Bunny Willows

Here is a really cute craft I'm calling "Bunny Willows".

I was at Dollaramma and they had these great packages of pastel colored pompoms, which of course I bought thinking I would come up with something.

The kids had a great time making these and I did this craft with both the Beavers troop (5-8 yr olds) and Kindergarten.

Materials Required:

a branch
large pompoms
med. pompoms
teeny tiny pompoms
tiny googly eyes or black beads
scraps of felt
tacky glue
scissors

Take a large pompom and spread it apart a bit.  Apply some glue.

Find a good spot on your branch...stick the pompom on and give it a good squeeze.


Continue to add large pompoms everywhere you want a bunny.  The pompoms look great on the branch by themselves too....... so you don't have to make everyone a bunny if you don't want to.

Take your scraps of felt and cut out a set of ears.  I did this ahead of time for the kids.  I made the ears all one piece for easy gluing.

Apply some glue to the bottom of the ears and stick on a medium pompom.

Add 2 eyes and a teeny tiny pompom for a nose.

Then glue this head onto your large pompom.

Finally you can add another teeny tiny pompom to the back for a tail.

Give it a try and I'll see you soon from Maui!

Easter Vacation

Well I'm off to Maui  for 2 weeks.  I have a scheduled post for you tomorrow of a very cute Easter craft so check it out.

  I will be taking my laptop so I hope to have some paintings to post for you while I'm there. I am so looking forward to have the time to PAINT!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!
Take care.

Guest Post

Hey Everyone,

I'm guest posting today on alpha mom.

So if you're interested in this art project you can read all about it here.

See you soon.

Bead and Clay Crosses

This is a project I do at Easter time with the students.  These are done by Grade 1. I also did this with Grade 4 this year using smaller beads and more complicated patterns.


Click on picture to see larger.

You need to do up a recipe of salt dough clay. ( 1 recipe is enough for 24 crosses using a 3 1/2 inch cutter)

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 cups to 2 and 1/2 cups warm water (varies depending on flour and humidity, enough for a soft dough)

Knead into a soft dough
Store in a ziploc bag.  If not using right away you can store in the refrigerator for like forever. Just pull it out ahead of time to come to room tempertaure before using.

I like to color the dough.  Using liquid tempera or acrylic paint squirt some on the dough.

Fold over the dough.

and then knead like crazy....don't worry if it looks marbled like this it just means you have to keep kneading.

It will eventually look like this.  Even color throughout.

Roll it out and then using a cookie cutter cut out the shape.

Place a paper clip 1/2 way in at the top for hanging.

I get the kids to put a bit of water on the surface of the cross using their finger and then they can start forming their design with beads.  We use pony beads in different sizes as well as wood beads and large decorative beads.

I asked them to try and make a pattern using color or shape.

They need to push the beads in fairly firmly.

I then place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  I write the name of the student on the paper in sharpie and then place their creation either on top or next to their name.  This allows me to keep them straight until they are baked when I can then write their names on the back in sharpie.

Bake in a 250 - 300 degree oven for about 2 - 3 hours until hard.  You don't want to overbake and have them get a brownish tinge.

When cool add a coat or 2 of Mod podge.  This will help "glue" into place any loose beads as well as add a nice shiny finish.

Keep in mind that salt dough responds to the humidity in the air.  It can sometimes feel soft even after baking and sealing.  Just let it be and it will dry out again. 

That's it.  I add a ribbon thru the paper clip at the top and the kids have a great creation to take home for Easter.


See you next time.

Art Exhibition

Here are some pictures of the art exhibition we had going on during Parent/Teacher interviews.  Click on any photo to see larger.   

Here is the Grade 4 Paper Doll and mural taken from this Feb Post.

Here is the Grade 1 display.  Paper mache Penguins and Polar Bear paintings.

Grade 3 made these adorable puppets all hand sewn with Canada flags on their "Olympic" mittens!

Some window paintings by Grade 3.

Work by Grade 2

Work by Grade 5

Great work everyone.  There was lots more that I didn't get pictures of.

Take care.

First Nations Headresses - Art Project

Well we finished our Headresses in time for Parent/Teacher interviews and here are the results.  This project is in relation to the Fur Trade unit Grade 5 are taking in Social Studies.  We discussed how furs were often traded for beads to decorate clothing and ceremonial objects.


You can click on photo to see larger.

Great job Grade 5!!

We started out by drawing a head in profile...the kids used a 1/2 sheet of 90lb watercolor paper.  I asked them to try and fill the space with the head as we were mounting them on a full sheet of black posterboard.

We talked a bit about placement of features....to try and keep the tip of the nose as the center of the head and not the eyes..to extend out with a rounded skull that connects back to the jaw line...to add a jaw line so the head and neck are distiguished from one another.

I then asked then to draw a band for the headress that sort of looks like a boomerang and a large circular medallion.  We cut these out of white posterboard.

You can test the size ...the heads were already cut out and we measured on the posterboard where the forehead was and where we wanted the band to end.  This made the sketching out easier.

I had printed off some reference photos for them to help them along.

Then the painting started.  They had to paint the head...the band (it needed to have a design as it was to show beading), the medallion, and then as many feathers as they could fit on another 1/2 sheet of watercolor paper in assorted sizes.

The kids are using disk tempera.

I also asked them to paint a square of newspaper in at least 2 colors using liquid tempera for the beads we were going to make...you could also use photocopier paper for this.

We then cut out all our components.  It was easier to paint our feathers uncut and this also decreased the amount of curling when they dried.

We then glued our heads down on our black poster board taking care to move our heads to the side giving us room for the headress.

Using fine sharpies we added lines to our medallion and band to make it appear beaded...we are trying to alternate our lines like shingles on a roof.

We then hold our band up to the head to see where the feathers should go and start gluing them down...here we have a board over the face to help the glue dry flat.


We used some real colored feathers as well to help fill out our headress.

We then glued our band into place.

We took our bead paper and cut it into long triangles. 

We then took a pencil and began rolling the paper starting with the wide end first.

When you are about 1/2 way down the paper apply some glue to the center of the remaining paper.

Continue rolling.

And then slide the bead off the pencil.

We made a hole thru our medallion...strung some beads on a piec of yarn with some pony beads mixed it and knotted our yarn.  We then glued our medallion in place on the band about where the ear would be.

...and that was it.

We had lots of Leprechaun traps arriving on Tuesday.......

but no Leprechauns were caught yesterday although they mixed up everyone's shoes in the classrooms.


I'll see you next time with some photos of the school wide art display that was put together for Parent/Teacher interviews.

Take care.