Making music...making instruments!

The sound of rice shaking around in a bottle, the clacking of wooden sticks colliding. Making instruments was a hit, Elizabeth designed the lesson around recycling and the children enjoyed the sounds of their own creations.

We even added colored water to the light table and had the children tap it with spoons and describe the sound. It was lots of fun!

Puppets come to life!

Art Camp is running through August and so we decided to have the children make their own puppets and put on their very own show. Hsuan-Hsiu crafted a lesson that enabled the children to use several different materials to create their own puppet.

The children really had fun with this project and some couldn't wait for their puppets to dry before taking them home.

Let's make dough!

Making dough is an activity children never get tired of creating. This week Lauren had the children make beads out of their dough mixture. After the dough hardened we had the children paint them and string as necklaces. Boys and girls went home with self-made adornments that they were really proud of. I actually noticed a child wearing their Magical Minds Studio creation at Whole Foods a few days later. It was very inspiring to know these children are building confidence with their art explorations.

Printing Time

There are many fun ways to learn about printing. Elizabeth decided to guide the children on a larger scale. We turned our banquet table into a painting canvas and let the children explore various colors of paint and tools to create lines, designs and prints!

Grand Opening Celebration and more...

Although we opened last October we thought it would be best to celebrate our grand opening in the summer. We had a blast with the children and we think they did too.

Congrats to those of you that won our raffle prizes! Thanks to Chris Fascione for his talented juggling act and storytelling skills. Also to Jim Hapenstal for his guitar playing, the children really enjoyed dancing.

Below are a few pictures from that day...including a picture of my newest family member, Leo Wilson. He arrived the Wednesday before the grand opening!

Trees and their importance to our environment

One of my favorite things to introduce to children is anything having to do with trees. This lesson focused on trees and what might live in them. We let the children come up with ideas of their own but offered them tools to make birds, nests, insects, plants and leaves. Books were used to guide them on the many different types of trees that surround us as well as how to calculate how old a tree really is. They loved counting the rings that went around the tree trunks. Thanks to Forest Park Tree Removal for donating the tree trunks.

Our light table became a nature zone with tree bark, leaves, small tree stubs, incased insects, butterfiles and more. With a mural of tree trunks on the wall they added branches and their creations. The little birds made from recycled egg cartons were a hit with parents too. They were mighty cute if I do say so myself.

Transportation around the city and beyond

We thought it might be fun to continue with the building boxes since the children had so much fun with them. Lauren decided to create a lesson that expanded the city theme so she came up with a really cool transportation lesson. We turned our water table into Lake Michigan too!

Some children decided we needed a bridge, boats, some thought tunnels, it was fun to see them get on the floor and use chalk to draw cars and landscape scenes. They were able to conceptualize their own town in the process which brought the exploration closer to them. One of the things we strive for - making it about them, and helping them find their place in this world.