Day 4 Gymnastics Camp Crafts

Tie Dye Shirts! 

No, not real dye, SPRAY tie dye!  Did you think I was going to get involved in rinsing and wringing out almost 50 T-shirts again in 98 degree heat?  NO WAY!!!!

 

The purple and blue are our favorites.  Even with coupons for Hobby, Lobby, Joann's, and Michael's, this is a more expensive craft, so I tried to get by with just enough.  Just enough, however, is not enough.  Next time I will buy several extra cans and save the receipts in hopes of returning a few.  As it is, I will be getting some more cans and taking them to regular Gymnstics team practice, because we ran out of paint during the last group.  Learn from my mistake!

Our methodology is to lay the shirt on the ground/newspaper/cardboard, scrunch it around and spray color 1.  Then pull it open, scrunch in a different direction and sray with color 2.

If the shirt has a logo on it, spray it anyway!

Reserved for the boys:  camo set!

I loved it that quite a few children showed up the next day wearing their newly decorated shirts.



Buttoned Up

Last week Science Geek had our children out doing cool science, measuring windspeed and direction.  These 2 pictures  have nothing to do with art, but I thought our girls were cute.

During Sm'Arties, we went more in the crafts-and-skills direction.  We learned a very valuable lesson - how to thread a needle.  We threaded  big plastic yarn needles first.

Having mastered the art of threading a needle, we threaded up a steel needle so we could sew a big button on a piece of flannel.  I bought large-eye needles for the children, but I think they will be useful for me as I progress into presbyopia.

 Whoops!  Speaking of presbyopia, there are my really strong reading glasses, the ones I use threading a needle.

 Good job!

Then I told a little story about one of our boys growing up to become a very cool best man at a wedding.  The groom comes to him distraught because a button has fallen of his shirt.  The very cool best man says, "Give me the shirt, give me the button; I'll take care of it."  In one version, the very cool best man said, "Dude...give me the shirt, give me the button."  

Coincidentally, it just so happened that 7 buttons had fallen off my husband's shirts, just that morning.  Amazing isn't it?  And just a week after he sent me down the well?   Sm'Arties to the rescue!

I am pleased to report that my husband can, once more, button his cuffs.  And all the Sm'Arties can sew on a button. 

Lizards are Still Leapin'

I've looked forward to working with fabric with our Sm'Arties.  This week we did it!  I printed out some lizard clipart so we could cut out 2 fabric lizards.  Peg and I cut out all the brownish lizards - that fabric was slippery, and cutting around the little wiggly reptiles just takes time. 

I showed the children my finished piece, and encouraged them to feel of the texture.  Since one fabric had a suede-y nap, the piece is fairly textural.  The green lizard got his little beady eyes rubbed off.

Then I gave each child a rectangle of fabric and talked about how working with fabric differs from working with paper.  We tried pulling the fabric north-south, then east-west, then diagonally.  They could feel how this non-stretchy fabric still stretches on the bias (diagonal).  When you lay it on paper and move it around, it can stretch and become distorted.  We also talked about how wet glue will seep right through the fabric more than it does on the paper we usually use, and I looked daggers at them.  As a result, we had to push them to use more glue :)

I showed the children how to pin the their patterns onto the fabric, a little manual skill I thought might come in handy someday.  Then they cut out the green lizards, with lots of help from moms due to the lack of really good-cutting scissors (result of sending an email out at 10:00 Sunday night for a Monday morning class.)

Then we arranged the little lizards on orange cardstock, one head facing up and one head facing down, and glued them down using regular gel glue and paintbrushes.  They were cute just like that, but we were not finished.

Each lizard got a little stripe of another fabric to glue down his backbone, and 2 little gold beads for eyes.   The beads were on a bead strand, and each child got a 2-bead piece, which we did not cut apart - they were already spaced just fine for this project. (Note - I did not want to use googly eyes.  I think the little beads looked more artsy).

We scribbled around the lizards so they would stand out from the picture.   The students had a hard time just scribbling - they wanted to outline neatly!   I introduced the children to Crayola Slick Sticks.  The Sm'Arties loved them as much as I do.  They feel like something between a soft oil pastel and a marker, and color beautifully.  (I saw one review of these that compared them to lipstick in texture and coloring.  I agree.  Then the reviewer said how much she disliked them and gave them only 2 stars, saying that her 2-year-old loved them but she - Mom - hated them.  A 2-year-old?  Come on!  The Sm'Arties, 2nd-5th graders, give them a big thumbs-up.)

 

 

We also added a few hightlights to the lizard bodies, and drew a border.  All the borders were a little different.

The 12-pack of Slick sticks includes white, gold, and silver crayons.  They really make nice highlights on fabric.

We love how they turned out! 

Each child has a little bag of fabric scraps, including a few beads, and a homework assignment - to bring me back one or more pieces of reptile artwork.  Earthgirl is working on hers this afternoon.  I can hardly wait to see how they all turn out.