ArtMix Blog

Clay Penguins!           At ArtMix we made clay penguins! I learned a lot from this experience. As usual I spent most of my time with the youngest student, Frederick. I discovered that kids at this age do not understand the challenge of rolling clay into a ball. The problem that occurred the most was the kids wanted to make the clay balls into cylinders. They couldn't understand the actual rolling of the hands part. When making the penguins body and after they squished the clay balls, we asked them to pull their penguins body to make the bodies more of an oval instead of a circle, which brought another issue! What happened is they wouldn't stop pulling! So instead of a clay oval it was clay string! We would have to re-start the whole process! It was a large majority of chaos. A great day at ArtMix!!   Frederick Painting!  Regina's Penguin!

Caterpillar Party! Today at ArtMix I got to go to a Caterpillar party!! It is very similar to the Butterfly projects ArtMix does there. You get a Caterpillar cut-out, put it in a tray, then get wiffel balls (no more than 3-4) and dip those into paint then you get this really cool pattern/design on your cut-up caterpillar! They paint their canvas and they make their flowers using glue cut-out flowers in different sizes and jewels. The clouds are a hand made stamp which is really cool and the butterflies we hot-glue on. It is super cute and the kiddos loved it! That was my adventure at ArtMix. 

The Project The Drawing Before the Party! Rocket Ship Birthday Party!   Today was Octave's 3rd birthday party! I know what you are thinking "Wait boys can have birthday parties at ArtMix too?!" Yes! They can!! It was a small party, I actually knew Octave from last year, he would do Pop-Inns when I was teaching a class. Their were 7 in total and the age group was 2-4. It was tough to get them to pay attention not going to lie, some of the kiddos didn't want to paint but near the end we got them!  Party!! Jean Philippe making his sky

 Sparkly Butterfly Birthday Party! I had the pleasure of being a part of the Sparkly Butterfly Birthday Party for Savanna's 6th birthday. There were 12 kiddos and it was a different age group for me. 6-7 year olds is very different from 2-3 year olds. Mostly I was helping set up for the part and helping the birthday girl's mother in anyway I can. I was working mostly with pop-ins and I had 2 little girls that happen to be the age group I usually work with, they were a lot of fun and they put paint everywhere! At the end of the day I ended up having paint on my face! As you can see in the pictures cleaning is a big part of my job! I spent a good 20 minuets cleaning toys and rollers and I also had to clean up after the party which takes a long time because kids are messy simply put. Another great day at ArtMix!

Thatcher's Painting: Ducks and Art?! Yes Please!         Today at ArtMix I helped teach the paint with me class. I had 3 students and our biggest problem today was the stamps and properly holding a writing utensil! When we use stamps I am supposed to cover the stamp with paint and have my student's hold the stamp and I help them keep it down and keep it from smearing. This is difficult because 3 year old's get distracted very easily and they like to bounce the stamp around the paper which makes it smear, they don't understand you have to have patients. We count to 3 and up! Beautiful clouds. Holding a writing utensil is always a struggle for the little ones. I asked Kelly (my supervisor), how do you know if a child is right/left handed and she told me she would hold out the paintbrush to see which hand they grab it with and watch the child to see if they are struggling or succeeding. Regina's Duck:         After we finished o...