Marbeling Paper & Unschooler's Letter Exchange

The lady over at The Artful Parent has an endless supply of art projects, which aids us in our laziness. She digs 'em up and we pick and choose. We leave the trial and error up to her. So since she didn't much care for marbling with cornstarch, we went to her older posts to dig up the tutorial from Unplug Your Kids.

This was a great, last minute thrown-together project for an art day when I couldn't quite pick from my many splendid ideas. It would, however, help if I had things together beforehand, I think. I think most definitely it would at the very least help my patience when the kids start digging fists in whatever materials we were trying to use.

Donna helped measure 1/2 tablespoons of oil (my cheap olive oil I use for cleaning) into glasses, followed by 1 teaspoon of food coloring (which ended up being whatever we had left after my kids colored their bathwater the last several months). The kids mixed this combination with forks to evenly distribute the color. We then poured water to line pans. In retrospect, we think that even less water might have been good - just enough to cover the bottom, no more. Then using eyedroppers (leftover from varying tinctures, which I keep lest I need them and finally I did), the kids put drops of the oil colors into the water, noting that oil and water do not mix (science!).
They then swirled and mixed their colors a bit.
They then laid sheets of white paper atop the liquid to soak up the oil colors.
Finally, we set the papers on a sheet to dry. We did find that some of the papers are quite oily. We're not quite sure how to remedy that, though I did not, admittedly, fully read the instructions I linked to. Perhaps that would yield some answers.
Afterward, we all headed outside to soak up the warm-enough weather. Donna traced the kids on the sidewalk. Aleks assumed a "T-Rex" position. Ivy drew a lion's mane on her outline.
While playing on bikes, with hula hoops, and bouncy balls, and blowing bubbles and coloring with chalk (such a plethora of summer outdoor fun!), Ivy suddenly discovered her toe had been stubbed and was bleeding quite a bit. Bastian practically climbed in Donna's lap while she tended to her injured patient, who dripped blood all over the porch steps and was finally mended with a sushi bandaid. Quite the eventful Art Day!

Call for Letter Exchange

On next week's Art Day agenda, we will be making envelopes. We'd like to write letters on our marbled paper to send in our homemade envelopes in exchange for letters. If you or your child would like to participate, please email me at annakissmm at gmail.com.