Bugle-Horned Rhinos

So this rhino craft we did today isn't the cutest art project. It won't win any awards or end up on any refrigerators. But there aren't many rhino crafts out there from which to get inspiration. And when I started thinking about what we could use for the horns, I couldn't resist trying Bugles.

I found a coloring sheet of a rhinoceros that I liked, but I covered up the horns with white-out before I photocopied it for my class. The kids used watercolors to paint them.

Then they could select one or two Bugles (since some rhinos have one horn and some have two). We used full Bugles for the big horns and I broke the top off of some for the small horns.

Then all they had to do was squirt a little glue,

and add their horns!

I think they turned out kind of cute, actually!

I also think candy corn would work for the horns.

Fun Fact: Black rhinos are very endangered. So much so that when my brother went on an African safari a few years ago, he said each black rhino had its own bodyguard!

Lazy Lions

We are on safari this week! That's right -- traveling to the Serengeti! This is one of my most favorite themes. You can see all our safari crafts from last year here, but I'm adding a few new ones this year. Today I taught about lions. The first thing I taught them was that lions are not the kings of the jungle because they don't live in jungles! It amazes me how many children's books show lions living in jungles. For art, I printed out a couple coloring pages of lions. I often like to use a coloring sheet for art, but expand on it so it's more than just coloring. First the kids colored their lion.

Then I put out orange and yellow tissue paper squares (I would have also used brown if I had any) and glue.

The kids scrunched up a tissue square, dipped it in glue, and stuck it on the mane or tail of their lion.

It added some nice texture and a little bit of excitement to their lions!

Fun Fact: The lion's mane gets darker as he ages. So the darker the mane, the older the lion.

Fly Swatter Painting - Take 2

Last week we finally had a chance to try our hands at fly swatter painting again. You can see our first attempt here. The results were great, but it was so windy outside that only two kids did it and then we packed everything up. This time it was a beautiful day. Not too hot, and hardly any wind. What a difference that made! I only had four fly swatters (remember these cuties?),

so only four kids could do the project at a time. Again, we did it on a swimming day so I could hose the kids off when they were done. They enjoyed that!

I put drops of paint on their papers, told them to wait until I was OUT OF THE WAY(!!), and then they started swattin' the paint.

The kids loved hitting it over and over again, but I kind of liked it better when they hit each glob of paint only once or twice.

But as long as the kids had fun, that's all that matters!

Kool-Aid and Ice Cube Painting

Our science theme today was freezing and melting. So an obvious art project for that would be painting with colored ice cubes. But there's been so much out there already like that and I wanted to change it up a little. I read here about sprinkling kool-aid powder onto paper, then going over it with a regular ice cube. It didn't show any pictures so I had no idea how it would turn out. When I tried it at home quickly last night, I just used cherry and it looked really cool! So today I set out 5 different colors.

I had made regular ice cubes with a toothpick inserted in the middle. The kids sprinkled different colors of kool-aid on their paper,

and then slowly painted over it with an ice cube.

Unfortunately, if they used all the colors of kool-aid, they mostly got a brown painting. But I think I was the only one disappointed. The kids still loved it!

 And some turned out very colorfully.

The kids were excited to see the color just appear on their paper, since the powder is quite dull. And our room smelled soooo good all day long! Oh, but here's what happens if you "paint" too much with the ice cube:

Fun Fact: I know I usually only do fun facts when I share animal crafts, but for some reason I decided to google Kool-Aid and I found out that it was invented by Edwin Perkins in Hastings, Nebraska. To this day, Hastings celebrates Kool-Aid Days, a yearly festival that takes place the second weekend of August, which would be this coming weekend! Cool! (Or should I say Kool?)

Magnetic Paintings

We played around with magnets today. It was fun!

I knew I wanted to do an art project with magnets, kind of like marble painting, so I googled it to see what ideas were out there. I got the idea to use paper plates from Rockabye Butterfly. We used magnet wands with nuts and washers.

I thought having heavier metal objects would be better at dragging paint than something light like a paperclip. But some of the kids found it a little tough. So I just told them to take their time and go slowly. To start, I put blobs of paint onto a paper plate. (I let the kids pick two colors because if there were too many, it would end up just being brown.) They either put a nut or a washer on their plate.

Then they put the wand under the plate and dragged the nut or washer around the plate.

The design left behind was pretty cool.

The nuts left thinner lines and the washers made thicker ones. It was a fun way to combine science and art!

Paintings...With a Dash of Salt

Before I get to our beautiful art project, I want to show you what we did that led up to the project. We are doing a little science theme this week and today we did several experiments about dissolving. I got this idea from The Picky Apple. I brought in a few things for the kids to mix with water. I had three containers and the kids took turns and passed them around. We tried coffee:

Rice:

Magic Noodles:

Smarties (leftover from our Octopus craft):

Sugar and Salt, which you can't really see:

And white chocolate candy corn M&Ms:

Seriously:

Hey, I was just using what I had on hand. And BTW, these tasted awful. I got them because I love candy corn and my husband loves M&Ms. But no, no, no. So anyway, after all that, we ended up using the salt with our art. I saw this idea at The Joy of My Life. And although I don't think ours turned out as cool as theirs did, I still liked the results. We started by brushing water over white construction paper.

Then we painted with watered-down tempera paint.

Finally, we sprinkled regular table salt onto our paintings.

The salt made a really cool effect.

And as it dried it left some beautiful art.

I was hoping the salt would dissolve a little bit more, but it didn't. I started scraping it off, but it was too much work, so I left it. I actually really liked the technique of just painting on wet paper, so we might have to try this again without salt.

And maybe it was just the colors we chose. I think the pink, blue and purple are just stunning!