Cincinnati Art Museum - No Spectators

We like to make a trip to the Cincinnati Art Museum every couple of months to check out new exhibits. When we saw pictures of the Burning Man exhibit, going to the museum moved to the top of our list.

The girls and I got there right when it opened (maybe a couple minutes before) and headed straight to the mushroom room. There weren't that many people there yet, so the girls and I had the room mostly to ourselves for 10-15 minutes. When the ring turns green, you can step on it and activate the movement of the mushroom top. After the initial scare of the movement, Cora really got into going around the room and activating each pad... and Ida held tight and was very cautious about enjoying the display. We went back to this room on our way out and it was pretty crowded.. I recommend going early so you can get this space to yourself for a bit.

All of the No Spectators pieces were scattered throughout the museum so we zipped around the entire place to make sure we wouldn't miss anything.  We passed the Rosenthal Education Center, which previously we either didn't have time to check it out or Cora wasn't very interested, but the girls beelined in there as soon as they saw it. They had a blast trying out some crafts and playing dress up. This place had so many great activities... and its all FREE!

Cora was most excited to see what she called the "Ice Princess". She asked about 100x times to go upstairs so she could look at it.

There were a bunch of other great pieces and it was neat to interact with them. The girls and I had a lot of fun and we definitely plan go go back for phase 2 (starting June 7th).

This was the first thing we crossed off on our 2019 Summer To Do list and we're looking forward to all the other activities.

Creating With Kids : Painting Ornaments

During Thanksgiving break, Cora requested that we finally paint our christmas ornaments. I bought a bunch of plastic ornaments from Michaels right after Halloween and she has been asking to paint them every single day for the last couple of weeks. We laid out some cardboard, turned on the Christmas music and got to work.

For a while, Cora was trying to be pretty neat and use a paint brush... then she started finger painting. It was interesting to watch her process. Some times she would paint her hand then put them on the ornaments and other times she would put little dots all over the ornament before mixing it all up.

While Cora was painting a million ornaments, I had Ida paint these wooden IDA letters that I purchased before she was even born. I also have ones for Cora that she painted when she was around 2.5 years old and I can't wait to get these both hung up. Ida is always pretty timid at first before she goes wild with the paint.

Once Ida was finished painting her letters, she took a page from Cora's book and tried a little bit of ornament finger painting herself. She only wanted to paint for a couple minutes before she was over it.

Once the ornaments dried, we drew some designs on top of the paint with paint pen. Cora's designs were really versatile with faces, cats, and even an ornament full of letters/numbers she knows. She was really cute drawing and saying things like "so-and-so will really like this one" and "I can't wait to give this to so-and-so"etc. Once the drawing was done, I did a light clear coat and hung them up to dry.

Since most of these are for Christmas gifts, I'm not going to share a complete after yet (all the drawings are facing the other way), but I definitely call this a successful DIY. It was easy for both girlies and was perfect to split up into more than one DIY session. 

Check out my Tips for Creating with Kids.

Tips For Creating With Kids

Because I love to create, I'm intentional about making time for my kids to create. Spending time DIYing is one of our favorite things to do together. I always receive compliments about how much people love how I create with my kids, so I threw together some of my tips for a successful creating session with my girls.

PREP - Prep is key to enjoying time creating with kids. Lay out a drop cloth, have paper towels and wipes handy, strap younger kids in high chairs (if using tray, cover with garbage bag), and messy clothes (or no clothes) for everyone. Snacks and music are always a good idea to prolong the DIYing.

CHECK YOUR EXPECTATIONS - be okay with a mess, focus on enjoying the process, and don't expect a masterpiece from every creating session. Many times I have to remind myself that our materials aren't precious... It's okay to use up a lot of paint or go through a million sheets of paper. Expect some projects to take multiple sessions. Our DIY christmas ornaments took a couple days to make (clay one day, paint another) so starting early and planning for multiple sessions made the project more enjoyable.

