Bringing it Home: Creative Hour with the Kids

Bead Soup Blog Party has begun!! I can only show a teaser of what I made with the wonderful bead soup that Wanda sent me because I'm scheduled to show my creations tomorrow... Go here to see the list of today's revelers, and check back there every day this week for links everyone else's entries -- there are 97 participants, so a dozen or so will be revealing their gorgeous creations each day. Today's sampling has been absolutely fabulous, and I can't wait to see more!!

Octopus' Garden by Lazarus

In other news, the kids are on summer break, and although I'm tempted to let them live an entirely unstructured summer, I know that some structure is better for keeping their minds and bodies active. So every day we will have several designated hours for focused activity; my first idea (surprise) was Creative Hour, which happens at 11:00 in the morning and will involve anything from drawing or painting to clay modeling to collecting materials for assemblages. Earlier this week we did jewelry-making techniques: Maggie and I did beading (and that's when I made my Bead Soup creations) while Lazarus hammered on some copper wire scraps I'd saved for experimentation. He wasn't entirely pleased with the results (he was trying to make an outline of a spaceship... doesn't render so well in copper wire, especially when you start hammering) but had fun and says he wants to try it again. And that is the point of this summer experiment: just play -- don't worry about the end result, just have fun doing it.

Today's project is Father's Day cards that they can take to their dad's house tomorrow. Both are doing pictures of fish and other sea creatures, a perfect summer theme... Aside from the scan here of Lazarus' picture (which I LOVE), I haven't gotten photos of any of the kids' creations yet because they keep moving them around the house. Another activity will be painting rocks, a wonderful idea I got from Kim at Queen of Arts, so I asked Maggie to pick us out three smooth stones to paint and I gathered several more small ones to make some inspirational message stones that I can pass out randomly. If I can pin them down I'll try to get pictures...