Every Council's Own Girl Scout Fun Patch Program That Your Girl Scouts Can Earn from Anywhere: Arts and Crafts

 

I am starting a very weird series based on an obsessive deep dive that I took this month.

My Girl Scout troop enjoys earning Council's Own fun patches, as well as official badges and retired badges. I usually look for a fun patch that they can earn in addition to a badge whenever we're planning a big project or a trip, etc. 

That led me to my current research question: what are ALL the Council's Own fun patches that a Girl Scout could earn outside of the council of origin? 

Fun question, right? Knowing that would make it a lot easier to find one that my troop would want to earn, or perhaps even one that would would tempt them into learning or exploring something new, always a Girl Scout gold standard!

I started my research figuring that I'd knock it out in an afternoon and get the blog post with my whole list published the next morning.

Yeah... the next morning I was still researching. And the next morning. AND the next morning...

Nine days later, I'm finally finished up (Girl Scouts of Wisconsin East was last on my list). The master list is RIDICULOUSLY long, so I'm going to break it down and post by category before I overwhelm you with the many-thousand-worded complete experience.

First category, Art and Crafts! This includes all the fine arts, in ways both experiential and informative, and hands-on crafts. There aren't a ton of Council's Own fun patches in this category, which is kind of a bummer because crafts, especially, are something that my Girl Scout troop tends to enjoy.

Ah, well. Wait until we get to the STEM categories, which have many, many, MANY fun patch options!

For these lists, I only included fun patch programs that fit the following criteria:

1. Girl Scouts can earn this fun patch wherever they are. I did not include any fun patch programs that have site-specific criteria, unless I felt that those criteria would be easy to substitute and still maintain the point of the fun patch program. I also didn't include fun patch programs that require time-specific criteria that have already passed, such as patches programs designed for the 2020 COVID lockdowns. I noted in the description of each patch when substitutions would be required.
2. Girl Scouts can obtain the council's requirements to earn this fun patch. I found several instances in which the council still sells a specific fun patch, but has deleted all the requirements from its website. If I couldn't find an easy link to those requirements from another site, I did not include the patch.
3. Girl Scouts can obtain the physical fun patch. There were also several instances in which councils still host the requirements for a fun patch program, but no longer sell the patch (or, as in the case of a few GSAK patches, they have fewer than ten remaining). If it is unlikely for a Girl Scout to be able to obtain the fun patch, I did not include it. The link to purchase each fun patch is in the caption for its graphic.

ART AND CRAFTS

The Art of Jazz GSLE

The Art of Jazz, Girl Scouts of Louisiana East. Experience and learn to appreciate jazz music.

Eco Art GSC

Eco Art, Girl Scouts of Citrus. Create art on the issue of environmentalism. This fun patch program pairs well with any of the Art badges.

Fashion GSSEF

Fashion, Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida. Learn about the history of fashion and the fashion industry.

Girls of "Note" GSNETX

Girls of "Note," Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. Learn traditional Girl Scout songs... and sing them! This fun patch program pairs well with the Girl Scout Way badges.

Leatherworks GSSEF

Leatherworks, Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida. Learn about leatherworking and its history and culture. 

Stylish Artist GSDH

Stylish Artist, Girl Scouts of Dakota Horizons. Try activities from different fields of art.

Next week, I'll post the Council's Own fun patches in the much bigger category of Culture, Diversity, and Equity.

Homeschool Book Review: Three-Dimensional Art Adventures

You might have noticed that I don't often have art as a subject in our weekly lesson plans. Primarily, that's because Matt has an art degree and he gives the children an art lesson every weekend. I consider them to be private art lessons, thriftily outsourced!

I do like to do art with the kids, but I don't consider myself skilled enough to prepare my own lessons, so I really appreciate packaged lessons that include study of an artwork and a hands-on extension. I have several of those kinds of resources in my Homeschool: The Arts pinboard, my favorite of which is this site with leveled art history studies. I especially like to incorporate those lessons into our other studies--we used the lesson on Daniel French, for instance, in our study of the Lincoln Memorial.

