One of the favorite lessons in Art Lab for Kids is “Foamy Prints”. It is exciting to make your own stamp and the 4-6 year olds should have this fun experience too! How to adapt this lesson:

Adults:

Cut shapes from the foam if the child is not ready to use scissors. Use circles, squares, rectangles, ovals and shapes that the child requests.

Let the child peel off the backing and stick the shape onto the mat board.

Let the child make the marks in the foam with the ball point pen, having them check occasionally if they are pressing hard enough to feel the lines they are making with their fingers. Encourage dot making as almost everyone has success with that mark!

Use nontoxic ink pads and a good stack of newspaper under the paper which you are printing on. This cushion of newspaper really helps make a good print!

Baby wipes are wonderful for cleaning the stamps up and little fingers! If you have requests for lessons from the book which you would like to present to preschoolers, just leave me a comment!  Check out our facebook page too for other ideas!

I have had a lot of feedback on making the lessons from Art Lab for Kids useful for preschoolers. Well, I am happy to announce that Art Lab for Little Kids is on it’s way this spring to book sellers everywhere. In the mean time I will be posting here with some “helps” for using the first book: Art Lab for Kids with the younger set. I hope you will check back often!

It’s sometimes hard to choose which materials are the best fit for your work. I suggest that you try them all. Be daring and start a drawing in ink, then add some watercolor. Let that dry and then move to pastels. Even if you are not happy with the final piece of artwork, you will have experimented with the materials and can try the same (or different) subject matter again. No ideas of what to draw with ink? Let a scribble be your guide! Most of all – have fun with it. 

A wonderful afternoon at the Eric Carle Museum in Western MA! Back in October we hit the road and ventured out to the beautiful countryside of Western MA. There was a lovely crowd of families and children ready to make monsters …

Everyone got into the action! Grandmas, grandpas, aunts and friends – not to mention all the kids who really embraced the process. So much fun! Thank you to the Eric Carle Museum!

First gather supplies: brayers for inking your objects and smoothing ink + neat stuff from around your house or studio! Use waterbased block printing ink for the best results.

Roll the ink out onto a flat surface then using the brayer, ink up your object! Press down onto your object with good pressure to insure a great impression! Have fun!

Grab some crayons or oil pastels and go outside and draw your house! Try using some watercolor paints over the top of your drawing to add a summer’s blue sky or some rain clouds. Use plenty of water and spread the color across the lines you have already drawn. The waxy/oil crayons will resist the water and your lines will still show. It’s fun to paint outside!

So happy to report that Art Lab for Kids is getting great reviews all around the web! Here’s a little group of links so you can read and hear what some lovely people are saying:
Over at Maya*Made and Poppytalk , Irene over at Bloesom Kids and Gabrielle Blair over at Babble. Also if you want to hear me answer questions and talk about the book, art and my life as an artist I was interviewed over at Artistically Speaking  by Rebecca Parsons and Craft Mojo with Mark Lipinkski.

There are a lot of events this Spring for me and Art Lab for Kids. Most are centered around New England – but stay tuned for the fall, we will be heading out west! Check the events page for upcoming workshops and book signings!

Art Lab for Kids is now available through Amazon, BN, Quarry and me! It’s shipping from everywhere and available at your favorite booksellers. Click over to the “buy” tab to purchase. There are some upcoming events for the book being added to the site on Monday so stay tuned for some fun!