creative jewish mom

Drawing Crafts For Kids: Recycled Cardboard Flowers

Helping kids develop their drawing skills through crafting (rather than just drawing on a piece of paper) makes the whole endeavor so much more interesting, and hopefully more attractive to the child whose drawing skills could use a little attention! With just a few simple ideas up your sleeve, you can spend a little pocket of time with your kids encouraging them to draw and create!

With almost no crafting going on around here lately on behalf of mommy's busy schedule, I finally had an "enough is enough" moment and got my seven year old to sit down for a little drawing session before running outside to his bike. And the results are just too sweet, and just in time for Shavous, when we decorate the house with plants and flowers.

Oh, and of course part of this little project is also encouraging kids to develop their dexterity with scissors, also an important skill to develop!

You'll Need:

• markers
• recycled cardboard food boxes
• something round, we used soda bottle tops and the top from a container of techina

How To: Using the bottle top, trace around it to form the center of the flower. This step gives kids confidence as they have a starting point that looks good....especially helpful for those lacking confidence with their drawing! Make little scallops around the perimeter of the circle and continue making row upon row to form a flower. Make as many as you can, they're so cute!

You can use your flowers to make:

• a garland
• napkin rings: Glue to tp tubes cut to size, or cut slits in the center of the flower and thread a ribbon through the slits
• a mobile: Glue flowers onto a piece of colored card stock, and cut out leaving a small border. Pierce small holes in the tops of the flowers and hang from an embroidery hoop with thread.

Get Out The Paints Mommy!

I have to confess — I have not been encouraging my kids to paint nearly enough, and I am now in the process of rectifying that lack by getting out the paints and including painting in more projects. Are you with me? Forget about all the mess, we've got to do it! And who knows, maybe my kids will inspire me!

Learning to hold the brush properly and learning how to apply paint are in themselves good skills, not to mention that painting certainly helps build fine (and not so fine, with large brushes) motor skills, which are very important for every child.

Fortunately, my seven year old is more than happy to participate in our new "get out the paints" program, phew! Last night he painted some elements that we'll use to make some artful trees for Tu B'Shevat, though not exactly sure how it will come together just yet! 

That's it for now, today is voting day in Israel, and I'm off to cast my precious vote! 

Helping Kids Use Their Brains—A Little Lesson In Parental Involvement

What is this you may ask? Well if you read Hebrew, then you will understand that this was a little exercise my ten year old daughter was asked to do as part of a low pressure art competition of sorts to kick off a new learning unit called "Moach Mavrik", namely sharp minds. Wondering myself what they'll be learning!

For those who don't read Hebrew, I'll just have to explain it a bit. In Hebrew, a phrase meaning something like a "sharp mind" literally means a clean and shiny mind. So for their class unit about sharp minds, my daughter chose to do a play on the Hebrew words by showing a sparkling clean brain (drawn by mom) with a bunch of cleaning products! And even smarter, she drew a little bubble with the brain saying "at long last I feel shiny clean!"

I just love the little illustrations, and the fact that on her own she figured out the whole presentation once I'd drawn a (not so great) brain for her, including making the brain have dimension by gluing it to some small wooden blocks.

The lesson I learned here? Sometimes when you help kids out with their projects by doing just exactly what they ask of you, and no more, you'll actually be helping them exercise even more creativity as they don't get hung up on the part of the project that they feel they can't do. Food for thought, right?

Watercolor Painting With Pencil Drawing

Isn't this little watercolor painting sweet, and so perfect for summer? Truthfully my daughter painted this over a year ago, and we just came upon it, which is perfect timing, as I really didn't have anything to share with you today!

Watercolors are a great medium for all ages, and kids can produce nice works of art by simply filling in a pencil drawing with a nice combination of bright colors. Simple geometric shapes always look great, or something with just a bit more detail like this simple Jerusalem scene. I also love the geometric border at the bottom, the addition of which results in an exciting combination of shapes and patterns. Give it a try!

More Dimensional Drawing With Lines!

Yesterday I realized that the technique we used to make the three-dimensional hand drawings, here, could most certainly be used for a variety of shapes, right? This technique is great for satisfying that desire to doodle, since you can draw something just about any size and on any little scrap of paper that happens to be hanging around! Enjoy!

Drawing Exercise: How To Draw A Hand With Dimension

Here's a fun drawing exercise that's great to have under your hat (or up you sleeve) when the kids are in need of an activity, and you're in need of an activity that doesn't require fancy supplies or make a mess! I saw this idea a while back on Craft Schooling Sunday (will provide the link when I have a spare moment to look for it) and finally got around to trying it out! I drew the pink version and my daughter did the versions below.

