The Pop-Up Book Project

This is a fun activity for kids ages 3 and up. The materials: used folders and paper (back side can be used for drawing objects), jumbo crayons (for toddlers), oil pastels, colored pencils, scissors (use child friendly ones or better yet leave cutting chores to adults) tape and glitter glue. Time: 1 1/2 hours (because of the cutting and pasting!)

If you have enough preparation time it would be nice to get children to write their own stories and make their own illustrations. Most of the kids I worked with have made their own storybooks printed and animated on disks! I love exploring themes like heroes, nature, animals and things that they love and fear and how to conquer it using art as a medium. Art is the best medium (art therapy) for anybody (including adults) to express their fear and anxiety and help them overcome it.

For this activity, I demonstrated how to make pop-up books using black cartolina (cut and assembled as pages) and pasted on an old folder. The cartolina pages were glued together and cut and folded to make their drawings 'pop up'. The kids made their own drawings which I cut and they paste on their pages. Everybody collaborated on the book cover and had fun decorating it!



Isa, age 3


Caitlin, age 5


Chiara, age 5


Caryn, age 7

Sorbetes!

Art workshops are not just fun informal sessions on learning a craft but it is also one of the great opportunities to impart important lessons on culture. I always advocate the importance of understanding cultural traditions and the many layers that people and communities add to these traditions like fiestas (feast of saints) which may be mistaken as some as fanatical and idolatrous but, for those who observe it, a fiesta is some form of communal celebration and thanksgiving.

The terminologies used for anything local as 'inferior' like the local ice cream as 'dirty ice cream' perpetuates this mistaken belief. In a workshop with kids this week I again introduced the yummy sorbetes, the locally made ice cream that uses fruits in season and coconut milk and peddled in a colorful cart is now almost a thing of the past. The ice cream cart vendors I see are big commercial players now plying the streets with built-in commercial jingle on a loop:


Kids can recreate their own version of that local colorful sorbetes cart using the basic geometric guide: make a circle for a wheel, draw rectangle behind it, draw wooden legs and handle, and from there they can now design their very own ice cream on wheels!


Chiara, age 5


Caryn, age 7

And from the CreativeKids studio in Alabang:

. . . my student Sophie, age 6, going through the process with such powerful lines and colors!

Lesson: The local ice cream is not dirty. It is clean and affordable and possibly made by the vendor himself we affectionately call Manong who will not hesitate to share with you how he made that yummy delight only if you'd care to listen . . .

October is Museums and Galleries month. GO and take the time to visit one!

Children's Art

Lex, age 6, was one of my students at CreativeKids last summer. Lex spent his vacation in Manila and saw the CreativeKids hands-on session on TV and decided to spend the remaining week of his vacation learning to draw and paint!

Lex made a macro Hibiscus (painting a detail of an actual flower), fruits in a bowl (one of the best and basic ways of teaching colors), an imagined scenery outside of a window, and capturing the image of an actual bird! Lex's father expressed his initial reservation about Lex's capability to draw and paint and this type of apprehension is shared by many parents and adults. An art workshop would quickly dispel such notions because everybody has the capability to express his world in the art medium that he wanted and is most comfortable with: visual, literary or the performing arts, including arts and crafts (creative projects like toy boxes, bedroom lamp, clocks, painted shirts, etc.)

I promised Lex and his father, who observed the sessions, that I will feature Lex in my blog so here it is, Lex. I am sorry if this came late though. And I hope and wish that you are now doing more fun and artistic renderings of your world and keep us posted about it ;-)

Still Life Flowers

Chantrice, 11
acrylic on canvas

An innovative work using cotton buds and acrylic paints using only the primary colors of blue, red, and yellow plus white. The child has no mixing plates and has to dot (pointillist technique) her drawing and paint directly on her canvas! This is a good alternative when the painting materials are not available during a workshop.