The other way that I like to use art lessons, if I don't have an academic context to put them in, is as a fun weekend activity to do with the kids. We spend a ton of time together during the school week doing projects, so you'd think that the last thing that we'd want to do on a weekend is sit down for another project, but it seems new and different, somehow, when it's not also a task to be checked off of a work plan.

That *kind of* explains why I received Three-Dimensional Art Adventures for free from a publicist back in July, and I'm only just now ready to write about it. I made note of the most promising activities, then put the book in with my other resources, and when the time was right for a particular activity, there it was, ready and waiting for us!

I think the kids' favorite of the activities that we tried is the "trick hand." The lesson began with a study of From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes, which the kids found fascinating, then guided us through the creation of our own "tricky" piece:

I can't tell which one, but underneath Will's drawing is for sure one of those LEGO books I was telling you about yesterday!

Does it annoy you to try to draw or write on a picnic table? We do it all summer, and it bugs the crap out of me! Painting boards are on my long-term to-do list.

This is when the magic happens!

Everyone's turned out really well, although we all figured out ways to make the effect even better next time (use a ruler to draw the straight lines, elaborate the curve on the curvy lines, make the lines as close together as we can, etc.), so it's still an activity that's repeatable.

Another week, during our shark unit, the kids became fascinated with the clean, streamlined silhouette of the shark, and so I took that opportunity to introduce the "Capturing Simplicity" lesson. It began with a study of a sculpture from Ancient Greece (and now I'm putting that down in my Greek mythology lesson plans to look at again when we study Hermes!), and continued with our own simple, sculpted silhouettes:

I don't know why I didn't photograph Will's, but she did her first initial. It looks really cool!

The tutorial calls for air-dry clay and paint, but we used Sculpey, and it worked perfectly.

I've often wanted to create some sort of cataloging and indexing system for myself, to use with my homeschooling resources. I have tons of print and digital resources, and when I create unit studies, I'm always flipping through every single thing, adding a reading from here and an activity from there. I mean, just in this book alone, the artwork studied ranges from Ancient Greece to modern, geographically circles the world, covers a huge variety of themes, and uses materials from nuts and bolts to pen and paper to fabric to floral wire.

Next on my to-do list from the book: the collage lesson, just because it's been ages since the kids and I have done collages together (and I have a bunch of random materials that I've been saving up and would love to get used up!), and the lesson on sculpting movement using floral wire as the medium.

Because Hermes!

Homeschool High School Art Class: How to Earn the Girl Scout Senior Collage Artist Badge

 

My obsession with using Girl Scout badges as homeschool units of study continues, as Will and I turned earning the Girl Scout Senior Collage Artist badge into an excellent and super fun study that I'll incorporate into part of a high school fine arts credit for her. 

Step 1: Explore collage. Normally, I wouldn't have thought twice about taking a field trip to an art museum to look at collages, but... you know, there's a pandemic going on. Now that our local university's art museum has re-opened, I do think we'll chance a visit, but until then, I satisfied this step by requesting a ton of collage books from our public library and employing contact-free pick-up. 

I actually ended up really liking what these books brought to our study, as we were able to look through not just fine art collage books but also casual how-to and craft books, which I think gave us more ideas about what we, ourselves, could do with collage. 

Here are some of the collage books that we explored:

Our public library has a stellar collection of zines, so if we'd had more access to the library, or if I'd also been leading Syd through this badge, I was toying with the idea of centering all the activities on zine creation.

Next time!

Step 2: Focus on composition. For this step, Will did do one of the suggested activities, just because it looked like fun!

Since this was a for-fun activity, not really one that I had planned as part of her fine arts unit, I didn't make any criteria for neatness, precision, or craftsmanship. If I had, I might have showed Will how to use our paper cutter to make precise squares, or how to grid the paper lightly to ensure accurate placement, etc. But since this was our very first actual collage activity, and since Will isn't the most confident artist on the planet, "cubomania" turned out to be the perfect low-impact, high-interest collage to get her interested in digging deeper.