How To: 

Trace your hand on a piece of paper. Draw lines across the paper, and when you reach the outline of the hand, make a curved line the spans the area within the hand. Continue in the same manner until the whole hand is filled! As you can see in my example, the fingers were the most successful part of the drawing as the lines were the most curved. Enjoy!

Melted Crayon Art On Rocks

Here's a great little craft activity that my kids loved — drawing with crayons on hot rocks! Yes, not recommended for little ones, but so much fun! I had my kids hold a crayon in one hand and  a spoon in the other so that they'd use the spoon for turning the rock if necessary!

It's not so simple to draw anything complicated on small rocks that we had, so I'd recommend using the biggest rocks you can find and creating some really special works of art!

You'll Need:

• rocks, with at least one flat surface preferably
• crayons
• an oven or possibly some strong hot summer sun

How To:

Heat up your rocks in an oven set to say 350F or 200C. Carefully remove the hot rocks from the oven and place them in a tray of some kind that was not in the oven, at least the tray won't be hot and dangerous for the little ones! You do want the rocks to be good and hot so they'll stay hot, and an oven does the job well, but if you work quickly stones heated in the hot mid-day sun could work well too. (Let me know if you try it!) Draw simple designs on the rocks with the crayons, and enjoy, it's really so much !

Thanks so much to The Artful Parent for this great idea, which Jean posted about here.

Drawing On Baking Paper!

Drawing on baking paper is a fun way to encourage your kids to draw, as variety is always part of any recipe for success! I've been trying to encourage a few of my kids to draw, as for some reason the desire just doesn't come naturally, who would have thought?

This lovely pattern was actually drawn by my daughter, who does love to draw, and she said she started drawing the pattern and just couldn't stop! I think it looks like a great scarf, and as a fun project you could even encourage your kids to imagine that they're fabric designers and to draw a pattern for a scarf on their square of paper.

In case you're not familiar with baking paper, it is in fact similar to tracing paper, but I love the fact that it comes in big square sheets (at least here) that aren't too big for a kid to handle! Plus, here in Israel tracing paper is on the expensive side, so baking paper is a very reasonable alternative.....and in some cases even better as it's heavier. And of course you can easily pick some up on your next trip to the store. Took me years to figure this one out, and now when I need some tracing paper I just head for the kitchen!

Note: An American reader just wrote to inform or rather remind me that baking paper is called parchment paper in the Unites States. Though come to think of it, I remember parchment paper being more creme colored than the baking paper we have here.........of  course creme could be lovely too!

Decorate Canvas Tote Bags With Fabric Markers

Canvas tote bags are great for crafting and simply drawing on them with fabric markers could be a really fun take-home party project, or gift bag just about any time. Purim is just around the corner, and my daughter and I had fun making these to use either on Purim for transporting little gifts, or even as gift bags themselves. We're not quite sure yet, but we still have a week to decide! In any case, these bags were only 3 shekels (about 75 cents) each, so there will definitely be some more in our future!

You'll Need:

• inexpensive blank canvas tote bags
• fabric markers: we used Tulip fabric markers, Tulip neon fabric markers,  and some Crayola medium point fabric markers
• a pencil and eraser
• freezer paper to iron on to the inside for stability, or a piece of cereal box cardboard

How To:

Iron a piece of freezer paper to the inside to stabilize the fabric and prevent ink from leaking through to the other side, or  simply cut a piece of cardboard to fit snuggly inside the bag. Draw your design with pencil and then go over it with fabric markers. Set aside to dry and set according to manufacturers instructions. 

I don't think anyone can ever really have too many tote bags, so these would be welcomed gifts anytime!

Watercolor Painting Birthday Card

This watercolor still-life painting birthday card was made by my daughter a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to frame it! I grew up making birthday cards, so I'm passing along the tradition to my kids, and have finally realized that if I want them to make traditional cards that open, then well I need to give them a blank card. Not difficult really, and together with some watercolor paints and a pencil, well the resulting works of art can certainly be sweet.

With all the scrapbooking and paper supplies out there today which enable one to make cards that look store bought, it's time to get back to basics and encourage the creativity that comes with basic drawing and painting. As you can see if you've been following this blog, I've been trying to do that a bit more in our home, and with great results, so do join us as we continue draw and paint our way through the year, you'll be so glad you did.