Here,Now: Artsy Partsy, Class 1

I saw an ad on Facebook about a place called Artsy Partsy yesterday and after looking into it for about 5 seconds I decided to sign Dakota up. The session began this morning so I had to think quickly and it looked like fun so I figured why not? When I told her about the class last night she seemed pretty excited and she was really happy when I told her it was something we'd do together every Wednesday.

The class begins at 9:30 am and lasts an hour. We were the first one's there today so we got to look around a bit before the class began. There are small canvas paintings hanging everywhere so there was a lot to look at. Dakota found a painting of a pug that she loved and I just wished I had an ounce of the talent hanging up on those walls.

The class was very small today, only three kids, but more are expected next week. It was nice to have so few kids because Dakota felt more comfortable with the smaller group, but now that she knows what to expect I think she'll be fine when the classroom is fuller.

Each of the kids was given a smock and there were some art supplies already out on the table. When Dakota spotted the paintbrushes she got excited because she LOVES painting!

The teacher, Ms. Jeanette, explained to us that over the course of the six weeks we'd be working on a sky, earth, water theme. Two weeks on each. So today we began with the sky. She talked about how the sky changes from blue in the day to black at night and the things you might see up there like clouds and stars.

We created a total of five pieces of art today. The first was a "hand kite" or a magic wand as Dakota called it. They each got a wooden star to paint yellow and after it dried they were given large popsicle sticks and ribbon to hang off of it. It does look like a wand..and Dakota was thrilled with it!

The second project was a side by side day and night picture. They glued down the day/night papers and then put a paper sun/moon on the coordinating paper. Dakota chose to color her sun yellow after she was done gluing.

Next up was painting a night and day sky scene. I got to paint (woohoo!) a large black rectangle on one half of her paper and a large blue one on the other half. She filled them in with paint and after they'd dried a little they painted clouds on the blue and stars on the black.

The fourth project was probably Dakota's favorite because she got to use glitter! The teacher mixed paint and glue together, showed them how to create a firework shape and then let them have at it. Once they'd painted their shape they were able to choose the glitter they wanted to sprinkle on their paper. Dakota chose purple, of course. :) The teacher told the kids to just dump the extra glitter right on the floor...so glad this was at an art place and not my house! Holy glitter!

The final project was placing some stickers on a wooden rectangle. The stickers were all "something you might see in the sky" related and when they were done putting the stickers on we put a magnet on the back so they could stick them on their refrigerators at home.

We had a really good time and Dakota said she couldn't wait to see what we did next week. For $10 a class I feel like it's a good deal and a good way to fill an hour of time during the week.

Here are the finished products:

Hand Kite (wand) and Sky Magnet