Tag: summer activities

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3 Ways to Have Fun in One Summer Day

Painted Driftwood Sticks

Painted Driftwood Sticks

  1. Attend the Exploration Works/Holter Science of Art Day Camp. Then have french fries and other unmentionable deliciousness.
  2. Head out to Lake Helena Reservoir to collect driftwood sticks of a certain size and smoothness. Take Charlie along for sweetness and chuckles.
  3. Paint your sticks while eating dried seaweed on the porch, all the while enjoying an afternoon thunderstorm.
solar ovens by kids
Teams of kids made solar ovens at Exploration Works

It has been 10 days since Ema and Adia and I spent the day together making art, playing with Charlie and doin other summer kid stuff. I actually missed them. And I think maybe they might have missed playing with me too. When I picked them up at the Exploration Works Science Museum at noon, they both gave Charlie and me big hugs and smiles.

So … we went to a fast food place for lunch (it shall remain unnamed — grin) just to do something totally unexpected and different. The girls liked it. (I remembered why I don’t eat there.)

Lake Helena
After lunch we headed out to the lake to collect sticks for our afternoon art project. Charlie also wanted to get in the water and show us his favorite trail. We could tell there was a thunderstorm brewing over the town.
drill press
Back in town, Tim let us use his shop’s drill press to make holes in our sticks.
painting sticks
Adia stayed absorbed in this activity for a long time — she’s the one who colors outside the lines. 🙂

Thunder and a sweet summer rain kept us company while we painted our sticks. It’s my favorite kind of weather — a warm thunderstorm when you’re nice n’ dry on the porch so you can feel the hairs rising on your skin but you don’t get drenching wet. Welp, that was fun! And definitely something 8 to 10 year olds can handle.

painting stick art
Ema is meticulous … taking her time and considering each brush stroke. Her color choices are fun!
painted stick art
Ema’s finished artful sticks, ready to be threaded and hung tomorrow
Painted Stick Art
Adia’s awesome finished sticks, ready to be threaded and hung as a sculpture tomorrow

Tomorrow it’s time to turn in our Chalk It Up Helena applications. We will have a cooking lesson (Pepperoni Pizza Puffs) and try to finish our stick projects. We’ll show you the finished results next time, okay?

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Ocean Mandalas Use Found Natural Materials

Ocean Mandala with natural objects
Ocean Mandala with natural objects
Making mandalas from natural objects you find on-site can be a playful or a quiet meditative activity.

At our family reunion on Vancouver Island this past weekend, some of us made mandalas of shore materials we found in the forest and on the beach. Natural object mandalas are– by their very nature — ephemeral, and will be destroyed by the tides, wind, wildlife and time. Yet the making of these circular designs gives so much pleasure it doesn’t really matter that they won’t last long.

Mandala of Natural Objects
Tom and Kat made this mandala using a barnacle-covered cinder block monolith, red seaweed, driftwood sticks, oyster shells on-edge, and some wild mustard.
Ocean Mandala of natural objects
Martina’s mandala has bilateral symmetry, and includes a border of seaweed, and in the center, she used driftwood, grasses and shells

As the evening cooled, we walked around admiring the mandalas … then later watched as Tom and Kat’s mandala was washed away by the incoming tide. I love thinking of beach-walkers stumbling across our mandalas and wondering about the makers. I hope these photos inspire you to make your own mandalas, no matter where you are.

Ocean Mandala of natural objects
Amy and her family made this sweet circle filled with offerings from the sea… tiny crabs, shore plants, seed pods, flower petals, shells and little bits of driftwood.
Ocean Mandala of natural objects
Margie and daughters created this wonderful mandala with concentric rings of seashells, plus driftwood, stone towers, flowers and leaves.
Ocean Mandala of natural objects
Tim and Maureen created their mandala with oyster shells, douglas fir cones, ivy leaves, foxglove, yarrow, driftwood, fir and cedar boughs.
Ocean mandala of natural objects
Moira and Brian worked side by side to creaste this stony mandala on a bed of beach stones… they chose lighter colored stones to contrast with the dark shore, and added shells, seed pods, and grasses tied in bundles as a circular boundary.
Ocean Mandala of natural objects
Marybeth and Sons …. played and worked together to create the most subtle of all the mandalas. They used stones, driftwood, shells, yarrow and shoreline grasses.