artnuts.berlin – Art classes in Berlin

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Finally!!

Still life of an old phone and a camera

These works are of a Grade 1. I know!!!

Oskar Schlemmer triadic ballet

This was a beatiful project kids loved for it strangness and me for its avant-garde. Our unit in Grade 2 is for the kids to get to know and make a simple machine. We incorporated pulleys into these little theaters. Kids watched videos of triadic ballet, observed the costumes, shapes and colours. They really were…

We made Hundertwasser towers at art in our recycling unit. Children loved it. The rule is, do not go too high because as a teacher you will struggle. 4-5 cups and no more!

Around the world

Grade 1 spoke abput celebrations around the world. We used watercolours and aquarel paper.

There was an old lady

After reading the book which really is cute and funny and deserves every attention, we had fun drawing the old lady and all she stuffed into her belly.

Go Berlin

Atak, still life, comic books, punk subculture, anarchism, east Berlin … so much to talk about. And the works developed under his impressions turned out beautifully.

Block prining

It is not the first time I am posting block printing but the results are always too special and unique for me to easily avoid another post. Therefore I will not talk and let photos speak for themselves.

Drawing hands making hands

Before starting to work on our clay relief project, a little challenging task of studying and drawing the hands.

Children’s rights

Talking about children’s rights in a technique of a collage caused a need to talk about nudity in art since we are using many art magazines that are so cracking funny. Collages turned out so meaningful as well.

Monotype

This is an easy printing technique to use in a classroom. Rolling the paint on a plastic foil, placing it paint down on a printing paper and drawing with a sharp item on the back side of the foil, students will get one time results.

Joan Miró

In our PYP Unit “Role models” Grade 2 discussed Joan Miró. We broke his colours down to basics, black and white and his shapes to little potatos that are sometimes overlapping opening possibilities for the third shape and a new colour. We added lots of soft lines.

Poetry works

While creating our poetry work for the March Madness call, we looked into the work of artist Tom Phillips, some pointillist painters and the movement itself. In addition we are working on a poem build out of words written in the page of a book so it is coincidental sort of writing. It is quite…

In our history PYP Unit students learned about Berlin wall. In art, our focus was a bit broader and we spoke about divisions and separations in general. We printed our linocuts in negative and positive.

Still life in linocut technique

I love still lifes so much. We just had to try it. Surely beautiful and raw results. I’d perhaps add one or two colours next time. And some text.

Pop art stencil printing

In our pyp unit “market places”, we are focusing on pop art and mass production. We printed with stencils. It was so busy I did not manage to get any photos done in the end but we were happy with the results.

stop-motion – greek mythology until we drop

We are on it again. Every year same same, every year a little different. And I still never know who is who in this mythological world.

topography sculptures

Another project that is pretty much on repeat because it’s so amazing. Do read about it bellow in another post if interested.

Clay animal figures

We had an amazingly loving birthday celebration of a 9 years old girl. Hip hip hurray!

Berlin Berlin

Berlin in our hearts!

Relief sculptures in sgraffito technique

Here are some slap sculptures of moths and butterflies in make. I found this project on the wonderful blog of https://www.smallhandsbigart.com/. Unfortunately we had no time to do sgraffito because there’s almost a month of holidays ahead of us so we had to decide between the paint or the pattern. And since the reliefs had…

While creating our poetry work for the March Madness call, we looked into the work of artist Tom Phillips, some pointillist painters and the movement itself. In addition students worked on a poem build out of words written on the page of a book so it is coincidental sort of writing. It was quite an…

Not the first time I am posting this sort of project but every time it is unique and I am impressed by the work. You can read about it in some posts bellow.

Landscapes

This sort of painting is quite an easy straightforward task as it comes with a reference. It was a fun project and kids were deeply into it.

Sustainable transportation and Marina Strocchi

In the PYP Unit we touched the topic of sustainability. Our key figure was Marina Strocchi, an Australian painter who uses divisions and patters in her paintings talking about land, harvest, ethnography, the coulours of dry land, red land, of home. I love her works to bits! So the plan was to get inspired by…

Here we go again with beautiful printing. Again I love the printing plates more than the results. However this was fun as it always is. We’ve made the printing plates out of various materials to leave various traces. We added all the colours at the same time. Because we don’t like to complicate.

Colour wheel in Grade 1

Connecting to our PYP Unit ‘Cycles in nature’ we took a pick into the life of colours on our beautiful classroom poster of a colour wheel designed by Johannes Itten. This was Grade 1 and children are small so to take off we simply did some skatches of winter and summer, connecting the colours to…

We started with drawing of a head of a chosen animal. What are the characteristics, what shape and where should be the ears, what are the colours… The starting point was a ball. To release all the air out of clay (very important!) one should have some throwing fun. Simply throw the clay few times…

Through our PYP unit the Grade 2 students researched animals in their habitats. We added to our learning by discovering 3D art in connection to pedestal. Clay is a complete winner with the kids. They feel very comfortable working with it. In my classes I never had a single child that would not like it….

