Marker Monday - Spring Break

Last week was Spring Break from school for Yip and Yap. Since we had just went to Taos last month we just spent the week at home. We declared Spring Break as Art Week in our house! I told the boys we would do any sort of art project they wanted. After combing some craft books for inspiration these projects are what they came up with!

Marble Painting

We taped down pieces of paper on the bottom of a box and dropped paint covered marbles inside. The boys rolled the marbles back and forth to create straight paint paths across the paper.

String Painting

I enjoyed this project because it is great for every age.

Watered down paint, dip in some string and go to town.

African Thumb Pianos

The boys found the plans for a thumb piano in one of our books and luckily it was pretty easy. I cut all the wood while the boys sanded. The fender of a Jeep sure works well for a workbench doesn't it? 

Basically, you cut two rectangles and glue 1" cubes between them at the four corners. We used ABC blocks and they worked just fine. Then you add three cross pieces along the top.

 

The outside cross pieces are glued down, the front being slightly thicker than the back. The middle piece is attached with screws at each end. Once you've slid the Popsicle sticks under the middle piece and adjusted them to different lengths the screws are tightened to hold the sticks in place.

Then we decorated them! These have a surprisingly pleasant sound when played.

Paper Mache Bottle People

I actually chose this project just because I hadn't done paper mache in such a long time....and I think it's kinda fun! But soon after I started Yap wanted to make one too. We used a ball of paper for the head and pipe cleaners for the arms and covered em' up!

Mine is the big one...the shamrock superhero. Yip didn't want to make one of these but he sure did want to tell me how I should make mine. So the Shamrock Hero brings colors to all the places in the world with no colors with her laser eyes. The design was Yip's....I just did the grunt work :)

Please excuse her pipe cleaner hair....she's having a Bad Hair Day!

Yap did a great job on his! It's hard to paint on details so he used a Sharpie marker which worked just fine.

The Christmas Go Cart

And finally, for their last art project of the week, they painted their go cart DR helped them build on Christmas Day. They had a ball when I released them with a can of spray paint!!

Overall we had a great Spring Break even though the furthest we got from home was the town park!

How do you spend your Spring Break?