December Grandview Program and Art Co-op

This month at Grandview, we did something a little different.  Usually we do an educational program about a specific topic (mammals, birds, fish, fossils, etc..) and then do a hands on activity related to that topic.  For the holidays though we thought it would be fun to do something different.  We did a program on crafts that could be made with things found in nature.

There were several different things available for the children to create their Nature Crafts such as pine cones, acorns, tree cookies, pine branches, sticks and twigs plus craft items like jingle bells, pom poms, paint, pipe cleaners, etc.. to turn them into an ornament.  There was even scented wax they could dip some creations into, and my boys figured out they could make their stuff smell like pine by slipping some pieces of the branch underneath their trees. There were several different ornaments displayed as examples of the types of things they could do, but they were encouraged to use their imagination and create whatever they wanted to create.  Some of the children made several different things, and some just worked on one project the entire time (Anthony worked on one the whole time.) They were very creative and came up with some very good projects.

After our lunch break we moved on to art.  Our artist of the month was Alexander Calder.  The project was to make a mobile using pipe cleaners and foam shapes.  We did a Christmas theme and the children made six different shapes that reminded them of Christmas such as snowflakes, dove, present, candy cane, star, stocking, tree, etc..  We used tape to secure the shapes, or just poked the pipe cleaners through the foam.  This was a fun project and turned out really cool.  The hardest part for the children was connecting the 6 pipe cleaners together, but once that was figured out it was pretty easy.

Happy Homeschooling