Another aquarell project with a bit older children. I do love still lifes. I also think I might like our still life projects the most. I love how you start with something and during weeks of painting we end up with completely something else on the tables. Coulour is different, shape has changed, texture had…

We’ve made some meters long shadow impressions of the theater plays Rapunzel and Nutcracker kids saw that week. Sure I want my hair like this!

Masks

Masks are always fun! Papier-mache too (only not how it’s spelled so I am giving myself freedom of not caring)! For the shape we simply used ballons. Sure the shape isn’t good to wear the masks but we wanted them on the walls anyway. Nice project it was.

Graffiti in the classroom

Children were very excited about this project, of course! They are Grade 4 and they feel close to and familiar with street art. Unfortunately the downside for them was there was no spraying (not for me though). We did this project in our history unit. We spoke about Berlin wall and street art in general…

In Grade 1 we learned how to make a printing template and we printed some lovely grazing horses.

Me pancake

Grade 1 had lots of fun trying out rolling the clay, cutting and gluing ears, noses, mouth, ears, eyes and hair. We learned funny vocabulary like Schlika and Kiln. We painted it, fired it and voila!

Clay self-portraits in grade 4

This was a lovely clay project that brought along lots of learning and joy. All our sculptures were hollowed, painted and fired and not a single one broke. Well done!

Spring is time for still lifes

We researched vitamins and minerals in connection to our unit of inquiry ‘healthy choices’. In the end we decided not to take it too serious and just make a bit of veggie jokes where a tomato driven by a car becomes a ketchup and a banana can and will not return because it is after…

In connection to our Unit of inquiry ‘Market places’ we learned about Pop Art. We painted mass produced candies. And if you are by any chance coming from Yugoslavia you will know more than one.

Thermal painting

In connection to our Unit of inquiry, Sharing the planet with energy at our goal, we spoke about energy of our bodies. We researched how the cool and warm parts of our bodies transfer it’s heath in colours on a thermal photography. Then we painted our heath and our coolness. You can guess which colours…

We learned how to paint using the direction of the brush and the way we apply the paints. This will bring dimension to our paintings, the real feeling of the weather we want to present, breeze on the grass, summer in the air… At the same time we were mixing all of our colours out…

Grade 1 spoke about celebrations and customs around the world: New Years Eve, Christmas, 1st of May, Hanukkah, Women’s day, Diwali, Carnival, Day of the dead, Halloween, St.Lucia. We spoke about gathering of people and families and why these days are so important. Beautiful aquarel works are presenting the excitement.

Greek mythology in Stop-motion

After a bit of work we are proud to show our stop-motion movies! Our topic was Greek mythology so don’t get scared – we are not violent people! – we are only presenting the stories. Our movies are a product of collaboration within art and music class. If you happen to have a bag of…

After building a city focused on rhythm and balance in art, reaching them with composition, form, size and colour, we now researched the world of mixing colours using a collage technique. Using cardboard shapes this becomes very easy and playful. Everything is open to experiment. Everything can be undone and redone. Slight change of a direction…

Kids made portrait of a school friend seating across. This time we looked at work of Amedeo Modigliani. Since Amadeo painted only eyes of people he knew and made eyes of unknown people empty looking, we are now able to chose one or the other for our paintings. Long faced we go towards new creations.

Dots here dots there dots everywhere

Our role model in Grade 2 was also Yayoi Kusama who turned her illness into art. We had fun learning about 3-D and papier-mache technique. And how to dry 3 giant prosciuttos.

Balance and rhythm in art

We learned about balance and rhythm in art. We build a city, our main goal focused on rhythm and balance which we researched with shapes, colours, size and composition. We asked ourselves questions as, what would happen if you change the direction or composition of one of the shapes? It’s colour? Size? Also. If shapes…

Grade 2 created self-portraits under the spell of Pablo Picasso. It was in our PYP connection to our unit about the role models.

Inside the fruits

While the little rabbit has tripped in their apple home and the mother is taking care of the bruises , the father comes home from work (the constellation) and the horse is pooing all over the yard. Party time!

Lino printing

We were working hard to understand the process of printing by making lino prints using four colours. It’s a lot of work and it lasts forever but the children are so captivated in this process and development it is worth every moment, every struggle, every obstacle.

Mandalas

Through these beautiful mandalas we explored shapes, symmetry and pattern.

Material printing, monotipie

We tried some mono-printing. Our theme were animals in their natural habitats. This is a really easy technique with beautiful results of both, the print and the template.

Topographic sculptures

Convexity and concavity. Sculpture and relief. Topography and amphitheatry. Am I warm? Am I cool? Am I big? Am I small? Am I winter? Am I summer?

Graphic identity

Our PYP unit in Grade 3 was about markets and services. We spoke about fair trade and made graphic identity: logos, stamps and posters, for imaginary fair trade services children had chosen.

