art | TheBoyandMe

Cray-Pas Oil Pastels (Review)

October 23, 2014 by TheBoyAndMe 1 Comment

When I was asked by my headteacher to return to work in September as a class teacher (as opposed to a cover teacher as I've done for four years), I was excited. There are some subjects that I have really missed teaching over the past few years and Art is the main one; I studied it for GCSE, A level and it was my specialism during my teaching degree. I can't think of a single child in thirteen years of teaching that hasn't enjoyed the tactile qualities of the subject, becoming thoroughly proud of the work that they produce.

Cray-Pas Oil Pastels 1

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Days 202-208 of Project 365

July 27, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 22 Comments

202-208 of 265

202. Fave Food (Massively contrived! MASSIVELY! However, The Boy decided to climb a tree at Westonbirt Arboretum so that he didn't become The Gruffalo's fave food!)

203. Grey (This colourful photo was taken to try and lift my grey mood after a rubbish INSET day where I ran around doing things for everyone else and achieved nothing for myself. Additionally, the end-of-year tiredness kicked in and I was exhausted and very melancholy.)

204. I Drew This! (Welcome to the family TBaM! I am so proud of him for this, I think it's brilliant.)

205. D Is For… (Danger! He does this funny little hopping up from behind thing onto the swing, only he planted his feet on the seat and stood up instead! Eeeek!)

206. Ground (We met an old friend up at the clifftop park with her one year old son. She was late and so while we waited The Boy had a swinging conversation with the ten year old boy next to him. The Boy won, which I was quite proud of, and cast some beautiful shadows on the ground as he was swinging.)

207. The Everyday (The temperature of the day started off quite mild, but after a phone from nursery at 8.30 to ask me to bring him in earlier than I normally do as they were going for a walk that morning, I ended up hot and bothered, rushing around. I got hom at 10.15 and then managed to settle down to have some breakfast and do some school work. Once I'd picked him up from nursery, we popped into Parc Play for an hour or so during which time the temperature soared to 28°C. We came home, borrowed a pump from a friend and blew up his new paddling pool. This sunshine photo is the everyday at the moment.)

208. Black + White (It's pouring down today, which is fine because the garden really needs it, but the world is a little bit grey and monochrome today. We also need a break from all the amazing outdoor play we've had; sometimes you just need a 'chill out and do nothing' day. Definitely a day for some work on pre-writing skills.)

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Days 132-138 of Project 365

May 18, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 24 Comments

132-138 of 265

132. Stick it! (After such a beautifully sunny day on Saturday, Sunday saw the doldrums return to the skies over south Wales. The Boy managed a few hours garden play in the morning, then in the afternoon we did some Post-it note art.)

133. End of the day! (A very trying day today. As my car was still poorly with a mahoosive oil leak, I wasn't able to drive to the other side of Cardiff as I wanted to, so we went with my mum. It was a hot and bothersome day, and ultimately boring for The Boy. Mid-afternoon I had a row with the garage who hadn't even started my car, and my dad had to go and help them find the problem. Daddy's girl? Me? Never! The afternoon ended up with a ridiculously elongated dinner time (of well over an hour) and a late bedtime, and a row! Essentially this was all because he was overtired and bored, and it wasn't the best day in my parenting 'career'.)

134. Wet (The garage phoned me at 4.20 to tell me my car was ready and they shut at 5pm. It takes 30 minutes to walk across town to there, it was pouring with rain and The Boy had only just woken up from a nap. Time to test the excellence of the Kiddy raincover. He stayed dry, my Regatta raincoat and jeans were saturated. I made it in time and recovered my car, minus £230 in my bank account.)

135. Sly Fox! (This is a game he's learnt in nursery, a little like Grandma's footsteps or What's The Time, Mr. Wolf.)

136. Sculpture! (I finish work at around 4pm on Thursdays so we've developed a habit of nipping down the beach with my mum for an ice-cream. Today we did a treasure hunt as well for an activity I'm blogging on the 21st May for the '100 Days of Play' activity link-up I'm taking part in.)

137. Rebel! (Just out of shot is a sign saying 'No cycling'. Well I'm sorry but he's 3 and not about to mow someone down so I ignored it. We love this park in Cardiff and took my mum with us, who hasn't been in years, possibly decades. A few drops of rain fell and the park emptied, which I found very sad. We're hardcore and stayed on to see the black clouds off.)

