Art Media Exploration - Print Making

We are continuing to use Atelier Art Levels 4 and 5 in our homeschool this year. I adore this curriculum and wish I had discovered it years ago! We complete our weekly art lesson on Fridays and the focus this past week was on Art Media Exploration, more specifically, Print Making. The lesson on Print Making was a fun and easy lesson that my children all seemed to enjoy.

I usually follow the instructions for the lesson very, very closely but for this lesson, I was more flexible. From years and years of teaching Sunday School and preschool art lessons, I have quite a few large stamps. So, I told my children that they had to create two of their own stamps but they could also use any from my collection in their pictures. The lesson also specified that a painting of a town be created - I let my children choose whatever subject matter they wanted for their paitings.

My youngest, Duncan, enjoyed picking out a number of stamps to use in his painting.

I didn't have the styrofoam wrapping material that was used in the art lesson to make the prints, so I used Fun Foam instead. The Fun Foam worked quite well! Each of my children made two stamps to use in their painting. They drew the shape on the Fun Foam first and then carefully cut it out. Then the stamp was glued to a small piece of cardboard for easy printing.My oldest, Amber, was particularly pleased with the way her crab stamp turned out!After the stamps were all ready, the children were free to choose the color palette for their pictures. Rather than dip the stamps in paint, the children painted the stamps and then carefully pressed them to their paintings.My youngest child really enjoyed this lesson primarily for the sheer pleasure of making the prints on the paper. He made a fish and a rock for his stamps.My middle child, Mason, first stamped a puzzle background on his entire paper. He chose to do a desert scene and created stamps of cacti and a baked chicken. I didn't get it at first, but it's so hot the chicken just cooked in the sky. I thought it was pretty creative.Lastly, my oldest daughter, who is always thinking of the water, created an underwater scene in her painting. My daughter was so pleased with her crab stamp, she created another picture with the stamp over the week-end.