Still lifes now again and forever

Our still lifes were made with observational drawing of real fruits and vegetables. Children observed the surface and the colour, the shape and the size and tried to capture it in our drawings. Paintings are made with aquarell paints on aquarell paper. In addition we used inks and wooden sticks to add the outlining and…

We love books. All kind of books; comics, art books, history books, books about nature and birds, flowers and insects, fantasy books… So we are very pro world book day-ers! We celebrated it by making an illustration inspired by a book that is dear to us. What else! We hung our works on the walls…

We discussed Mail Art and Fluxus (there are many explanations to the meaning of the name but of course we loved the one connected to the toilet the most!!) across the Grade 4. I always wanted to do this with kids but it’s a bit complicated since you need people to send mail to. And…

Printing is always amazing. So many Oh-s and Wow-s produced during a class. Also some Oh no-s, sure. Kids made beautiful prints of The last supper. We couldn’t decide which were better, the actual prints or the matrix.

Frida Kahlo visited C104

There was a lot of self portraying in our classroom lately. These amazing works are of Grade 2 students. They were insired by Frida Kahlo. A lot of privacy and backrounding.

Folk Art, monkeys and musquitos

Believe it or not, this is Grade 1 working on Folk Art and German flowers with intense symmetry. I can’t get enough of them. These children are 6. I find them stunning!

The girl and the song, Stop-Motion animation

Here it is!! Our Stop-Motion! We have never been this cool! Be patient please. First part is slow. We were all very shy, not sure about what we can actually do. But it gets really good. This project means a lot to us. First I thought how it is strange, this 70′ story from a…

We are still working hard on this… Painful joints, broken backs, numb legs, shaky fingers, stiff necks, … but if someone already made a dog that was not supposed to be in the story, we will move it across the room, lay it down and shake all the fleas out of its bum with its…

From 2-D we logically went into 3-D. I connected our lesson with the drama teacher who was teaching children about the monologues. This was a long project because of many steps: building the bust, pulling over the skin, drying this out, adding the features and the hair, drying it out, painting, drying, painting some more,…

We used a kiss print technique for this. Very easy and lots of fun and messy moments. We’ve already made beautiful kiss prints in our sketch books to start ourselves properly. We spoke about facial proportions and how to draw a face. What shape has an eye? Where does a nose start and end? Why…

This project is just brilliant. In takes a lot of explaining but when children understand what it is about it becomes very playful in some sweet arithmetical way. Yea I did say this! A wolf eats seven little goats. Wolf is a black dot and little goats are orange triangles. So we put seven little orange…

Folk Art

I love anything to do with Folk Art. Music, hand work, dialects… all of it. It’s the culture, old customs, stories told by warm fire while outside the snow is covering the world. It talks about people, their modest way of life, hopes, love, the weather, harvest. It reminds me of my grand mother, old…

This project was connected to our school’s unit of inquiry on energy and sustainability. We collected old plastic bottles and as many old plants as it was possible to get. Some were brought in new by kids. Students designed the hanging gardens out of three to five bottles alone in groups. Some were really inventive…

Students were learning about natural geological events. At about same time I came across this amazing project on Small hands big art, website, that must be helpful and inspiring to anyone working in our field. Observing the geodes we studied their shape, structure, colour, crystals. At first we paid attention to the shape, we drew…

I love moments when I don’t prepare, being simply forced to improvise. I mean I do know when I can afford this and it’s not often. And then it somehow almost always happens that the materials are just there. Things that were laying around forever are turning out to be more perfect than one could…

At music students made their own music pieces. They were doing them collaboratively so we kept the same groups at art. We talked about John Cage and his work in music and visual art. Each student in a group got a piece of transparent tracing paper and worked on it in various media while listening…

Children were learning about simple machines in their main subjects. To strenghten the knowledge gained by connecting it in as many areas as possible we spoke about Rube Goldberg and possibilities in art. We’ve decided for pulleys and mini collaged theaters. Curtains to be pulled apart by a string would be a great addition but although…

Valiant pepper. Vibrant banana. Valuable broccoli. Virile aubergine. Vehement pomegranate. Venturesome onion. Vast sweet potato. Venust apple. Veteran carrot. Vigorous beetroot. Viable cucumber. Vigilant turnip. Vaulting fennel. Vulnerary ginger. Very vital visitants on a venture of observational drawing with incorporation of text. What a vigour, what a vim!

This is not a goodbye!

