Ordovician Sea Life

Once again taking inspiration from Nigel Marven, Leif asked to do a project with orthocones and sea scorpions that he saw during Nigel's travels to the ordovician period. In this episode, he swam with chain mail and a scuba suit and encountered these creatures. Leif painted the background, traced the orthocone pattern, then cut and pasted black coral. I traced, cut, and detailed the animals so he could paste them on. Great fun!

Dinosaur Breeding Grounds

This multimedia dinosaur project features breeding pairs of stegosaurus, triceratops, allosaurus, ultrasaurus, parasaurolophus, quetzalcoatlus, and one macroplatus which was caught and is being eaten by the allosaurus pair. Leif painted the background, traced the animals, and I detailed them so he could glue them on. Notice that each female is guarding an egg clutch. Yet another fun and very successful art project at Leif's suggestion.

Triceratops Pumpkin

Leif and I carved a pumpkin this morning, and he wanted it to be a triceratops. We scooped out the guts of the pumpkin, then Leif traced and cut the triceratops from his dinosaur book. I traced his cutout onto the pumpkin and carved the details of the dinosaur. Then we put a candle in it and took a picture. Although it isn't visible in this picture, there are pumpkin seeds glued on, lining the curve of the triceratops' plated skull.

Cuttlefish Project

Still taking inspiration from the IMAX film, Leif wanted to do a project with cuttlefish. Note the cuttlefish eating the crab, just like in the film. Also a sea turtle eating a jellyfish, a swordfish eating a porcupine fish and a crab dining on a limpet. My favorite is the giant clam; Leif traced, cut and colored it all himself, all I did was outline with black marker. He also colored the highlights in the turtle's shell with various shades of green. He also traced the swordfish and the limpet; I am impressed at how much he is doing on his own without help since we started doing projects together in January!

Chambered nautilus

Leif saw these magnificent creatures in the IMAX film "Under the Sea" and also in his Zoology book. He painted a background while I traced the nautiluses, then he wanted red kelp like in the movie, so I cut some tissue paper which he glued onto the paper once the paint dried. I detailed the natiluses and Leif put them onto the painting. These are really cool animals!

Shark Project

This was a multi-day project; first we went to the library to find a couple of books on sharks, then Leif picked out the ones he wanted. I traced them, then we glued the tracing paper onto cardstock to make patterns. While I was cutting out and detailing the sharks and swordfish, Leif mixed blue and green paint, then painted the deep ocean. He also cut some rocks for the sharks to hide behind. Emma Kate and her Mom also helped us with his project. In this project are great white sharks, reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, basking sharks, leopard sharks, zebra sharks, whale sharks, tiger sharks swordfish, and a mosaic shark I can't name.

Dragon Project

Leif decided he wanted to do a dragon project. This actually took a couple of days. He painted the background and cut trees and rivers, then picked a dragon from google images and decided he wanted rainbow colors. He then chose three colors per dragon to fill in details. Then, he wanted to make fish for the dragons to eat, and lastly, he used tissue paper to create the fire for the dragons' breath.

Devonian Period Sea Life

Again inspired by Nigel Marven, Leif wanted to make a project with Dunkleosteus's and what Nigel called 'ironing board sharks'. Leif painted the background and cut the coral, plus pasted on all the critters after I made them for him. I particularly like the green fish!

Cretaceous Period Sea Creatures

Leif and I watched BBC’s “Chased by Dinosaurs, Sea Monsters”. As Nigel Marvin travels back in time to dive with prehistoric sea creatures, we learned all about the 7 Deadliest Seas, from the Devonian to the Cretaceous, which inspired us to do a Cretaceous Sea project. In this project are Mosasaurs, Pterodons, an Ichthysaurus, Plesiosaurs, ‘killer fish’ and Giant Sea Squid and Giant Sea Turtles. Leif thinks Nigel Marven is the ‘coolest dude’ on earth!

Leaves in a Pond

I gave Leif a sticker sheet of fall leaves today, he decided they should go in a pond to be reflected upon and enjoyed.

Scarlet Macaw

Even though Leif tells me this inspiration doesn’t come from Diego, who ever heard of a scarlet macaw before this tv show? LOL I was very happy to help him make this beautiful project.

Pelican Project

Given the crisis in the Gulf, I showed Leif some of the animals affected by the crisis. He wanted to make an oil-dipped pelican so we searched google images, but he fell in love with this Chilean pelican instead.

