So what do you do when your low on cash and need a canvas to paint on? You create one yourself. It was mighty simple and I learned a few things along the way while creating one.
First, you need cardboard, or wood, an old white sheet or even a pillowcase will do. And a staple gun.
Next, either cut the sheet or slide the cardboard or wood into the pillowcase. I chose to use an old pillow cover that had a broken zipper on it. So no loss there.
Last, staple the sheet. Make sure you get it as straight as you possibly can. And Viola' a poor man's canvas.
Pretty simple huh? Marilyn decided to give her water color picture a try on this. She used masking tape to make the design.
What did we learn about the poor man's canvas we created? That using water color paints is pretty touch and go. It has a tendency to bleed under the tape. Something like tempra or acrylic would work even better on a sheet. But I will admit the bleeding did give it a little character.
Next we turned to more collage work. Marilyn really enjoyed making a collage so she tried a couple ideas that I found online.
The first was the 3D snow man. This was used by making snow paint. With a can of shaving cream and some glue its amazing what you can create. I used a couple cups of shaving cream to one cup of glue and the result was really cool and amazing. I will give you a hint that after stirring it , let it sit for a few minutes before using. Otherwise its really gooey and messy. To make our snow man we used measuring cups. We tried to gloop it on but it wasn't working. So we used a 1/2 cup for the bottom, a 1/3 cup for the middle and a 1/4 cup for the head. We did not fill the cups up all the way either. Filling half of them was plenty. We learned if you used to much it just ran down the paper and off it. Once it dries though its really neat to touch. Almost reminds you of the leather in new cars. At least that was the description my husband used.
Marilyn used some felt for the hat, eyes, mouth and scarf and then went outside and found a couple of sticks. She finished the bottom with some cotton balls that she spread out to make it look like snow. Brilliant!
After she was done with that she worked on her next collage. This one turned out pretty neat to. The night before we looked for an old book, and tore out a few pages. Granted it tore me in two to tear up a book, but it was for the sake of art so it had to happen. She pained the pictures all the colors we had except for black, and then let them dry overnight. In the morning she painted another sheet of white paper with a blue background and let that dry. Once the background was dry her mission was to cut the pages from the book she painted the night before into a landscape. It had to contain buildings, trees, grass sun, clouds, etc. And this was her end result after gluing it all on:
In the meantime we had a really nice surprise come to our doorstep. Once a year or so Cole's Foundation sends Maggie a really nice care package for her birthday. The last package we had gotten it was of a beautiful crocheted blanket and we've had it ever since. This time Maggie received a bunch of wonderful girl goodies like hair bands, and coloring books and crayons and a beautiful, beautiful blanket. Maggie carries it around with her wherever we go.
It was so nice to receive a package for Maggie that wasn't medically related.
Also that day the UPS man graced our doorstep with wonderful school supplies. I can't wait to get officially started with Marilyn and Maggie. There was a slight change of plans for Katie and Hannah at the moment. They will attend school this year. I'm not sure how this all is going to work out. But we'll give it a try. In the meantime I'm keeping their school stuff in the even this arrangement doesn't work out, or they can work on it when they have no homework , or on the weekends.
But it was like Christmas, well , at least for me. To see all this new stuff.
Maggie decided she wanted to get started right away. So we pulled out the Learning to Read. Most of this has been lots of review. But I think there is plenty she can glean from and learn from. Such as writing her letters, and the listening skills and so on. But she's doing really, really well with it and I think we'll be going through this program extremely quick. She is doing 2 lessons a day right now and just flying through it. Reading wise she's beyond the first two readers that I have right now. But it will help with fluency, and will be light for her at the moment. I'm hoping with that it will make her feel more comfortable with doing the school work and not so much pressure. Maggie just turned 5 so she's a young 5.
Marilyn on the other hand is trying to see how long we can push all this off before starting school. Isn't it like a 13 yr old to not want anything to do with school. Humph.
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