Tots on Tour: Reindeer Collage

When I walked into the East Gallery, I stopped in my tracks and then proceeded with a huge smile today. In all of my years teaching my monthly Tots on Tour class, I've never been in such a gorgeous space! Our normal art room in the Education Center, which is nice, is under renovation/expansion until early 2015. In the interim, I am running classes from other spaces at GFS for a few months. Today, we are in a huge space with leather couches, amazing floors, beautiful murals and surrounded by windows. Breathtaking. 

Tots on Tour is always a fun time. Here are 5 young artists all set to work.  They look like models in their pretty clothing- 2 for Crew Cuts and 3 for Gap Kids :) We had to put aprons on to protect those nice outfits!

I read a story to the group with the best backdrop and demo-ed our mixed media lesson about reindeer.

It was a smaller group today with the first morning session. To be expected with the holidays looming- but we had great conversation about all sorts of things from animals to reindeer and fried zucchini. 

Here is Nina writing her name on her work so nicely. 

Talking to the children, meeting so many neat parents and working with a fantastic group of volunteers makes each month magical. Grounds for Sculpture IS magical. Carrie and I talked about how we have to stop and just be mesmerized sometimes because the grounds have changed so much since we joined the staff. Things are so different but the heart is the same- beating hard and glowing in a way unique just to GFS.

For the project, we created a wet-on- wet watercolor background using my fav liquid watercolors. We added collaged papers into the background and created a reindeer with assorted paper. The paper crimpers munched the legs to give them texture and all pieces were glued down. 

My favorite part of today was actually observing one of the children excitedly take pictures with her camera while on our tour. I thought how awesome her parents were to give her a camera so that she could view the grounds (with which she is very familiar) with a new lens.

Last month as the 5th graders explored GFS with their cameras, I found myself really valuing switching up perspectives and empowering children to adventure and capture their perspective via photography. 

Have a great weekend!