Fall Counting

Yesterday, we went on an exploration of some large public gardens in Vancouver called Van Dusen Gardens. I've been having a new parenting challenge, which  is that I have completely lost my voice. I feel just fine, but cannot speak. I never realized how much I rely on my voice to keep Auggie entertained. Being outside in the sun helped, but when we started to flag, I gave him the task of finding numbers, like, what can we find for "1" and for "2" and so on. It was a sort of numbers scavenger hunt and it was fun.

We took pictures and then the next morning did drawings. I put together a quick PDF and published our project to issue. Issuu is free, and if you can make a PDF (which you can also do in photoshop), you can make a little library of your own. You can read ours here or make your own.

This was Auggie's description of the our day and our project: "Well, it was really beautiful."

coffee filter sky

Update: we worked on this more this morning to make all different planets! This technique makes great suns, too.

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This is an idea that came from DLTK crafts for kids — they made a coffee filter planet earth.

We visited the planetarium this weekend and this was a fantastic after-activity. It's a great idea, thanks to DTLK Kids for the idea, which you can see here.

If you draw with felt pens on coffee filter paper and then spray or sprinkle water on your drawing, it gets nice and fuzzy. Perfect for making weather paintings, satellite images or even a collage. This would also be a good way to make a Foggy diorama.

The shape of the filters we have make a natural rainbow shape — cut off the sealed side and bottom and unfold. Cut circles for suns & planets (or just flatten them, if that's the kind of filter you have).

washi tape trains

We've hit some stumbling blocks in the drawing department at our home recently. My son will paint or do sculptures, but drawing (or especially writing) are very frustrating for him. He wants them to look "right" and when they don't he doesn't see the point, really.

We received a set of carte da disegno (drawing sheets) by enzo mari. These packs contain long sheets with drawing of empty train cars, freight ships, zoo cages as well as empty sheets. Partly the subject matter  of this set, combined with the clear drawing structure really launched a lot of drawing activity — it was great. We started with the freight ship and he drew black coal for each barge. Then for the train, he diligently gave each car some cargo — my favourite was the donut car (not pictured). 

When we used up the printed sheets, I made him some more with washi tape. You just need wheels (which, theoretically, your children could draw) and then you make the cars with long pieces of tape. He added some in for the track, too. We had a lot of fun with these and at the end, we also got one completely free-form train (bottom), which was a big step forward.

moving

I've moved most of my blogging over to my hundreds & thousands' studio site.

There is a knitting pattern for some Sunny-inspired keyhole scarves to come soon, and hopefully a few Windy goodies and updates to post. However, most of my posts about children's books, illustration, crafts, arts + crafts, easy cookery, knitting, everyday life are on my new blog, as well as typographic notes. Come visit me.

I am also maintaining my illustration blog, Auggie (which also has a blogroll of blogs I like and follow)  I've just been busy re-setting up my studio, but I'll be doing weekly posts again, soon.

Butterfly by Gwen, rock sculpture by Auggie