3. Create with color. Here's another suggested activity that worked perfectly as written and was also very fun! It tied well into a review of the color wheel, although, as you can see, Will chose to work entirely in greyscale:

Here are some of our color wheel resources:

• 3D color wheels. My Scouts have a varying level of patience with step-by-step directed activities such as this one, but this DOES make a beautiful hanging piece!
• color wheels composed with strange paintbrushes. Sometimes it's not what you make, but how you make it that's the point of the activity. This project ties into the Outdoor Art badges by challenging kids to make the standard color wheel, but to paint it with something unusual. In this particular activity, I had my kids use tree branches, but it would be fun to have kids first collect a variety of nature finds to use--perhaps even without telling them what they'll have to use them for! I think older kids especially enjoy these kinds of physical challenges that are both unusual and maybe just a tad bit babyish. Who wouldn't want to play a little bit longer?
• giant collaborative color wheel. Yes, this is written as a preschool art activity, but not all process-oriented art is solely for preschoolers! This would be a fun group activity to begin a color study, especially if you encourage kids to collect ephemera between meetings. 
• interactive color wheel. This is such a good idea! Instead of using a pre-printed template, though, I think it would be fun to have kids make their own card stock template, and then let them choose their own colors and color wheel combination. Think how much fun they'd have playing with their favorite colors in this wheel, instead of the standard assortment.
• mandala color wheel. Here's a much more sophisticated color wheel that will make an appropriate challenge for an older kid.
• spinning color wheel. This is a quick and easy activity that gets kids up and moving a bit.

Step 4: Use found objects. Will and I went off the rails for the last two steps of this badge, and so instead of creating a found object collage, for this step we reviewed symmetry and how it effects artistic composition. 

Afterwards, Will created a larger piece that incorporated three different types of symmetry into a single composition. 

Step 5: Share a message. Until this step, each of Will's collages had been completed in a single sitting. Even if it took her a couple of hours and/or several episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, each time, when she got up from the art table, she had a finished product to show.

I wanted Will to have the experience of creating a multi-step, multi-day, more involved project, so instead of any of the "share a message" activities, we created that elaborate piece.

I used this large-format collage animal tutorial, and I LOVED it! The only step that we did not attempt was the free-form, process-oriented art while listening to music, and that's only because I have SO much large-format paper ephemera, some of which includes old kid art. So that's what we tore into strips--

--and used as the base for our collage animals:

Matt made us the tracers, and I was surprised when Will wanted to create not the dog that I'd just assumed she would, but an owl:

Black screenprinting ink worked great as a substitute for india ink, but polyurethane did not work as well as the resin called for in the tutorial would have. Definitely use the resin for realistically shiny eyes!

Imperfectly shiny eyes aside, Will and I are both very pleased with her large-format, multi-step, carefully-crafted owl collage:

It's now mounted high in our family room, so it can watch over our bookshelves and keep our books safe from mice.

Even though Will was my only Girl Scout who earned this badge with me, I think this is a badge that would work particularly well for Girl Scout troop meetings. It's set up so that completing one collage per meeting is very manageable, other than that last collage, but the tutorial for that one is written by an art teacher who lays out how to space it out over a period of days. Add in a socially-distanced field trip to an art museum, followed by a picnic and some free time outdoors, and you have a picture-perfect Girl Scout badge!

Want to do more with collage? Here are some of my favorite collage resources and projects, and even more collage projects and resources that are on my to-do list:

• Jack-o-lantern. This is a little cheezy, yes, but so fun and festive to do on a holiday week!
• reflection board. I think this would be such a cool starting activity for every Girl Scout meeting while you're working through the Collage Artist badge, or for the beginning of every school day if you're incorporating it into your homeschool. There's a lot to be said about the experience of getting into the practice of something, even if only temporarily, and I love this as an extension or alternative to journaling. 
• window cards. Here's a way to multi-task collage activities with a service project! You could use this activity to make Christmas or Valentine cards, in particular, because they both have iconographic silhouettes that come to mind. Kids could make them for their families or for nursing home residents. 
• tags and bookmarks. This could be another good pre-holiday activity, or you could forget the gift tags and just focus on bookmarks. The extra artistry and detailing that's called for with these types of projects can be extra-appealing to older kids, I've found, and sourcing materials should be easy, because you can simply ask kids to bring in some of their recycling!
• magnets. These are similar to the tags and bookmarks, above. This project would work well with the Senior Room Makeover badge, since kids could also make an upcycled magnet board to go with it (pro tip: thrift old cookie sheets!).
• postcards. You have to be a little more careful with postcards, but it's fun to see how things end up when they go through the mail! I recently did a similar project with my Girl Scout troop as an at-home activity, and the kids are all waiting with bated breath to receive them as I type this!

