Create to the Music

This exercise is very freeing.
1) Have a mix of music ready.
2) Have a variety of art materials such as water colors, chalk, oil pastels, etc.
3) Place in front of you a large sheet of paper.
4) Turn on the music, grab a drawing utensil, close your eyes, and begin to create on the paper how you feel the music would look like in colors.
5) When the song changes, grab a different drawing material and start again on the same piece of paper or a different one.

Water Color Sun Catchers

These are coffee filters!
1. Water colors
2. Unused coffee filters
3. Paint your coffee filters with the water colors.
4. Let the filters dry.
5. Clothes pin
6. Take the dried painted coffee filter and start pulling it into the clothes pin until you get a shape that looks like butterfly wings.
7. Take a string and tie it around the body of the clothes pin so you can hang your sun catcher in the window.
8. Hang in a sunny window.

Mini Me's

Mini Dolls is fun at all ages.
1) You will need clothes pins.  Try to pick out the ones that resemble a human form.
2) Use pipe-cleaners for the arms.  Below is an example on how to wrap the pipe-cleaners to make them look like arms.
3) Use fabric swatches for the clothes.
4) For the face I just drew it on with markers.
5) Use yarn for the hair.
6) Create your Mini Me!

Name That Herb!

This is a fun exercise to do!  It's simple and fun.  Let's wake up the Olfaction!

1) Have a variety of fresh herbs.

2) Place a leaf of one herb in the person's hand.

3) Have them smell and guess what herb it is.

4) Do this with all the herbs you have.

That's it! 

Sand Vessels

I find this project to be very meditative.
1. You will need an empty glass vessel with a lid.
2. For the sand you have two choices:
A. You can buy sand that already has color in it.
B. You can make your own colored sand by buying white sand (if you live by a beach or sand
dune you can collect free sand) and use colored chalk to color the sand.
           1. On a large sheet of paper poor a small mound of the white sand on the paper.
           2. Then take one color of chalk and begin rubbing the sand with the chalk.  Make sure you are holding the chalk horizontally to cover more of the sand. Keep rubbing the chalk into the sand until all the sand is colored.
3. Take one color of sand (ex. red sand) and poor some into the glass vessel.  It's always best to poor about 1/2 inch because the more layers the better.  But it is your jar so poor as much as you like.
4. If you are making your own colored sand repeat step (B) to make your next color.  Take a second color and poor in another layer of colored sand into the jar.  Keep repeating this process until your jar is full with different layers of colored sand.
5. Get a piece of thin gauged wire, such as, a wire coat hanger.  Make sure the piece of wire is the length of the vessel, this way you will be able to reach the bottom.
6. With the wire piece poke the inside sides of the glass vessel to begin making the design.  Make sure you slide the wire down the sides of the glass as best you can to create a design.  Keep doing this around the entire jar until you are satisfied with the sand design you achieved.
7. Once you have finished poking the sand put the lid on the glass vessel.  If you have any space between the sand and the lid make sure you fill it with more sand.  There should be no air between the lid and the sand, we want it as tight as possible.  This way if the jar ever fell the sand won't get all mixed up.

Marble Splatters

 Great for all ages

1. Get a shallow box, like the top and bottom of a shoe box.  2. *Place a blank piece of paper on the bottom of the box.

3. Place globs of your favorite color of paint onto the paper in the box.

4. Drop two marbles in the box and begin tilting the box back and forth to create a painting using the marbles.

* We used a blank envelope and card stock to create matching cards and envelopes.

Collage Scenery

Great for all ages.
Prep by cutting out images of people from magazines.  Make sure you have an abundant amount from various cultural ethnicities.
1. Pick an image from the pre-cut pile that stands out to you the most.
2. Paste down the image on to a sheet of paper.
3. Create a landscape for the image you picked.