I want him to be able to appreciate other people's art. There's a great book I borrowed from the library called The Creative Family, and I was happy to see that there were quite a few suggestions in there that we already do here.

This past week Little Man had a home project for school which was to make an aquarium. You could use any materials you wanted, and the project could have been as simple as a drawing, but I took the opportunity to put the power of my craft room into the project. I took a shoebox from my closet and used acrylic paint to paint the inside and a side that had a label, and luckily the paint matched exactly. Then I painted the bottom and used a glitter varnish for the "water." The next day Little Man got involved and had a lot of fun putting in stickers and telling me where he wanted me to hot glue seashells that we had picked up at the beach the previous weekend.

We had a great time making it together and Little Man loved going up to it and pointing out all of the different things he put in it. It's almost a shame he liked it sooo much, since we didn't know that the kids would be giving their aquariums AWAY! Ugh, I think I actually wound up more upset by it than Little Man, but, it would have been nice to know.

Then on Saturday we headed to the Mint Museum of Art for Family Fun Saturday. I've wanted to visit this museum for a while, and the activity was the perfect reason for us to go this weekend. This weekend the activity was to paint circles, inspired by Wassily Kandinsky, a famous abstract artist. His work is currently visiting the museum, and the activity was a lot of fun for all three of us as we traced circular household items to make circles we could then paint in.

After setting our paintings on the drying rack, we went to explore the museum. We pointed out things to Little Man, and had him keep an eye out for the circle painting (the Kandinsky). We enjoyed the temporary exhibit: Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art, and we were able to see Picasso, and Monet, and Andy Warhol's Cowboys and Indians Exhibit. There was a coloring table in the Latin American section where children could design and color a tunic and Little Man enjoyed the pit stop. I also think that stop helped keep his interest for the rest of the visit, and, while we kept it short, he behaved well and Hubby and I enjoyed the art.

Later that day, after Wal-Mart shopping for the beach, we had more art time at home. It was a fun rainy day filled with art!

Can you tell we love foam stickers in our house? (And yes, I did the grass and mud on the farm picture...but Little Man did everything else!)

So, next post I'll show you something I just finished up!

Oh, and I'm thinking of getting rid of Crafty my sidebar pet, thoughts? (Be nice everyone)