The Flight of Europa, Re-Imagined

The other day on a school holiday, I took both the girls up to Indianapolis to visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art. You might remember that the idea of this trip filled me with trepidation, on account of the huge, screaming fit that a certain 4-year-old threw within eight minutes of entering (after standing in line for over an hour) the San Francisco Modern Art Museum. This trip was certainly better, in that we got the chance, you know, to see some actual art this time-- --but it did end, of course, in me tersely escorting the girls from the museum an hour after entering, and I wasn't quite successful in convincing Willow, at least, that a museum without anything to climb on is still super-fun, but after spending 5 seconds looking intently at The Flight of Europa--

Willow did sit down with her sketchbook and colored pencils and create this:

When Willow asked me why the lady was riding the bull, I told her that it was a big, friendly bull named Zeus and it was taking the Europa lady off on a special ride across the ocean. For anyone else who knows the myth of Europa, you can join me with a quiet "ahem" inside your heads, as well.

Next time (probably the IU Art Museum), we'll spend ten minutes looking at art, twenty minutes hanging out with sketchbooks (the girls were inspired to draw in the museum for quite a while after looking at the art, even if they weren't necessarily impressed by that art, so I'm calling the enterprise a success)--

--and then we'll move on immediately to some very different activity that requires a lot of climbing upon things.

If only art museums had a playroom.

Crafty Book Review: Drawing Wild Animals, and 8 More Art Activities for Biology

I've mentioned off and on for years now how much the kids enjoy how-to-draw books. Every now and then I'll check out a pile of them from the library, and every now and then a publicist will send us a free one to play with.

Our most recent review copy is Drawing Wild Animals, which is coming in super useful for our Honors Biology study. The animals are categorized by class, with examples of mammals, amphibians, and reptiles represented. Some of the animals that the book shows you how to draw, such as the frog, toad, and salamander, are animals that the kids can practice from the book, then draw again as we do nature studies. We can do the same drawing practice, but then visit the zoo to study and draw animals like the tiger, giraffe, rhinoceros, zebra, elephant, lemur, and rattlesnake.

And, of course, some of the animals we can just draw for fun! Here are some sketches that Will made from the book the other day:

Will doesn't consider herself to be a competent artist, which means that she's often reluctant to do art. I'm always thrilled, then, when a resource is so deliciously tempting that even she will happily partake! And, of course, it helps when it's user-friendly enough that she's pleased with what she creates--that's positive reinforcement for practicing art!

Syd does consider herself to be an artist--and oh, she's a wonderful, gifted artist, indeed. Here's what she drew:

I think the detailing on the antlers, and the hair on the... hare... are new techniques that she picked up from the book. Super useful to be able to draw antlers and bunny fur!

Syd has sometimes been less engaged in our extensive biology studies this past year, so I'm contemplating deliberately incorporating more art into our biology. Syd always likes to do art! Here are some of the ideas that I've been researching:

1. I love these free, downloadable artist's study lessons. The first grade packet includes a close reading and extension activities for The Peaceable Kingdom; the second grade packet includes Tiger in a Tropical Storm; and fourth grade has an Audubon plate and The Horse Fair.
2. The Endangered Species Art Contest takes place every year!
3. There's also a National Fossil Day art contest!
4. A magazine collage would be fun for younger kids to create.
5. Look how beautiful these feather prints are!
6. You can make a life cycle story board for for every unique life cycle that you study.
7. This photo tutorial is for a papier mache dinosaur, but papier mache would work for any whole-body animal study, or even as a project on cells or organ systems.
8. The Children's Museum of Indianapolis has an entire curriculum about paleo art. It's young for my two, but easily adaptable.