Dear friends, Holidays have taken place, Christmas is here and New Year is not far. I would like to wish you all peaceful family times and a fabulous 2020 with as little stress as possible. I would also like to share some news. I lately got a full time art teaching position which will take…

This came out so pretty it’s hard not to be a little proud to be the one who led it through. A very uncomplicated subject, easy to explain, understand and assemble. It’s all about shapes and colours. We spoked a bit about Bauhaus and looked at their work, we also looked at some videos of…

A lot of cutting this was. The basic idea was for the children to comprehend and accomplish understandment of third dimension and size diversity. I personally find third dimension hard to explain. These children are between 5 and 6 years old. We started with the smallest cloud making it bigger and bigger. Children glued cardboard…

Is there something at all left to say? Could these be any better? I mean except my lame photography skills and the fact that I have to take a better camera in my hands since it is winter and not much light here anymore. I found this book in one of the art projects on…

Dragons. The mythological creatures. The shivers of imagination, paintings, folk sculptures and literature. Dragons. Who doesn’t like them! The class was full of joy and enthusiasm and the rewards left children speechless. They were so proud of their work and it was so great to see them seeing the work they almost forgot about (it…

At school the children are learning about how to use natural resources to make art. In this group the room teacher decided to teach children about spiders and their natural environment so she already had the project prepared. Spiders were supposed to be made out of paper but they will be building the rest of…

My midis were left to themselves and they behaved very responsible. I am ever so proud of them!

Paul Klee and his forms

These children are learning about geometric shapes at the moment so I thought this could be a good starting point in art. “Castle and sun”, the beautiful Paul Klee. The lone sun shines in the ingeniously designed sky created by strong lines and structure while various shades of colour and rectangular sizes add depth to the…

A fantastic hour with minis. Houses, trees and the weather. They loved it!

Halloween workshkop

Time for shivers, scares, and thrills, for pumpkin grins in windowsills, for black cats in the full moon’s glow, and a happy Halloween HELLO! Although I’m not at all a fan of celebrations that don’t belong to our culture and prefer to live them in the country of it’s origin, there seem to be things in…

This was fun. A bunch of us walking to the playground to fill up the empty bottles with sand. There is a little road dividing the atelier from the playground and I had to stand in the middle of it for all of the kiddos to pass safely to the other side while the cars…

So if you are careful you might notice on the last photo (I did my best to cut it out elsewhere) we have a new wall at school. Well I don’t really like it! It’s red and white and red and white and with this a bit of this and a bit of that it simply…

Oh dear! Should I remember? We did this workshop quite a while ago and honestly, the result is cute but THIS was a mess. I don’t think I ever had a workshop that wouldn’t somehow work but this……………. I don’t want to put anyone off this job so just sayin’: DO try out the balloons…

This project was connected to the school unit of self exploring. It was an action painting. I chose five different pieces of classical music for children to listen to while their eyes were closed. Then at some point while the piece was still running they were asked to start painting by simply moving their hands…

Kids love printing. Printing and clay. If they won’t know the project ahead they will shout PRINTING!! or CLAY!! So we did some block printing of folk birds and horses!! Inspiration was a Marimekko designer Sanna Annukka. No really, more than her was Smallhandsbigart, where I saw lovely bird prints of children from another side of the planet.

Print me a horse

This was a lovely easy going project. These girls all love horses, of course, they have seen them many times and they therefor had no problem of drawing one. How cute and self confident are these? I just love them. Instructions are, I think, well captured on the photos. Draw, cut out, add materials, a…

This was a 4 hours workshop of very fine results. I really underestimated the children on this one! I thought it will be so hard I even made a back up plan of making comics if this might not work. We watched some you tube videos together and in not even 5 minutes had these…

What a very fine project this was! We spoke about Patrick Heron and his amazing work. Children have cut some forms out of pre painted paper (Matisse style) and glued them on their paper. This is just to make the further process easier. Next step was cold colours. They got only primary colours, black and white and…

This project was made with children aged 3 and 4. I do not have any photos of the process alone but it was pretty straight forward. The theme at the class was communication about which children spoke already on few occasions with their class teachers. I prepared a table full of wooden blocks of all…

Children were asked to bring their old little items, toys, toothbrushes, things that were once used and have passed their time. Time to recycle! I printed out some photos of Louise Nevelson and her work and then we spoke about her, about items she collected and found on the streets and amazing works she did…

Great project with such amazing subject by smallhandsbigart. I mean here are hooorseeees and pandas and cats! Children loved it and they loved to learn proportions and try themselves out in realistic portrait drawing. They really had so much fun doing these it is certainly not the last time. But I bet it will be hard…

Minis were enjoying wood. They were making all sorts of animals. A lovely relaxed open creative play.

Folk art at the spring Camp, Arpilleras-Berlilleras

Our two days long camp was inspired by folk art. We were making our own arpilleras, that are actually connected to our life not the one in Chile, so maybe they should be berlilleras. I came across this lovely project at smallhandsbigart and I am immensely grateful for this site loves to share and give opportunity…

Lovely “black paper-chalk” (for midis) and “black paper-gouache” (for maxis) project. These are working so well together that I believe they might just be my favourite painting materials. So we spoke about Modigliani, quite a sad story too, actually one of those rare ones that you really can’t give to children, not in full, no…

Another project for our school’s unit. Self-portraits with beautiful backgrounds. Children were instructed to use all sorts of lines. I find this project so positive and beautiful. It was suggested by the class teachers which also did the photography, the little interviews and writing with the children. I only did the art bit, quite easy…

I found a similar project somewhere on internet, I think it was by another workshop genius artbar, which loves cardboard, but I can’t find it any more. This project is connected to our school unit and was done by preschool children. This are their self-portraits and many do look alike.