Bald Eagle

One of Leif’s favorite exhibits at the Roger Williams Zoo was the bald eagles. He wanted, of course, to do a bald eagle project to honor these magnificent birds.

Screech Owl

Sitting on the porch last night, we had the opportunity to hear several owls hooting at each other. Leif asked me to look them up, so we searched google images for owl pix. Leif was inspired by a screech owl, so this bird was born today of a google image.

Hummingbird

Today on our feeder were several hummingbirds, many different colors and shapes. Leif wanted to do a hummingbird project and made up imaginary colors. It doesn’t resemble anything we saw today but I think its brilliant!

Forest Project

Inspired by the moose sighting on our street that we both missed, Leif wanted to do a forest project. Sounded good to me, we used stickers and traced other animals. In this project are deer, turtle, fish, flying ducks, and interestingly enough... no moose.. :)

Cormorant

One of the highlights of the day was seeing a cormorant dive for its food, coming up with a beautiful, shimmering fish. When we got home, of course, our mission was to recreate the cormorant. Awesome!

Blue Jay Project

On our hike the day before, blue jays were all over the place, trying to steal everyone’s food. Leif thought a blue jay project would be appropriate today.

Panda Project

Seemingly out of nowhere, Leif wanted to do a panda project. Mixed media, Leif cut and marked the bamboo all himself, plus glued all the pieces together. Very lovely!

Free Form Drawing

Leif, feeling a sudden urge of independence, wants to do his own art project, by himself. He selects broad stroke crayons as his medium and goes to town. He mentioned the sun in the upper left hand corner, but said the animal was a secret. I didn’t press.

Toucan

After seeing a PBS special on rainforest animals, Leif decided he wanted to do a toucan project. We researched images on google, spending lots of time until Leif found exactly the one he wanted. He was quite pleased with the results.

Dinosaur Volcano Project

Inspired by the awesome exhibits at the SEE museum the previous day, Leif combines the dinosaurs we saw with the knowledge he gained from the volcano book we read. The result is a masterpiece in fingerpaint, tempera paint, tracing paper, and FUN!.

Peacock Project

Leif’s most favorite bird all day was the peacock. He was all about making one for an art project after we got home from the zoo. Why not??

Flamingo

Inspired by the flamingo exhibit today, Leif decided he wanted to make a flamingo this evening. It came out completely awesome under his expert guidance!

Red, Red Robin

This morning I mentioned to Leif that the surest sign of spring is seeing a robin, with his beautiful red breast. Sure enough, out the window at breakfast, we spotted a robin, which inspired this art project.

River Project

Leif wants to do a river scene, so we check out several of his books and pick out animals to trace and paint. After careful selection, he paints the background and picks the animals.

Puffin Project

After reading a book about arctic animals the night before, Leif is inspired to create a puffin bird project.

Ocean Masterpiece

This multi-day extravaganza was a delight to make. First Leif identified what sorts of creatures he wanted in his project, and I traced and cut patterns to make them out of colored and white construction paper. Leif glued tissue paper coral and seaweed, then glued the creatures in place. I love his sense of linear motion! He then asked me to broad-stroke crayon blue water in between. the creatures, seaweed and coral. For the bottom, he used stickers for shells.

Bird Project

This multi-day project consisted of a painted sky and ground, construction- and tissue-paper tree, and multiple birds. We had fun tracing birds out of various books and magazines, then we painted one side using q-tips, then Mom detailed them with black magic marker according to Leif's specifications. I particularly like the tissue paper of the vulture nest, that was entirely Leif's idea.

Crouching Bunny, Hidden Jellybean

Even though we will be celebrating Easter the Sunday following the traditional Easter holiday, when we saw jellybeans at the grocery store today we had to make an Easter project. I suggested a bunny, Leif said he wanted to hide the bunny in the jellybeans to protect him from 'dangerous creatures'. I cut out a bunny pattern for him, he painted it with tempera paints and q-tips, then he he glued it on green construction paper background. Lastly, he glued the jellybeans around the bunny as camouflage.

Chicks in a spring nest

Leif and decided that because spring was upon us (judging by date and not by the rains!) we should do a spring bird project. Leif fingerpainted green leaves on yellow paper, which we glued onto a brown background. Then he glued white cotton balls for chicks with googly eyes and orange paper beaks. We then used FiberOne cereal glued to a brown paper "nest".

