Recently I've been engaging Alicia in quite a few new activities and this blog post is about one of them. It's also a review of the last item I bought in my art-supplies-spree. :P
Almost every parent at Julia Gabriel cringes at the mention of 'messy' artwork during class, especially when the kids are asked to use their fingers or hands as the medium for painting. I've never flinched at those sessions, but what I dread most is the use of 'messy' glue. Glue is in my opinion, a lot messier and harder to get rid of than just paint. Yet, art for the young hands would seem incomplete in the absolute absence of glue.
Glue sticks must have been invented for this reason. :P
They are a lot easier to handle and it hardly creates any mess.
Crayola's glue sticks are rather special in that it goes on blue when applied but when it dries the colour disappears too. This aids the young child as she is able to tell where the glue is and can complete the artwork accordingly. It's as you've guessed, non-toxic too. Perfect for the young artist.
A box of two glue sticks for only $2.30!
The shortcoming of this product would be that it gets used up quite quickly with the child pressing really hard on the glue stick. Once she learns to control the amount of pressure to apply while using the glue stick, this problem could be alleviated.
Activity with Alicia:
Tearing coloured paper and pasting them using the glue
Tearing paper actually hones fine motor skills but I guess when Alicia was younger and more destructive then, she was too well-taught that she should not tear paper (and books) and hence, when I told her to tear the coloured paper and demonstrated what she had to do last Friday, she shook her head vehemently and told me, 'No, cannot.' *faint*
Materials needed:
- glue
- coloured paper (or unwanted colourful magazines if you have those on hand)
- another piece of paper for sticking the small bits on
Scrutinising the glue:
Hey, I can lift up the paper up with the glue!
While it is good that the glue is blue when applied, Alicia actually mistook the glue stick for crayon and was just interested in 'drawing' with it.
She kept saying, 'blue blue!' as she doodled with the gluestick
I got her to help stick some of the pieces of paper on - she refused to tear any but she agreed to stick some.
I didn't have any picture in mind for her to form using the pieces of coloured paper, but you can do so for the older kids and it could very well turn out to look like a piece of mosaic art. :) Have fun!