138. Ding Dong ("Mummy, why don't bluebells ding?" The Boy's paternal grandparents came down for a visit today to take us out for lunch, so we took them to Dyffryn Gardens to walk off the pizza and garlic bread after. They were as enchanted as we are with it, and The Boy got to examine some bluebells up close.)

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Days 90-96 of Project 365

April 6, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 44 Comments

90-96 of 365

90. Rolling, rolling, rolling! (We went to Dyffryn Gardens for the National Trust Easter Egg Trail and had an absolutely marvellous time exploring the recently reopened Dyffryn House. However, the best bit of the day is that The Boy got to cross off #2 of the 50 Things: Roll down a really big hill – really big is subjective when you're only three!)

91. A-maze-ing! (Despite yesterday's beautiful weather and the hint that Spring was on its way, today was blindingly cold and dreary! We spent much of it inside chilling out after our hectic previous week and weekend, with Nanny and Grandad coming to dinner. I'd bought The Boy some new wipe-clean books from Usborne; this is a maze book and he is completely devoted to it.)

92. Spiderman (Having popped up to the local butcher we went for a walk in the main park in our town, a park which has many different 'zones' to it which provide ample play opportunities. We discovered yet another tree that needed to be climbed, although he decided to jump out of this one, rather than climb down. As it was only a foot drop, I let him off.)

93. Hello down there! (Another day, another park! Swing time took on a different angle today.)

94. Nearly there (The Boy is obsessed lately with trying to make different colours and I decided to let him loose with a colour mixing experiment. My sister would be pleased to know he just wanted to make brown – her favourite (boring!) colour – and he very almost managed it.)

95. Cookie dough (Today was dominated by The Boy having his preschool MMR booster in the afternoon, and it appears I may have been quite anxious about it as I was a grumpy mummy most of the day. I managed to summon up the inclination to make cookies with The Boy, but even that was staight from a packet and add two tablespoons of water; how lazy! Turns out that The Boy was fine with his booster, didn't even notice the injection.)

96. Where's the hole? (We returned to Dyffryn Gardens today, as I hadn't had long enough to explore the inside of the house, and get the photos I was after – I still didn't manage it today as The Boy wanted to explore the gardens. The garden rooms are plenty and full of little holes and pathways leading through into a different 'room'. Only thing was, there wasn't a hole in the hedge here, despite The Boy trying his hardest to push through. Look closely and his head had half disappeared inside. It reminded me of Tom in Tom's Midnight Garden.)

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How To Make A Snow Picture

January 27, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 8 Comments

The Boy loves doing large scale art and when the snow fell earlier in the week, it was the perfect opportunity to get creative again. His recent painting sessions have shown that he is really keen to express himself artistically and so I wanted to allow him the freedom to make whatever picture he saw fit. I gave him the resources and let him get on with it.

We used:

A2 mounting card (equally could have used a cardboard box cut up)
various coloured paint
a variety of sponges and paintbrushes of different sizes and textures
silver, blue and white glitter
cotton wool
metallic white, foil confetti
glue
bubble wrap
coloured pompoms
talcum powder

You could also use:

tissue paper
clear cellophane

How To Make A Snow Picture 1

It's at this point that we talked about how he could use the different materials, it was the bubble wrap that really captured his attention. We ~~popped a load of bubbles~~ talked about what it felt like, looked like and how when it was stretched out it looked like a load of balls. At this point it was laid over the card and The Boy commented on how it looked like snow balls. He decided to paint a garden scene (is this one of the first pictures that they like to paint at this age? It's his most common scene for paintings!) and he set to painting with the grass and the sky.

The thing that often amuses me about infant painting is the way that the sky never reaches the ground, to them it's way above their heads and as they can't see the blue around them why would they paint it down there? The other thing that amazes me is how The Boy has always painted grass as blades of grass, never once has he painted a swishy mass for the ground. He normally wants to paint mud but was distracted on this occasion!

How To Make A Snow Picture

I framed it using a child-friendly picture frame from Ikea which has plastic 'glass' (although I've actually left this out because the painting is so 3D), and I've hung it in The Boy's bedroom for him to enjoy. As the seasons change, we'll do an updated picture to reflect the changes in nature.