I feel like I'm on the right track with this, but I don't think I've yet hit on anything that would be a meaningful contribution to our study and would fill Syd with excitement. Let me know if you've got other suggestions for me!

Small Town Famous

Even though I made Matt promise to not let me enroll the children in ANY OTHER SUMMER CAMPS this year (sleep-away camp and our big road trip seem like plenty of adventure/expenditure this summer), there are always so many cute and cool and interesting and enriching summer camps on offer--rock climbing camp! horseback riding camp! acting camp! Humane Society camp! archaeology camp! golf camp!--that I nevertheless pored through our local summer camp book that came in the newspaper a few weeks ago, exclaiming over and then having to remind myself not to book every single camp.

As I was carefully reading the entries on one page, trying to decide if maybe I could make an exception for art museum camp, I found my eyes repeatedly drawn to one particular image, and yet it took more than a minute of glancing at it, reading some more, then glancing at it again--

--before I realized, "Oh! We're IN that photo!" It must have been taken in the fall, while Matt was away at a conference. The kids were sad that he'd missed their horseback riding show, so even though I didn't feel like getting out of the house and into the car again, to cheer them up I took them to a children's event at the IU Art Museum.

I had clearly forgotten all about that trip, since I distinctly remember late this winter beating myself up about completely neglecting art history and art appreciation in the children's education. Ah, well... that at least spurred me into redemption; I scheduled what turned out to be a AMAZING field trip for my homeschool group to that very art museum a few weeks ago, and this weekend our whole family is spending the day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (a place that I have not taken the children since, shockingly, 2009!), including watching an aerial silks show!

With an aerial silks show, make-and-take art projects, a family-friendly tour, and a quick couple of hours spent afterwards at the nearby children's museum, this trip to the art museum will be a raging success.

I may have been gritting my teeth while I wrote that last part.

At the Indianapolis Museum of Art

With temperatures in Indy in the low 40s instead of the forecasted low 50s, it wasn't the best day to explore the Indianapolis Museum of Art and its expansive outdoor park and gardens, but there was a children's tour I wanted to attend and an aerial silks performance art piece (outdoors, of COURSE) that I'd already bought tickets for, so we all just girded our loins and muscled ahead.

It's always, fortunately, a great day to explore the indoor museum:

Matt and I usually practice a man-on-man defense in museums, which is why I only have photos of one kid OR the other, and none of Matt. He was there, just mostly with Will while I was with Syd. We'd pass each other between galleries and I'd say, "There's a Matisse over there!", or we'd find ourselves in the same gallery and spend a minute all together with the Georgia O'Keefes before I had to take Syd to the bathroom, and as a reward for sitting in the foyer with Will (who threw a fit because there were too many babies and toddlers on the children's tour--she disdains babies and toddlers) while I went on the children's tour with Syd, he got to look around all by himself(!) for half an hour or so while I hung out in the hands-on art room with both kids:

They both stay in the same place pretty well when there's art to be made.

We also huddled together as a family--Syd tucked onto Matt's lap with his arms around her, Will squished between the two of us with one of my arms over the top of her--through the performance art piece, which everyone liked, although we all would have liked it a lot better if we hadn't been so uncomfortably cold:

So walking the grounds didn't happen, and the picnic didn't happen, and the portable art set for making art en plein air that I brought didn't leave the car, but we saw the silks, some of us took the tour, the kids now have postcards featuring Georgia O'Keefe paintings on the walls by their beds, and we'll go back again for all the rest when it's actually sunny and springlike and warm.

In Her Father's Footsteps

You may not believe that I was able to hold off this long, but y'all, I have signed my baby up for her first craft swap.

Well, really it's an art swap. House on Hill Road and Blair Peter are moderating what is possibly the FIRST Artist Trading Card children's swap. I am a super-big fan of Artist Trading Cards, but I've never joined in on any ATC swaps on my own behalf because, well... I'm not an artist. But mediating my baby's first forays into official artdom is actually making the concept seem a lot less intimidating and a lot more accessible, so I likely might jump in sometime soon.

