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!

 

Meet Grrr nica- Picasso monster!

I decided that for my newest set of monsters, I would take my inspiration from artists that I love. I actually love a lot of obscure artists, so decided that it would probably be better to choose artists that I love that others love as well:-)

It is a lot more difficult than I thought to create a monster that others would recognize as inspired by Picasso- but I had a ton of fun trying. In the end, this little monster is one of my favorites.
My favorite Picasso painting is Guernica, which is a pretty tragic painting to inspire a fun piece of child friendly art... but I think I managed to capture the bull figure a bit in my horns and eyes.

I also knew I wanted to include Picasso's signature striped shirt.

So, do you think I captured him in my little monster?

And if you haven't entered my giveaway for February,
please click the link and leave a comment.

Winners will be announced on February 28th!
Thanks for visiting!

Giveaway,,,

Leaves of my tree is a great little blog that is hosting a lovely giveaway for a set of alphabetty monster prints and an adorable little owl from make more friends. They are so totally cute. So please stop by and check it out the blog and all of the giveaways!

The set of four prints that I am giving away are for four monsters of your choice- personalized in whatever way makes you happy.

I love grouping my monsters based on who I think would be friends. My latest grouping involves "adventure monsters". In this set is adventure monster, birdie monster, rocket monster, and one of my favorites- snorkel monster:-) But you of course, can choose whatever four monsters you want!

And soon will be the One World One Heart Giveaway- so check back at the end of the month!