Create Your Own Fuzzy Painting

Have you ever seen those books that have pictures you can feel? Sometimes there are fuzzy ducks or smooth egg shells or birds with feathers. Today, make your own fuzzy picture.

Young children can enjoy this project too. Focus on using lots of colors instead of on making a recognizable picture.

Supplies Needed:

Yarn
Scissors
Glue
Construction Paper
Paper Plate (to use as a palette)

Choose what colors you want to use in your fuzzy painting. Wrap a length of yarn around your fingers about twenty times. Slide the yarn off your fingers and snip it into tiny bits. You don’t want any pieces to be larger than half an inch. Repeat this process for each color. Pile the yarn colors on your paper plate palette.
Use glue to draw the outline of your picture. Press bits of yarn onto the glue. Draw the details in glue and press more yarn onto your page. Continue this process until you have filled in your picture.
When the glue dries, you’ll be able to pet your fuzzy creation!

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Here's Looking at Me by Bob Raczka

I went through all the trouble of naming Fantastic Fiction Fridays and today’s book is non-fiction!

So today is Fantastic (Non-)Fiction Friday.

Bob Raczka’s Here’s Looking at Me is the perfect introduction to self-portraits. Raczka tells the story of 14 self-portraits, beginning with the very first self-portrait ever painted and ending with a photographer who is still creating art today.

You’ll recognize many of the artists in Here’s Looking at Me, such as Jacob Lawrence, Henri Rousseau, Vincent van Gogh, and Jan Vermeer. You may also discover artists you never have heard of.

Each story that Raczka tells is engaging and fun. Do you know why Marc Chagall gave himself seven fingers in his self-portrait? Do you know why Francisco de Goya used to put candles in the brim of his hat? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

This book is a great resource if you’re studying self-portraits or even autobiographies. And it’s an interesting book for anyone who likes art. I highly recommend it!

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Classifying Animals in Art

While we’re talking about classifying animals, here’s an activity that uses art to practice this skill. Younger students should focus on grouping similar animals together (birds, mammals, fish). Older students can group animals in more specific categories (animals in the cat family or the dog family). This activity is especially good for groups of 2 or 3 kids.

Kids who are studying zoo animals will benefit from this activity because they can look for similarities and differences between the animals they are learning about.

At the end of the post are some pictures you might want to use for this activity. There are many more examples of animals in art so you shouldn’t have any trouble adding to the collection if you choose to do so.

Supplies Needed:

Computer Print-outs of animals from art
Scissors
Marker
Construction paper or poster board
Glue stick

Look at the animal pictures you have in front of you and decide on what categories you will sort them into. Cut the animals out of the pictures and sort them. Make sure all animals fit into one of your categories. If you have some left over that don’t fit, you either need another category or you need to rethink the categories you have.

Write your categories on your sheet of construction paper or poster board. Arrange the animals on the poster board and glue them down.

Do you notice anything about the artistic style of the animals? Were most of the birds painted in the same style? Did all the sculpture end up in the same category?

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Charles Wilson Peale's Science

Yesterday you learned about a great painter from the America’s revolutionary days. But Charles Wilson Peale did more than just paint portraits of famous Americans and foreign visitors. Peale is also known for his natural history museum and his contributions to science.

Peale put together the first scientific expedition in America. He and his crew went to New York and dug up a full mastodon skeleton. The mastodon is extinct, but it was kind of like an elephant. Below is Peale’s The Exhumation of the Mastodon. This painting shows Peale’s crew trying to dig the mastodon out of the ground. They are using to the buckets and wheel to empty the water out of the hole.
Peale also collected living snakes, toads, turtles, and fish. He stuffed other animals, including several species of birds. He classified everything using the Linnaean taxonomy. The Linnaean taxonomy is the same system we use today to classify living things (though it is much more complex today).

Charles Wilson Peale gathered all these animals and created a natural history museum in Philadelphia. He placed each animal in its own natural habitat. He put the mastodon’s bones back together to create a full, 3D skeleton. Neither of these things were common in natural history museums in the 1800s but you’ll notice skeletons and animals in natural scenes when you go the museum now. Above is Peale’s The Artist in his Museum. It shows Peale pulling the curtain to reveal his natural history museum. Notice the mastodon skeleton behind the curtain and the stuffed animals lining the walls.

**If anyone knows of a good site about Linnaean taxonomy for kids, please tell us about it in the comments. I couldn't find one to link to here, but it would be very helpful. Thanks!**

Edited to Add: Thanks to Ms. Julie for the link: taxonomy for kids. This site is very long but it's written in easy-to-understand language.

Also thanks to Peter for the classification link. Here you'll find a simple illustration of how to sort colored shapes the way we sort living things.

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Charles Wilson Peale

Art is a great window to history. I haven’t posted a lot of paintings of historical America and it’s time to change that.

Charles Wilson Peale was born in Maryland in 1741. When he was thirteen, he became an apprentice—but not to an artist. Peale learned how to make horse saddles. He then taught himself to silversmith, paint signs, and upholster furniture. Peale was interested in a lot of things, as you can see.

He went to London in 1767 to study painting. When he returned to America (the colonies) two years later, he painted the first portrait of George Washington (shown below). Peale painted almost 60 portraits of Washington over the course of his life.
Peale went to Philadelphia in 1776, a date you know as the year the colonies declared their independence from Brittan. In Philadelphia, Peale painted portraits of many members of the young American government.

In 1777, Peale joined the Continental Army. During his service, he captured the officers’ portraits in miniature paintings which he later copied onto larger canvases. Shown below is a portrait of Arthur St. Clair that was painted during this time. St. Clair tried to defend Fort Ticonderoga but was forced to retreat. Later, St. Clair was with George Washington when the British surrendered at Yorktown, the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.
Throughout his life, Peale painted portraits of many of the most influential people in the making of America. Below are some of Peale’s portraits.

John Adams who served as the 2nd president of the U.S.:
Thomas Jefferson who wrote the declaration of independence and served as the 3rd president of the U.S:

Meriwether Lewis (left) and William Clark (right) who explored the west:

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about Charles Wilson Peale’s love for science.

Edited to Add: Ms. Julie has an art lesson posted at her site which uses Peale's portraits to teach about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Go check it out!

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