And you know how I love arts and crafts materials, so one of the coolest benefits of Will doing this swap is that I'm being introduced to all those official kinds of artist's paper--watercolor paper, sketch paper, Bristol board, vellum, canvas, etc. You absolutely have to use a professional-quality artist's paper for an ATC; you can cut them down from larger pieces, but for this first time I just bought a few packs of each in the exactly correct size for an ATC (2.5"x3.5", if you're curious, or the size of a baseball card).

So this morning I explained the concept to the kiddos and off we went with our watercolors and our Strathmore watercolor paper:

And you know, it IS more fun to paint with watercolors on professional-quality watercolor paper--the way the colors flow, and they look so pretty, and the paper dries all nicely. The girls enjoyed painting with watercolors more this morning than they probably ever have previously, and I, too, was quite pleased with my efforts. I'd noticed that the Strathmore papers are on sale at Michael's this week, so this afternoon after school we went by and bought a pack of watercolor paper in every size--big, bigger, and poster-huge! I'm looking forward to a family-wide collaboration on that huge paper.

We're going to study art for a while around here, I think. I requested a ton of art books--kids' and adult, from the library, as well as
(which I'm pretty excited about), and I'm looking forward to exploring more hands-on art with the girls.

We can also incorporate some field trips--the IU Art Museum is terrific, and, so, of course, is the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Of course, Willow's last visit to an art museum went less than well. But she's what, six months older now? Whereas four-year-olds may shriek and act possessed the second they so much as enter the foyer of a world-class art museum, four-and-a-half-year-olds tend to appreciate their educational opportunities so much more, don't you find?

Don't you?

Homeschool History: The Berlin Wall and Political Graffiti

I haven't posted a lot of hands-on activities from our AP European History study for the sorry reason that we simply haven't done a lot of hands-on activities for that class this year. We're taking a second year to make a second run through the study, however, so that will change, at least.

Silver linings!

Here are the textbook resources for this lesson:

• For the older student
• Palmer, R. R. "Chapter 25: The International Revolt against Soviet Communism," A History of Europe in the Modern World, 11th ed.
• For the younger student
• Bauer, Susan Wise. "Chapter 41: Communism Crumbles." Story of the World Volume 4: The Modern Age

After reading these chapters, the kids and I spent time discussing the Berlin Wall, and then watched this TED-Ed video on its rise and fall:



I pointed out the examples of graffiti on the Berlin Wall, and we looked at several other examples of Berlin Wall graffiti here.

 It's important to note that this graffiti was only on the "Western" side; make sure you look at plenty of examples of what the wall looked like on the Soviet side, as well, as it's shockingly different.

We performed a close reading of all of these images, simply noticing and identifying all of the graffiti we could, marveling at some of it, enjoying the funny bits... acknowledging the dirty stuff...

As we looked, though, I encouraged the kids to point out whenever they saw graffiti that was "political" in nature, something that spoke to how people should govern or be governed, their freedoms and restrictions of behavior in their socioeconomic context, etc. There should be lots of examples! Graffiti is often a form of political speech in that it speaks to these issues, in a far more public medium than even a famous artist or politician could often hope to reach. It's also a form of speech that's culturally assigned to the individual, typically the individual with the lowest socioeconomic privilege in a particular culture, and so is often privileged to represent what "the people" really think.

As such, it's an excellent example of a primary source, visual document to analyze as part of AP European History. Here's are the specific AP European History categories that it touches:

• Analysis as a Primary Source
• Authorship
• Audience
• Format or Medium of that Source
• Assessment of the Usefulness, Reliability, and Limitations of the Source as Historical Evidence
• Historical Themes
• Poverty and Prosperity
• Objective and Subjective Visions
• Interactions with States and Other Institutions of Power
• Individual Versus Society

AP European History students should make good notes about each of these categories, and include specific examples of Berlin Wall graffiti that they could refer to in future thinking and writing. This is also a good subject for an essay!

On this day, however, there was no essay writing--instead, I wanted to combine our lesson on the Berlin Wall with a hands-on art lesson, one that inspired the children to feel the power of graffiti as an art form for themselves, as well as one that got them playing with, and feeling the possibilities of, some art supplies that we don't often use.