Stone bugs

A little stone project for little artists. Bugs and their large families were hatched on these trays. Unfortunatelly I had no time for a camera and took these few photos with my phone. Better than nothing.

Mother’s day with Maxis

And here I present the third and oldest group being busy with mother’s day presents. Children were making beautiful mobiles. Leaves and feathers made of clay hanged on beautiful branches shaped and formed by unflagging three: see, salt and sun! They came all the way from Cantabria in our suitcases instead of shoes and other useless…

The Midi’s were fully busy with their Mother’s day preparations too. They’ve made self portraits. We used a special paper (kiss print) and some chocolate boxes for frames. A really sweet little gifts these were!

Mother’s day celebrated with Minis

That special day when kids get probably more excited than mothers! I have to say it is the most wonderful to be the one taking part of it and lead them through. Mother’s day was this year very big at out studio and all the ages were making different project. This one was done by…

Another air drying clay project. Children at school took a letter C on that very day so we decided to grow cactus’. Why not!

Air drying clay and houses

A lovely project for an open play with the little ones. Houses are a big inspiration at this age so no problems around there. A lot of trying out, adding and removing, playing around with items that are leaving traces when pressed on clay. Nice working hour.

greek mythological monsters

I did same kind of workshop with the preschool children before (scroll down if interested). It was not the easiest workshop, it takes time, patience and involves a lot of thinking but I think it is a very important subject and kids adore it. Great stories filled with power, imagination, super powers and mystery. This…

We spoke about Roy and Andy, POP art and Easter. Very funny I know but we like to laugh!

Easter eggs and garlands with the minis

This was a mix of a bit of everything workshop that lasted really long time. We produced all sorts of eggs and eggs and eggs.

Sweet and less sweet little bacterias

This workshop was held at school with 3 year old children regarding the school unit and also at my private studio with 3-6 years old children. It was very sweet. We spoke about bacterias, dirty hands and all those coughing methods. We read through a funny book of funny harry little guys with sharp teeth…

This project was fun but a lot of work. It might not look like it but every single child would agree. The cutting was the hardest. I wish we had time to make some sort of head rings behind the wigs so they would stand on heads by itself but it was more than enough work…

Years later we landed back at fairies. Well what can you do, they are too cute! They offer such variety of imagination. They are forest creatures. They sleep in most beautiful, soft, green moos. Nuts all around them, they have hats made out of various forest fruits and live surrounded by dog roses. We love…

Still life with beautiful vegetables. We enjoyed all the curves, shadows, bumps, holes, lines. Some vegetables are really like planets. Such surface. It was a fantastic workshop.

Robotic worlds

Children themselves were bagging for this project. Kids firstly drew their robots like we usually do, a little study. Then they talked about them pretty intensely, how do they look, what can they do, they also gave them names of course. There was a lot of talking about lasers, eyes lasers, finger lasers, no idea,…

We love Piggy and elephant books at our mini classes. We read There is a bird on your head. So what else can you do than draw birds on each other’s heads? I choose birds because these are pretty small children and drawing is still quite a big deal and a challenge. Birds are fairly easy….

We talked about a living artist. Finally! Gustavo Peñalver Vico. There are at least two buildings with his art on Berlin’s skyscrapers. When I saw them I thought it’s such a simple and clear drawing with all of those divided forms and colours. Kids would love it! Each child got quite a thick piece of wood with attached…

This was an amazing project with a great story behind. I would love it to be mine but it wasn’t. I fully found it on Small hands big art, my favourite of all creative pages. Children engineered flying objects. First they drew a sketch and a whole planning. They were offered certain materials and a photo…

I found this chalk pastel project somewhere on internet. It was great to use the pastels and the project was just lovely. The children couldn’t wait to come as far as to smear the pastels and they did it with such joy when they were finally and officaly allowed to. I will definitely be coming back to…

This was such a fun project, an open art play. Children were very busy and they wouldn’t stop really. So much concentration and patience. Great work!