Days 20-26 of Project 365 (Country Kids)

January 26, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 62 Comments

20-26 of 365

20. 'Birdman' (Yes we had a snowball fight but who wants another picture of that? We spent time on Sunday putting out food for the pair of blackbirds and Mistlethrush which we have in the garden. The fatballs had frozen so needed crushing, and we had half a loaf of bread to distribute. The Boy then spent ten minutes calling them, before going inside to wait at the window for them.)

21. 'Heart-pressing' (The Boy is obsessed with Instagram. 50% of the likes you'll see from the little green bug are actually done by him, he particularly likes seeing pictures of other children playing and I have to tell him who they are. Daily I have to look for photos of Jenny, Burton and Jenson; think we need another playdate. If your photo on Instagram is of a child and I've liked it, it'll be him. If it's got a comment or of food, it'll be me liking it!)

22. 'Artist At Work' (We spend a long time making the most amazing snow picture today; 95% of it was done by him – the 5% done by me was the gluing because he's a lazy tyke! He then wanted to take a photograph of it because he was so proud of it.)

23. 'Meet The Family' (I was incredibly disappointed today to discover that, despite two inches of snow falling on compacted snow and ice, school was not closed. I made my way in to my job, but was out of there by 3.45. At 4pm we were making snowmen in the garden! I'm on the left, Mr. TBaM is in the middle and The Boy is on the right.)

24: 'Now, Which One?' (This giant Kerplunk we had for review a few months ago, is still one of the most played games in the house! Problem is that now he's cottoned on that he needs the least amount of balls to win, and is very competitive!)

25: 'Eat Your Heart Out, Gordon!' (Uninspiring photograph, but it's a milestone snap. The Boy made his own tea tonight: pizza pocket. He cut the pitta bread in half, sliced up the chicken and grated the cheese himself, before stuffing them in the pitta pocket. And yes that's a sharp Kitchen Devil vegetable knife. Give a child the correct tools to use – under supervision – from the start otherwise they just need to be retaught. He'd be more likely to cut himself with a blunt knife as the knife would slip!)

26: 'Birdies, NO!' (Today has been a non-day. I hate days like this; slow to start and before you know it, the weather has turned and the light's almost gone. They affect my mood greatly, pyjama days on a weekend do not help the happy family way of life for us! All too late in the day we went to feed the swans at the local country park, they must have been starving because as soon as we walked towards them and they spotted the bag of bread, they were out the water and coming! To me, it was something like a horror movie, The Boy took it in his stride, and Mr. TBaM stood there telling them off for pecking his bottom! Nutter! The Boy then made us go for a walk in the pitch-black around the lakes, luckily we had our torches!)

My favourite photo this week is Day 20: 'Birdman'

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Monday 31st December 2012 – 'Looking Forward' (366/366)

December 31, 2012 by TheBoyAndMe 12 Comments

Pirate Craft Under A Yellow Moon Sky

September 11, 2012 by TheBoyAndMe 4 Comments

It's fairly obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly that I like doing craft activities with The Boy. And obviously Yellow Moon got that impression as well because they've sent us a box of art and craft supplies to get busy with over the Summer holidays. We've been chocka-block embracing our inner pirates in a wealth of shiver-me-timbers activities and had great fun in the process.

The Boy and I have made a number of things with these resources, and I have posted about them separately, but there were a few smaller activities that I wanted to share and show the resources we used to make them.

Pirate Collage

Foam stickers (£2.99 for 120) and coloured card (£2.99 for 50).

Pirate Finger Puppets

We coloured in these nifty pre-cut finger puppets (£2.99 for 24) with metallic pens and coloured felt pens.

We were sent other items which we used to make a pirate island, a treasure hunt and a spyglass. It's provided us with a Summer of fun and games, exploring history and adventure. It's also given me huge idea for The Boy's birthday party next Summer!

We were provided with these items for the purpose of this post. Our ideas and opinions are honest and our own.

How To Have A Pirate Treasure Hunt

September 10, 2012 by TheBoyAndMe 7 Comments

That Peppa Pig has got a lot to answer for you know! Thanks to her and her friends on Pirate Island, we've had to hold a treasure hunt, although I have managed to stop short of making a metal detector to find treasure in the garden. (Maybe we could pretend there's treasure in the defunct vegetable patch which might convince Mr. TBaM to dig it over?)

If you want to have a treasure hunt, you'll need:

pirate craft