Although we do spray paint sometimes--a five-year-old can spray paint with liquid watercolor poured into small spray bottles, and a six-year-old can spray paint with real cans, for the strengthening of their hand muscles for writing at either age--and I do keep several colors in stock for the kids (with the new-ish rule, after Will had a friend over and they got rowdy with it, that they mustn't spray paint anything that is alive, such as OUR TREES!!!), spray paint is a supply that has much more potential than I think the kids realize.

I set the kids up with two different stations for this activity. At one station, out in the yard, they could tape large pieces of newsprint up to Syd's abandoned-while-in-progress pallet play house--

--and at another station on the back deck they made smaller-scale graffiti with our Crayola Air Marker Sprayer:

The kids were really excited to do this project. Like, REALLY excited. We'd flipped through a bunch of books on the art of graffiti before this, as well as looking at all those examples from the Berlin Wall, and as they worked, their eyes were just alight with excitement and, dare I say, maniacal mischief-making possibility. I have designated the chicken coop (because who cares?) and the driveway (it'll wear off) as free spaces to explore more graffiti art, so we'll see if that mania takes fire and political expression comes to life on the chicken coop!

Here are some other resources that we used for this lesson:

• Global Street Art
• This is Not a Photo Opportunity: The Street Art of Banksy
• Exit through the Gift Shop
• The Wall: A World Divided
• The Other Side of the Wall

There are a TON more resources than this, however, both on the Berlin Wall and on the art of graffiti. It think it's good to include at least one live-action video on each subject, so that kids can see the process of graffiti, and you of course have to see some video of the Berlin Wall being torn down by the people whom it had been imprisoning--the power of the individual versus society, indeed!

P.S. Want more handmade homeschooling resources as I come by them? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Paint a Folk Art Coca-Cola Bottle

I've been spray painting some of my vintage Coca-Cola bottles because they look awesome that way, even though I don't know what to do with them afterwards other than put them back on the same shelf where they lived before, but now looking awesome.

I'm thinking candle holders. Stay tuned.

Anyway, every now and then I mess up the spray paint job and end up with bubbles or drips, so I was also trying to think of a way to rescue the messed-up bottles, when I remembered how even more awesome the folk art Coca-Cola bottles that we saw at World of Coca-Cola were.

The folk art bottles were embellished in all kinds of ways, from decoupage to beading to even more extreme transformations, but the most accessible method that still had beautiful results was simply to paint on them.

To make the most authentic folk art, you should have no expectations built from previous experiences of what the artwork should be, so instead of trying something myself, I first gave a red spray-painted Coca-Cola bottle to the youngest of us. I provided her with my new favorite art supply, paint pens, and asked her if she would like to paint on this bottle for me.

Reader, she would!



And you're not going to believe what she came up with. The specific decorations are very much her own, but I think that the overall look reminds me VERY much of other folk art Coca-Cola bottles that I've seen:



I love that she went over the embossing in white, so that it stands out, and there's also a cat and a ballerina, representing her favorite things, and a mug of hot coffee, which she says represents my favorite thing.

I've already tried to get Will to paint a bottle, too, and she refused because she didn't like the feel of painting over the bumps, but I'm hoping that if I can catch her in the right mood she'll agree another time, and then I'll corner Matt, and then I'll make one, myself, and then we'll have a whole family of painted folk art bottles.

Just don't ask me what I'm going to do with them...

P.S. Here are some other things you could do with a stash of clear vintage bottles on your hands:

• Cut them down and pour candles in them.
• I'm pretty sure I have the right tools to drill a hole into a glass bottle, maybe for a string of twinkle lights or a post.
• If they're filthy, here's the best way to get them squeaky clean.
• I do NOT have the tools to flatten a glass bottle. Do you?
• I think this paint-dyed glue would make a more economical alternative to paint pens.
• I don't love the effects of dyeing the bottle from the inside, but maybe you do?
• I also want to try painting them from the inside with craft acrylics.
• Cover the bottle in twine, and it would make a lovely vase.