Inside my head

As an upgrade to the previous project, Inside and outside of the houses, we talked about ourselves and our inner self. How do we look and what is happening in our minds, what are our favourite things, what do we like to do most, what we don’t like doing, maybe our favourable memory. Our inspiration…

I have a book that I find pretty amazing. It’s called Woran denkst du?. I wished to do a project on the subject but since it’s quite abstract I decided to start with a similar project only instead of drawing our mind we drew houses. Houses are easy. We all have one, live in one, have…

This was such a cool project. I had an excuse to buy beautiful big old jars we used for drawing. Children needed to observe the form, jar’s opening and jar’s bottom. When the form was in place we spoke about the most valuable memory the children could think of. This project was an inspiration from…

This was a very nice activitiy inspired by Small Hands Big Art’s amazing blog. I love the black paper we used and the credit cards are extra fun. Special usage of cards as brushes is reall enjoyment to play around. How and where to press on the card, which direction to pull it into, movements…

As the year draws to an end I feel deeply grateful to all the parents for the trust, enthusiasm and support for Artnuts over the years. Artnuts wouldn’t be what it is today without you and your wonderful children!As a little thank you we had a few lovely Christmas Family Workshops at the studio. Together we made seasonal…

These beautiful rainbow crowns turned out really royal. Princes and princesses of far countries, scent of myrth, secret of buried treasures in vast lands of dunes, camels, tanzanit blue skies, golden orange abandoned cities dancing in the heath and rhythm of sintir. Just imagine!

Christmas wreaths

This was the loveliest activity ever. Four hours of sitting, listening to music and working. And not a single little artist wanted to get up until it was time for hot glue station (me in charge – big burn to show off!). Well we did force the children to have a break and everything that goes…

It was still nicer and warmer outside when we did this workshop. Beautiful autumn offers so many opportunities to use lovely natural materials. A little walk outside that do us all good and a bit of exploration which we all have in our veins. First we read a sweet book The little gardener then children were…

I had no idea children will enjoy this activity so much. It is a very easy one to understand but since everything is so small and rounded (and quickly also very sticky) it is not that easy to make. They did love it though and they would probably make just as many more dolls as…

We spoke about Mark Rothko a little bit but more than that the children were into mixing colours and trying how they match together and what sort of impression do the combinations provoke. Is it OOO, is it AAA, is it UAAA or YOOHOOO or maybe a MMMMMM… and what do all those interjections mean….

We read a book Mog’s Christmas and we’ve made some Christmas decorations. Children were using natural materials, wire, beads and buttons. They created some lovely mobiles.

Still Life of an old Camera and a coffee grinder

Two hours of observational drawing. Observed were the old cameras and old coffee grinder. It was quite a lot of fun. The group was very excited and tried all sorts of drawing: drawing with mouth, with left hand for right handed and opposite, drawing without looking, drawing in one line and even drawing with the…

Some more printing moments captured in this post. Styrofoam prints this time. Printing is fun!!

Mini Puppets

This was such a sweet little project. We read an African book in which a friendship between various animals is seriously challenged. The variation of the animals helped children decide between three different animals they should blend into one. The cocktail was delicious!

Pipe cleaners and beads

I find pipe cleaners and plastic pony beads somehow off-putting. I could include some other stuff here like googly eyes, school markers or colour-ins for example. I think with me anything to do with easy crafts goes in that brain field. But I do know all these things are also really unbeatable. If you want…

The magic of 11.11 and the beautiful city of little lights and songs singed by tiny voices. We were ready! We made the pretty lanterns with crayons, water colours and inks. We used aquarell paper and thicker drawing paper, both were fine. When the paintings were dried I oiled them with kitchen oil, children beaded the wires and wrapped the sticks…

Still life, fruit plates and old stories. We went in the past and enjoyed the process a lot. Children drew and cut out the fruits and then made different structures with various tools. They made some plates, some juice glasses and straws too. Voila!

Printing Elmer

We read a book Elmer the Elephant in the Mini class and we did some sponge dipping for the patchwork elephant and some brush painting for the carnival elephant. Of course you have to read the book if you want to understand that! It was fun!

Observational drawing

We had a lovely class on observational drawing of insects. I printed out different insects and children mostly decided for a bee. They observed, compared, counted and did all of that fur in a certain direction. Just as it grows. The wings were great too. If they drew them too hard and thick, pressing their…

There are projects on internet so perfect I can not only not avoid trying them out but I can’t even make myself change a slightest thing!! This original creation is by Artbar and it blew my mind. It was a busy hour with a group of 3-6 year olds. Children had a blast with these squeezing paints that…

These beautiful autumn days have been high in printing spirit. Full of experimenting and anticipation, some disappointments, some surprises but mainly excitement. Printmaking just is like that!

It’s time to fly away!

These beautities were made at Minis, parent-child classes. There was some work and a lot of inventiveness on the mothers’ sides. Children did the deco, all the important buttons and helmets too of course. I know they will have A LOT of good time inside of them. Everyone needs a rocket once in a while….

