St Basil Cathedral Printable Project

This week St Basil Cathedral celebrated its 450th anniversary. What an amazing piece of architecture!  It was built under the rule of Ivan "the terrible" and it is said that he blinded the architect after its creation, so that he might never build anything so beautiful again.  It was almost destroyed under Stalin, but luckily the building was spared.

Today I thought I would share a project I did with the children I work with.  Some of you maybe aware that I am a licensed mental health therapist and board certified art therapist.  At some point, perhaps I will do a post just about that.  But for now, I just want to share my art project!

 

I was actually super pleased because the kids really liked doing the project.  It kept them occupied for nearly an hour and a half- which is really saying something when you work with a highly distracted group.  And their finished projects were beautiful!  All around win!  And just so you know, with this project we worked on listening and following directions, problem solving, dealing with frustration, and project completion.

Here are my easy peasy directions

Step One:  Print these templates! 

• Template One
• Template Two
• Template Three
• Template Four  

Step Two:  Color!  Use lots of bright fun colors in unexpected combinations!  Just have fun!

 

Step Three: Cut out the different building segments

Step Four:  Put the pieces together in whatever way you choose to create your own unique piece of architecture.  I showed my students a few combinations- stacking a couple of large bases, then putting a column, and topping it off with an onion dome.  They didn't need much in the way of demonstration before they completely understood the concept. 

Step Five:  Glue down your building on a large piece of construction paper.  You might have to make two separate buildings in order to use all of the pieces and so that it might fit on your construction paper.

Step Six: Show off your finished piece of artwork!  

Happy Constructing!

 

Free Robot Monster Printable!

My son will be two at the end of September.  When  I tried to get him dressed this morning, he kept saying no to every shirt I pulled out.  "Robot!  Robot!  Robot!" he repeated.  I guess he has reached that age where the only shirt he will wear is one that has a robot on it.  Unfortunately, he only has three robot shirts and two are sweatshirts.  It is a super hot day here, so those are out of the question.  The other robot shirt is in the laundry.  I made a good case for the monkey shirt- and he finally agreed- although he definitely was not happy about this.

So in honor of my little robot lover, I decided I needed a robot monster.  (The above robot monster is only my working sketch- I will reveal my finished little robot monster later).  I generally begin all of my monsters with a quick hand drawn sketch before sitting down and working on the computer.  My daughter liked the sketch- and asked if she could color it.  I made a quick copy and she was very happy.  Of course, she made the electricity coming out of the rabbit ears into a nice princess crown.

I thought- maybe somebody else out there would like to color my robot too!  So, I made a pdf file that you can download.  Just click the monster below!

Happy Coloring!