LIMIT COLOR PALETTE - Choosing an analogous color scheme (colors next to each other on the color wheel) keeps your child's art from becoming muddy. I generally like to choose a couple different blues and greens so they have a lot of shades to pick from. As my kids get older, they get to pick more colors.

CONSIDER COLLABORATING - Some of my favorite creating sessions were when we work on something together. These usually result in a fun piece of art to enjoy and a longer creating session than when we're working on our own solo projects. When working on a piece with your kid, follow their lead so they can stretch their creativity, mirror their strokes, and keep up the encouragement.

MIX IT UP - Work with a variety of medium. Sometimes we'll start out working in watercolor and end up drawing with markers. I introduce different medium as they start to get tired with something (usually when they get super messy) and they will continue on creating. Introduce them to different things like clay, water color, acrylic paint, pastels, etc. They may really love something random and we'd never know if we didn't try out a bunch of different things. I also love to let the girls work on larger projects like furniture painting or our cottage makeover.

DOCUMENT - Snap a couple of photos at the beginning when they start... or throughout the process. I love cutesy end of DIY pictures, but generally when we're finished, the girls are finished and won't even stop for a quick pic. The in process pictures are some of my favorite pictures and sometimes an in process art piece ends up so completely different than the finished piece.

CELEBRATE THEIR WORK - Compliment their technique and imagination, discuss what they like about it, and display their work! Building confidence in their artistic ability is a huge boost for the enjoyment of future creating sessions. I love hanging the girls stuff around the house in frames, on our fridge, on our calendar wall, or gifting it to family members.

ENJOY THE PROCESS! - I know I already mentioned this, but it is the most important tip so I'll say it again. Enjoy the process!!! If you want to instill the love of art and creativity into your kids, you want this process to be enjoyable. A lot of our artwork gets scrapped, but we enjoyed our time creating so we call it a success. 

Creating with Cora

One day last weekend, Cora was the first one to join me in the morning (normally she sleeps in) and she requested that we paint. We laid out all our stuff and settled on a palette of cool colors plus yellow. Tip for creating with kids: choose a limited palette to keep things from getting muddy.

I started by putting some dots all over the canvas and we painted and chatted... and by 'we chatted', I mean Cora nonstop talked the whole time. We each did our own thing and we layered and layered more paint as the morning went on.

Last week, I was watching Alisa Burke's instastory where she discussed enjoying the process instead of worrying about the final product... and that is exactly what we did. We spent that morning enjoying the process of painting and spending time together and it was perfect.

I don't know if we're finished with this yet, but it's currently hanging in our living room. It reminds me of that quiet morning with my girl Cora as we enjoy the process of painting and reminds me when we used to spend our weekend days crafting just the two of us.

Cincinnati Art Museum

Last week, I took a little time off work to relax and have a little staycation with the girls. I had a dream about a bunch of my high school friends meeting up at an art show and the show had all kinds of crazy stuff, so I got the urge to go check out the Cincinnati Art Museum. I haven't been since I went for art history assignments in college, but I was excited to see some of the new stuff and for Cora to experience it for the first time. Above, Cora is admiring the Mihrab (prayer niche). This is right near the entrance and probably one of my top five things I loved from our trip.

Cora liked some things and didn't like others. We have a rule when looking at art (mostly from our trips to art fairs) that we only say what we like about things, and if we don't like it we just move on. Cora told me some things she liked, but we didn't spend too much time at any one piece. I've always been a Monet fan, so we had to stop and admire Rocks at Belle-Ile, Port-Domois (below).

We went to their current exhibit featuring Folk Art in America. Cora loved the little horse statues, lion statues (above), and the carousel figures of a rabbit and elephant. She had lots of questions about every single piece in the museum, so I did my best to answer what I could. At the Folk Art exhibit, we heard a tour guide talking about how when someone's loved one died, they would get a painting made of them. Cora is very curious about death so she had a lot of follow up questions about that.

Ida rode along in the stroller and seemed pretty content just riding along and looking at things. She stayed up the entire time and really only got a little fussy towards the end because you can't bring in food (and we're a family that loves our snacking).