Mini classes had a chance to play around with clay. I find children always skeptic about it at first, not knowing what to do and not wanting to damage anything they’ve made but as they get familiar with it, realizing they can fix just about anything that seems they’ve messed up, it becomes such fun. It’s…

Our first summer camp at Raumerstrasse turned out wonderful. Our project was entertraining, merry and joyfull. Children would gladly prolong it until Friday and we could probably really be working for another week to make it all perfect and satisfy all the ideas and wishes. Development of our project was really in stages and it…

This fun activity is much about unconscious learning. Children have lots of fun using the pipettes, sucking the liquid in and out, leaving traces of paint on paper. By slowly adding another colour to the paper they can observe how colours mix and change. They are offered to blow on their papers. It´s such a…

We read There is a bird on your head by Elephant&Piggie. The book is really funny and my mini course group had much lough. After the reading we spoke about the nests, what is in them, who is in them, what are they made of. The children then each got a paper and were challenged to make…

Finally again a female artist! Pfeeeew this feels me up with relief! I am pleased to present cardboard version of organic shaped landscape sculptures inspired by Barbara Hepworth. We studied and enjoyed her work immensely and also loved the b&w pics of her, chisel and a cigarette in her hand. A great woman, work, and the project too….

We did these heads so long ago the children probably already forgot about them. Well they are in for a nice surprise this Saturday because the heads are finally fired and ready to take home. None broke and all of them are fantastic.

Wooden towers

The mini class was gluing, building and painting. Ah, this lovely realxing art!

Studying Eric Carle’s illustrations

This project was done in one of my mini classes with 3-6 years old children. We read one of many Eric Carle’s books and had a little discussion about what illustrations are, who is an illustrator and what is his job. Then we looked carefully at Carle’s art and sleeves up and work began! Children used all sorts of…

For last two months and a half our work was dedicated to portrait, self-portrait and mixing of colours. We’ve made large self-portraits on cardboard, portraits of children’s mothers on wood painted in expressionist style, we’ve made clay heads which are currently in the process of fireing. And since we’ve tried the adding process with clay…

An amazing few hours we had making these beautiful paintings. We quite took the time and that was fine. Children enjoyed the project with ease. We started on this paitings just after children learned how to mix primary colours so this seemed and turned out as the most logical step forward. We looked at works…

Thinking, imagining, associating, planning, transforming it from imagination to paper, from paper to wood and then staying in the frame of fauvist and expressionist colours. The children did fantastic work guided by their desire to give a wrapped gift to their dear dear mothers on Mother’s Day. Have a happy one dear mamas! You rock!

Animal masks

After reading a book Masks in the forest children made animal masks. They were working their finger muscles by gluing little pieces of paper on not such small surface. Quite some patience and focus were demanded and they did it really well.

Studying Marc Chagall

Every year there is at least once time for Marc Chagall and his magic. Here the masterpieces of 2018. A week later these children went for an exhibition with their class and by some space/planet/univers-al coincidence they were shown works of you know who and they all started shouting: “Marc Chagall! We know him! It’s…

The children here only got primary colours and black and white. They were mixing and mixing and mixing and I bet they would still be mixing if I didn’t take paints away.

Giant ice creams

Ice creams are a thing. You can never go wrong there. And if you make them giant as these you are in for a win and gold and all ot that. This is a lovely spring/summer art project. Easy and tasty. Inspired by lovely artbar.

Ice cream sundaes

We’ve made some beautiful ice cream sundaes with my 3-6 year olds after reading a book from Mo Willems, Should I share my ice cream. We’ve made them before with my now older children. You can search for the post below if you are interested in the process. They are an on going inspiration by…

This is a lovely project all made from egg cartons. It needs a bit of preparation but children enjoy it a lot because it involves all the good things: painting, assembling, gluing. Two hours of joy!

Giant cardboard self-portraits

I did this project last month with my 5 and 6 year olds but as these works are turning out so amazing I am posting here the works of my 7 and 8 year olds. Somehow I was never a Depeche mode fan but I guess there comes a time for I just can’t get enough…

I am most proud of my 5 and 6 year old artists! We had a tiny chat about self portraits in the history, we had a good laugh about a few of them and we were shocked about some others. Some pretty, some surprising. Quite very interesting! And this here is how my children see…

We had an amazing fun building a city in a collaborative art project. Whole thing turned into a great game. We had a factory and a store of different shapes and colours. We had a production, a selling department, costumers and an assembling department. Very merry!

Marionettes

This is again an inspiration from many time mentioned artbar. To make these lovely marionettes there are many steps to achive but none is very complicated. If you will be making them with more children at once, bare in mind there are many knots to do. My children couldn’t do them especially not the double…

It’s time for carnival! And we love animals! And we love to look crazy! So do not bother guessing…

Animal puppets

My fine motor skills class worked on animal cardboard puppets. They were building their finger muscles whille fighting through thick cardboard and their brain muscle when building this thing together. Look at these beauties please!