Goldfinch

Today's project was a spring bird, Leif chose the bird because spring is coming. We google image searched to find the perfect bird to copy and viola, here's our project. We also put up a shelf today to host Leif's entire aviary. The birds all look great hanging out together!

Zoo project

This idea came right from dear Leif, he asked if we could make a 'zoo project'. I asked him to describe how we'd do it, he said he wanted to take pictures from his magazines and glue them onto a painted background. Sounds good!

He used two colors for the background using a wide brush. While it was drying, he picked various animals (and one human observer!) from his Animal Baby, National Geographic Kids, and Your Big Backyard magazines. After I cut them out, we blocked out where each animal was to go, then he pasted them on.

Black-capped chickadee

More toilet paper tube art. This was after a day of wicked powder skiing and a huge homemade Italian dinner. Leif crashed pretty hard that evening!

Snowman

This was a crazy powder day up at Jay Peak. We got stuck in the driveway, flagged down a stranger to push, they got stuck too. Tow truck hauled both of us out, then we couldn't get up the 242 pass.

Waited in the Big Jay lot for a tow truck to pass and all the cars to come down that couldn't make it up, then we went for it again. No go. So we decided to make a snowman instead. And chocolate chip cookies too. The snowman has broccoli for eyes, carrot nose, twig mouth, and mardi gras beads of course.

Mardi Gras Mask

Mardi gras mask making at Jay Peak. Leif didn't want to do his face (I wouldn't either!) so we did his hand instead. Note the safari animals!

African Project

Leif wanted to do a project about Africa. This was a multi-day project as he finger and brush-painted the background, then we traced some animals out of two of his animal encyclopedias. Then we pained the tracing paper and glued them onto the background. I used a black sharpie to define edges. Lastly, Leif wanted tissue paper leaves and shrubs which we pasted onto the background. Up in the left corner are meerkats which get somewhat lost in the brown but are nonetheless cute!

Ostrich

Today we made an ostrich. He needed cotton ball wings since paper just wasn't going to cut it. Leif decided it was a girl ostrich, hence the eyelashes.

Pileated Woodpecker

So what art project shall we do today, Leif? Mom, I want to make a woodpecker. A Google image search brought up several interesting kinds, but the pileated woodpecker caught his attention. How much fun is this, to use a discarded toilet paper roll, and turn it into a replica of a living creature?

If I had to do it again, I'd leave a band of white before the black on the beak part, to contrast the head from the black body. I'm sure there will be plenty of practice, we've an ostrich, a chickadee, and a rooster on deck.

Dinosaur Mixed Media

This several-day project was loads of fun. We took dino patterns from our same library book (too bad its due soon!), broad-stroke crayoned the backgrounda, added a tissue-paper mudhole at Leif's request, then stuck 3-toned tissue-paper to our dinosaurs and pasted them on.

Leif wanted a troodon and several pterydactyls that were not in the book so we found them on google image search and created our own patterns. The trees were scrapbook paper pasted right on.

Vulture

This little beauty was Leif's request, he's all about African animals so the vulture is an inevitability as its a part of African life. We had no brown construction paper so this time the body is made out of tissue paper.

I am the Walrus

Our same January art book had an idea for a walrus mixed media creation. We watercolored the white background, pasted it onto a blue background, pasted cotton balls, then sponge painted the walrus. What animal is complete without its googly eyes though?

Whale Ocean

Taking inspiration again from the "Mailbox Friends Arts/Crafts", we copied patterns of whales to paste for a whale project. We used blue fingerpaint to create an ocean, waxed paper for the waves, and we cut out orca, beluga, sperm, and humpback whale patterns using construction paper and glued them to the ocean background. This project took us two days to complete between background, patterns, waves, and whales.

What is really striking to my untrained art-eyes is how linear Leif pasted all the whales, they are either exactly horizontal or exactly vertical.

Hyacinth Macaw

Since we had so much fun with the penguin, I asked Leif if he'd like to make another bird. I suggested a macaw thinking he'd want to do the scarlet macaw so popular with Diego, but he seemed to remember the Hyacinth macaw at the Stone Zoo so that's what we made instead.

Penguin

Leif and I made a penguin using a toilet paper tube, construction paper, and googly eyes. We took the inspiration from the January 2000 version of "Mailbox Arts and Crafts" that showed us how. We had so much fun we decided there would be a lot more birds to follow.