(Non)Crafts for Lazy Parents: Leonardo Da Vinci

Da Vinci is the perfect artist for kids who claim to hate art, or to be terrible at it, or just can't get motivated by paintings and sculptures. Da Vinici of course, was also an inventor, architect, scientist and mathematician. There are probably thousands of activities that could be inspired by Da Vinci. I'll get to a few easy to manage ones in a minute.

As with everything, I think you should start by reading about Da Vinci with your kids.




For kids who do like art, the easiest thing to do is have them create their own portrait - their own Mona Lisa, so to speak. You can stress how Da Vinci filled up the entire canvas; this will encourage them to take longer finishing their portraits. This is also a great time to introduce colored pencils to little ones and oil pastels to big kids. New materials and knowing the fancy word for drawing a person's face might keep them occupied for quite a while.

It wouldn't work on Lovebug, though. He loves to draw, but he's not trying to make anything beautiful. His motivation is telling a story. . .or planning a Lego creation. When he first discovered what diagrams were, his whole attitude toward drawing changed. He's a lefty and drawing and writing were always a struggle for him, so he avoided them as much as possible. Which of course made them a bigger struggle. Then he discovered comics and diagrams. He's been drawing like a fiend ever since - and he's gone from struggling to print his last name to making lovely cursive letters in the years from kindergarten to second grade.*

So anyway. Da Vinci is known for making plans that included such non-Renaissance era machines as the submarine, hang glider and helicopter. Isn't that amazing? I still don't understand how helicopters work exactly. . . and I've been in one. I think getting your kids to diagram - or just draw, depending on their ages - a future machine of some sort would be a great way to teach about Da Vinci. And keep them busy for a while. And not require a lot of clean up. Graph paper, rulers, protractors and mechanical pencils can help with inspiration here, especially if these materials are new to kids.

Another Da Vinci activity that might appeal to kids more interested in science is to create a nature journal or notebook. You can start simple and cheap by just stapling paper together to make a booklet, or you can buy a special drawing notebook and let your kids decorate the cover with nature stickers - whatever you want to do. Then head out into the back yard, preferably with bags to collect leaves, flowers, twigs or whatever else catches your kids' eyes. Next encourage them to draw (or write up) what they see. Some kids might do a delicate sketch of a blooming flowers, others might write a detailed description of a spider eating a fly. Both would probably be in Leo's book. Just make sure the spider doesn't wind up in the collection bag.


*Some of this progress is probably also due to the fact that boys (often) develop their fine motor skills later than school districts them want them to. But that's a rant for another post. 

Piet Mondrian for Kids (Crafts for Lazy Parents)

One of the first artists' styles I remember recognizing is Piet Mondrian's. Even though Mondrian started off as an impressionist in late 19th century Amsterdam, years in Paris and his own spiritual quest led him to develop Neoplasticism. I don't remember that word, nor do I remember another description of Mondrian's later paintings: geometric abstraction.

But the black lines, rectangles and primary colors?

Those I've remembered for more than 30 years.

How could primary colors and simple black lines NOT appeal to a kid who liked art but felt she had no artistic ability?

Creating Collages With Kids

Originally, this project was going to be about the Dada movement. I thought kids, especially rebellious preschoolers and tweens, might enjoy an art movement that was all about breaking the rules. Plus, let's face it, the typical preschooler art project (as well as my typical art project), is usually more about the ideas than actual beauty anyway. But then I tried to find kid friendly books about the major artists behind the Dada movement, like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray and Hannah Hoch.

But guess what? No one has written a kid-friendly book about Marcel Duchamp, the man who entitled a sculpture "Fountain", then revealed that the "sculpture" was an actual urinal. I'm pretty sure 8 year old boys would love a book about that, to tell you the truth. The only kids' book relating to Dada that I could find was this:




Granted, it looks like a pretty cool book and it explores the idea of being true to yourself, which is an idea I really like. But it doesn't give kids the basics on Dada, or how the artists and writers behind Dada encouraged the use of collage, photo montage and found objects in art.









So, if you'd like your kids to learn about Dada before doing the craft, you can read about Dada here. Otherwise, you can just skip to the collage portion.

I made the above collage when I was in college, because I had a lot free time in college. I loved making collages back in the day. I used magazines here, in case you couldn't tell. With kids, magazines can be a fun place to start (though I don't recommend having them cut up Cosmo and Glamour, which I'm pretty sure is what I did to make the above collage), provided you have an appropriate stack of magazines around and your kids are good at cutting. Newspapers can also work. But don't limit your kids to just newspapers and magazines.

I have a collage of the kids' old artwork and cards and whatnot in my office:

You could let your kids use art work that you're not preserving, or school work or family photos that didn't make it into the scrapbook. Wrapping paper scraps are another fun collage texture. If you want to keep the spirit of Dada alive in their work, encourage them to use lots of different textures and types of paper. Or have them break away from paper altogether. They can make nature collages with objects they find in the yard, or arrange their toys and take a photo for a toy collage. The possibilities are endless.

If your kiddo is still too little to be trusted with a glue stick, have her use stickers. Or cut shapes out of construction paper, put the glue on them yourself and then let the kid stick them together. Tearing the paper instead of cutting it can be fun for kids who aren't comfortable with scissors yet.