Harvest paintings

We made a beautiful project on harvest. I came across an art project on Marina Strocchi by Art Camp that I loved and Maria’s simple childlike beautiful forms do trigger a desire to offer kids to discover her work. She is painting landscapes of her homeland, Australia. She has this natural raw touch of warm colours…

We were learning how to mix colours. Children enjoyed this very much. I only gave them blue, red, yellow, white and black and they made such pretty shades of all possible colours. They were first painting on cardboard and then on canvas. We tryed to frame the paintings with embroidery hoops but I think they…

We spoke about arhitecture and the lovely Hundertwasser. And we said things like: “Ooooooh, if only more houses were of him. Slides everywhere! Trees on the roofs! And those windows! I want round windows from ever! I want gas stations with trees and the flowers! I want a round room on the top of the…

Our famous artists workshop was this time really ancient. We peeked into the world of Greek mythology. We used a fabulous book about mythological monsters. We were swimming in various materials. We had much fun and we also learned. With our exhibition we are now teaching others.

Magical globe fairies

So we are back after long and good holidays, yiiipeee!! And for the starter my children did these beauties. I am so very proud of them! The inspiration came from my dear friend Tina who is an expert on fairies. Many fairies she made lives all over our apartment, hidden somewhere between jam glasses or just hanging from ropes…

We had a very interesting time talking about Oskar Schlemmer and the basic forms. Children were busy drawing the forms, some also used rulers, then there was lots of cutting. And after – the pleasure of painting!

Mixed animal collages

My children assembled these pretty mixed animal collages that are now shining in our school’s hallway. Each creature is made out of two or three animals. Pretty cool they are!

Louise Bourgeois with kids

This time we worked on madame Bourgeois. We browsed through a really nice book, Lied für Louise , and we talked about her life quite a bit. You can’t avoid it when discussing such a prominent lady. The children did the spiders (one made an octopus) out of wire that they’ve taped over to reach some more volume…

This time we had a little lesson on Jean Dubuffet and then we did a lot of work. Children had such a good time. There was nothing to think about, nothing to be careful about, they could even walk and lay down anywhere on the piece they were creating. Really cool!! And now look at…

Beautiful aquarel paintings by my 5 and 6 year olds. We spoke about Marc Chagall, we looked at some of his work and the children talked abaut what they’ve noticed. I drew their observations on the black board because they don’t read yet: Eiffel tower, a goat, a violin, a rooster, houses, flying people… The…

Tempting ice cream sundaes made today. Again inspiration by an art workshop blogger artbar that I greatly admire for her creativity. She published a book Art Workshop for children I like to open often. My girls could spek only about biting in their papier-mâché scoops and I do understand. I bet they also did it when I wasn’t watching….

The amazing assemblages with found objects. One could do them all the time. They are so special and unique. Children brought in their own items. That way they really connect to their piece and are involved from the beginning. Finding items, keeping and bringing them, showing them to the others. This all gives so much…

I am happy to show off this lovely circus tents, inspired by artbar. I have to say it was A LOT to prepare but seeing children’s faces when they finished payed it all off! They really looked forward to finish this project making it as pretty as possible. I had no time to take photos…

20 small fingers and 10 clever heads were working hard to make these beautiful statues. We talked about Giacometti and we tried various techniques for this project. Also clay, if only to learn we don’t come third as high as Giacometti’s figures are. This surfers are made out of wire which children taped to get…

Each child got one stick that I picked in the forest. The instructions were to observe the stick and decide which animal to make out of it. It had to be part of the animal. When they decided on an animal they made little sketches first and then started working on cardboard. They were then…

Artnuts really went nuts with Yayoi Kusama and we loved it! It was such a fabulous project involving a lot of singing: “Alles gets, alles gets, NO excuse me!!… alles gelb, ALLES GELB!!!” Wireing, sculpturing, painting, dotting, talking, talking, talking. It took us a while but it was simply great. And we learned a thing…

My preschoolers were busy with Paul Klee and these are the fruits of our work. Great they are!

Collages with Matisse

We worked on Matisse, we read a nice book about his life and his scissors. Man in his bed and his wheelchair cutting up everything that came under his fingers. The project was easy. I love the forms the children did, the colours they’ve joined. We were a bunch of proud and bouncing art nutters!!…

These little creatures were made out of recycling materials and materials taken from nature. It took us a little longer to finish this project but it was cheerfull. Children also made homes for their little fellows and voilà!

Joan Miró’s mobiles

Today we spoke about Miró’s lovely colours, elements and creations. These lovely mobiles are the prove of successful operation!

Laurent Moreau’s Masks

The new school year`s workshops have kicked off and we are having wonderful time of creating, cutting, measuring, cleaning, painting bits and bobs, gluing, chit chatting. Here are the results of our first workshop. We did masks inspired by Laurent Moreau. Wonderful book too!

Painting with natural materials

Hello spring! It’s time for little walks with baskets. There is so much to collect, try and make. We love it!

Wooden mini sculptures

Natural wooden beads always come in handy and it’s good to have them around. Today was their day in our house. We decided to glue them into… whatever. With some extra paint! We lasted hours!