Summer Pinterest Challenge 2019: Week 2

We are in our 4th week of summer mode and it's wonderful.  I am staying up way too late and sleeping in while my kids fend for themselves and watch some random dude playing video games and that new Pac-Man cartoon on Netflix in between all of the many of soccer games on this season.  We are all living our best lives over here. . . lazy summer vibes are strong!

We are, however, making room for fun things like art, movies, and adventure along with the occasional chore, but that isn't fun.  No one really wants to hear about chores.  You are here because you are looking for something to do with your kids that gets them doing something creative.  So, welcome to Week 2 of our Summer Pinterest Challenge, Kids Art edition.  If you haven't had a chance to read about last week's art project, you can scroll down to the bottom for the link.  It gives an over view of our approach for the this project and why we are combining it with literacy and a little artist study and not just random art projects.  I encourage you to head over to that post to read more and then come back, or just read it afterwards. 

 I remember taking an art history class in college.  It was probably one of my most favorite classes because it taught me so much more than the styles, but the history and life of the painters themselves.  Two years ago, on our summer trip to Chicago, we took the kids to one of our favorite art museums. . . the Chicago Art Institute.  This place is amazing and has so many wonderful (and famous) paintings on display.  One of them being this painting by Georges Seurat (if you've watched Ferris Bueller. . . there's a famous scene at the art institute with this painting).  Looking at paintings in a book is so much different than seeing them up close and in person.  For example, this painting, called "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is huge.  And when you take notice of the style he used, called Pointillism, it's amazingly impressive that each tiny piece of color is a dot of paint.  So, picking Seurat for our Art Challenge was no question.  

 We had friends over last week, when we worked on our Pointillism piece and so we forced them into joining in the fun (they look so bored, don't they? ha ha).  We chose to do the Eiffel Tower because Seurat is French, but also, he has a piece where he did the Eiffel Tower with Pointillism and it's beautiful, but also a lot easier to re-create than one with people, monkeys, and landscape.

    We used an empty egg carton and some q-tips for this art challenge.  I modeled it with some paper on the fridge. And they followed along.  We talked a lot about how making dots is an up-down process and not a slide the paint across the paper to achieve a straight line.  My favorite is how easy it is for them to fix areas that they messed up and how beautiful they all turned out. 

 I was going to have them cover the entire thing with dots, but they were loosing interest after about 45 minutes and so they decided to do some fireworks and honestly, I love it! 

 I can't even begin to tell you just how much I love how these turned out!  The conversations that happened while they were sitting down creating are one of my favorite things.  They all worked so hard and did such a great job. . .  

 that popsicles were a must!  (and we eat them outside because it was gorgeous!).

I hope you will join us on this art challenge this summer!  Feel free to post to instagram and use #OOTRBsummerkidsartchallenge

Also, check out last week's first challenge here. 

This post was inspired by the pin from this blog post. 

Happy Creating!