With older kids, you can talk about the message behind their collage. Help them think of a cause they care about and find ways to show that in their collage. Or just encourage them to glue whatever and wherever. Either way they'll be getting in touch with the Dada movement.

Crafts for Lazy Parents: Cubism for Kids

I have spent the last 10 minutes debating how I want to start this post, because I can't decide if the line I really want to use will be as funny to you all as it is to me:

I'm no Picasso.

(Because Cubism, get it?)

But for this craft, that really doesn't matter. I mean, sure, Cubism was the first abstract style of modern art and it was developed by the actual Picasso (and Georges Braque, but no one ever jokes about not being a Braque). And yeah, the actual paintings are quite complex.

But the goal of crafts for lazy parents is to get kids learning and crafting with a minimum of parental work, not to turn kids into world famous artists. Or even art history professors.

Here's the part where I suggest books. Do you have to read the books first? No, but it helps if the kids have heard/read them at some point. Do you have to buy the books from the links I provide? No, of course not, what kind of fascist do you think I am?

Now, for the craft. First, have your kid draw two large faces:

(I believe we've already covered the fact that I'm not an artist. Ahem.Also, the project looks cooler if the faces are colored in, but I was in a hurry.)

Encourage him/her to add details like eyebrows and nose rings. Crayons, markers and colored pencils all work for this; choose the one that your kiddo likes best to maximize drawing time. But don't let your darling get too attached to the portraits, because next your going to cut them into squares. 

The size of the squares is up to you and/or your child's patience. The older the kid, the smaller the squares can be. These are going to be the "cubes" that your kiddo "paints" with for the final step. The final picture is a mash up of both portraits:

I would let kids move the different squares around and try out new arrangements before handing over the glue stick. Depending on your kid's enthusiasm level, you can let him/her make up to three different collages from the two portraits. 

In actual Cubism, the artists also looked for other shapes found in nature, so you could extend this project by have them mash up two house drawings by cutting them into rectangles, or mash up to trees by cutting them into triangles. 

Crafts for Lazy Parents: Chalk Impressionism

Someone once told me that my love of Impressionism was "pedestrian, boring and the mark of someone who didn't really understand ART."

To which I should have said, "Gee, you're a massive tool. Let's break up right this second."

Or at least, "You know why Impressionism is so popular and well-loved? Because it's freaking beautiful."

One of the many Monet posters in my house.

I can at least say that my love for Monet and his friends  has lasted much longer than that romance did. Anyway, I am a huge fan of introducing artists - or any subject, really - through picture books. While you can of course do the project even if your kids have never heard of impressionism, I like to tie the two together. Some books to get you started are:

 (These are affiliate links.)

Oil pastels and watercolors are ideal for letting kids experiment with impressionism. However, they are also messy and can be pretty expensive. They are not for the lazy (or maybe I should say energy-challenged?) parent.

Colored chalk and construction paper are for the lazy parent.

That totally looks like the ocean, right? Right? RIGHT?

Let kids draw whatever they want on using colored chalk on sturdy paper, like construction paper. You can talk about things that the Impressionists liked to paint - Monet with his gardens, Renoir with his portraits, Degas with his dancers - or just let the kids draw whatever. Encourage them to use lots of colors, but not to color anything in. 

The final step - the fun step - is to blend the colors together, rubbing all the lines together with your fingers. 

Probably your kid's picture will look much better than mine. 

But I still had fun making it. 

When I used to do this with classes of kids, I learned the hard way to make sure they washed their hands IMMEDIATELY after the line blurring. And to make sure to hang the finished projects in an area where brushing against them is unlikely. 

Crafts For Lazy Moms: Pointillism

I did my student teaching in an arts magnet school. I blame the experience for starting my prejudice against kids doing cutesy projects as "art". Kids are born artists, but they'll never develop their creativity if we just keep having them copy adult designed projects over and over.

But in addition to my philosophical problem with cutesy "art", I'm also lazy. I don't want to spend an hour cutting out construction paper shapes or prepping my dining room for kid painting time only to have the kids finish the project in 5 minutes.

Pointillism is a style of art, pioneered by Georges Seurat in the late 19th century, where artists use dots of paint to create one mass or object. Seurat and his contemporaries used two or more dots of different colors, dabbed adjacent to each other, to create other colors. That's an activity for real art teachers, not those of us trying to keep our kids entertained on long afternoons.

But we can take the basics of pointillism and have our kids make dot art; I've seen kids as young as 6 work on dot art for 2 hours. I've seen preschoolers work on dot art for 45 minutes. That's a good chunk of time for a rainy Saturday.

I suggest reading a picture book or two before the activity, but you don't have to. Your local library probably has some kids books on Seurat, but you can also get some good ones from Amazon:


(These are affiliate links. Please use them so I can make a buck. Literally.)

Pointillism Activity:

• Have kids do a pencil drawing on a half sheet of paper (if your kids are very patient, you can use a full sheet, if they are on the younger side use a quarter sheet).
• Emphasize that they should NOT color anything in. 
• Get out markers and show them how to make dots.
• Have them practice making dots on a piece of scrap paper.
• Then let them "color in" their pencil drawing by making dots with markers. (See my picture above for what it might look like).
• If you want to be less lazy, you can have them use paints and Q-tips to make the dots. 
• When everything is dry, have them erase the pencil drawing. 

There's an entire musical devoted to Seurat, so you can always waste a little more time letting the kids watch excerpts of it on YouTube: