Child’s age: 1,5 – 2 years
Today I want to share with you two of our favourite toddler books, each of them is read several times a day by my almost 2 years old son (and me).
“Bus Stops” and “My friends” are written and illustrated by Taro Gomi – one of Japan’s most prolific children’s book illustrators. Stories are simple and illustrations are just brillant. To be honest I’d love to have several of these illustrations printed and framed in my living room.
Spring does not seem to come soon unfortunately (at least in Poland) which means we have a lot of bird guests for breakfasts here. A few days ago I set up a real life matching activity for my boys and the younger one (almost 2 years old) got it instantly. He is learning to speak at this moment and each opportunity to name something is interesting for him.
I recently ordered a set of Usborne birds cards from Amazon and it was perfect for this purpose. It contains 30 beautiful illustrations of birds living in UK (I guess), but many of them are the same as in Poland. Illustrations are detailed and accurate as well as really beautiful. I chose 6 birds which are our frequent guests: house sparrow, 2 species of doves, great tit, magpie and a sea gull and just placed them on a wall with washi tape near the window where the birds are coming for breakfast. My son got it in a moment and started to point and name pigeons as soon as they came for breakfast – in fact this is the first thing he does in the morning everyday now.
For more inspiration visit:
Recently I came across these dreamy, irrealistic landscape photomontages by Polly Balitro, artist based in Helsinki, Finland, and I just couldn’t resist to share them here.
Project description from artist’s blog:
These photomontages are the result of the encounter between my photographs from Lapland and my collection of Finnish old photographs. they might make little sense at first glance – but all you need is a closer look to find the right connection.
Polly Balitro – photomontage
Polly Balitro – photomontage
Polly Balitro – photomontage
Polly Balitro – photomontage
Polly Balitro – photomontage
If you want to see more photographs by Polly Balitro please visit her site.
All images via artist’s blog.
Today I wanted to share with you these sweet food illustrations by Katt Frank:
Katt Frank – food illustration
Katt Frank – food illustration
Katt Frank – food illustration
Katt Frank – food illustration
Katt Frank – food illustration
All images via Katt Frank’s Tumblr – check for many more beautiful illustrations!
We rarely associate black and white colors with food illustration but it’s not so obvious. Here are some very interesting illustrations by Alice Pattullo, artist based in East London:
mapart.me: Alice Pattullo – Vegetables
Alice Pattullo – Vegetables
Alice Pattullo – Fish
Alice Pattullo – Dairy
Alice Pattullo – People
You can find more (not food related) illustrations on Alice Pattullo’s site or blog.
These watercolor paintings by Sarah Hinckley are so simple and beautiful I had a hard time choosing only a few… You can find more on Sarah Hinckley’s web site.
Sarah Hinckley – Light a spark (3)
Sarah Hinckley – Be the change
Sarah Hinckley – A wind down the road
Sarah Hinckley – As far as the eye can see (1)
Sarah Hinckley – After all the dreaming I come home (2)
Sarah Hinckley – Troubles behind (1)
All images via Sarah Hinckley’s web site.
Child’s age: 1.5 – 3 years old
One of our all time favourites is a series about Bartholomew Bear – a little bear who is funny, emotional and naughty just like every other toddler. Short stories are brillantly illustrated by Virginia Miller – in very few pencil strokes she is able to portray little bear’s strong emotions – so well known to any parent of a toddler.
There are six books in this series (I list the best in our opinion at the beginnning):
I haven’t found a source for new books so we bought used ones, but they are sturdy and came in very good condition. You can find them on Amazon. I recommend board books (they also come in form of one big standard book which is not so convenient).
Virginia Miller “Eat your Dinner” (via)
Virginia Miller – Eat your Dinner
Virginia Miller – Be Gentle
Virginia Miller – Be Gentle
Writing this post I found out there is another (seek-and-find) book about Ba which we still don’t have – Where Is Little Black Kitten. As soon as we get it in our hands I’ll update this review!
I just came across “Underwater Plantlife” series of linocut prints by Jennifer Ament and immediately had to share them! So simple and beautiful!
All images via artist’s website.
I’ve been working on mineral drawings / watercolor paintings series recently and I think it’s a good time to share them here. I’ve done 6 paintings and at this point my work started to evaluate in different direction, so I think I’m done with mineral watercolor paintings for this moment. I’ll share another version of these drawings next week. Here they are:
Hanna Grochowska – Spodumene
Hanna Grochowska – Opal
Hanna Grochowska – Aegirine
Hanna Grochowska – Clinoclase
Hanna Grochowska – Olivine
Hanna Grochowska – Vermiculite
Prints of all paintings are available in my Etsy shop.
Child’s age: 1.5 – 2.5 years old
Children love boxes, everybody knows it. And they love small objects – it’s even described in Montessori method as a “sensitive period for small objects” (circa in age 1.5-2.5 years old). Also this is the age when toddlers learn color names. My conclusion was obvious – let’s make a color matching box for our younger son.
mapart.me: Color matching box
All you need for color box is:
* a shadow box with 9 compartments (you can also use smaller or bigger one, see my notes below)
* paints: red, blue, yellow, white and black
* a collection of small objects found around your house
Colors:
I wanted to include 9 colors: all primary and secondary colors (red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange), brown (the mixture of all primary colors), white and black, that’s why I needed a shadow box with 9 compartments.
You can also make different versions with:
* only 4 colors (red, blue, yellow and green),
* 6 colors (primary and secondary colors)
* or even 12 colors – adding for example pink, grey and sky blue to 9-colors version which I made.
It all depends on your child’s age and objects you can find around your house.
One important note about colors: I recommend using rather light color versions of blue (like sky blue), green, violet and brown for a few reasons:
* lighter colors are easier to discriminate than darker ones
* in a shadow box colors will appear darker
* most of the small objects I found at home are of ligher shade than “model colors” and it may confuse your child a litlle.
That’s why I’ll probably repaint our box (at least blue and green compartments) in a spare time.
Order of colors:
What I found is important is the order of colors in the box. You should put similar colors near each other (like orange between yellow and red), it will help your child examine them exactly during color-matching game. I found my son has difficulties in discriminating orange from brown, red or yellow and violet from blue. That’s why I should put brown compartment in the middle of the box near orange (instead of white, which is easy to discriminate). Here is the right order (I believe) for 9-compartment box:
Color diagram
Box and compartments’ size:
Compartments in our box are 3” x 4.3” (8 cm x 11 cm) and 1.5” (4 cm) deep which means if you put 2-3 objects in each they are nicely layed out and do not feel “crowded”. If you want to, you can pack up to 5-7 small objects in each compartment of this size. But it also means the total size of our box is 10” x 14” (26 cm x 35 cm) which is big for little hands. I didn’t think of this issue before and next time I would rather buy smaller box with smaller compartments.
How to make a color box:
As you can guess it’s easy, easy enough to make by older sibling (in fact this box was painted by my 4 years old son). I just mixed paints, drew dividers and made spots of colors on each rectangle so he would know what color he should use.
mapart.me: Older brother is painting color matching box
Small objects:
I used small objects with bold and obvious colors found around our house. If you have problem finding any color try to look for bottle nuts, crayons, blocks, playdough nuts, colorful adhesive tapes, marker nuts or clothes pins.
It’s enough to have 2-3 objects of each color, more objects at once may be distracting. If you have more, just store it somewhere and rotate to keep game fresh and engaging.
mapart.me: Color matching box
How do we play:
At first I gave M. one object and asked to put in the right compartment, he caught the idea of matching objects and compartments immediately. If he put object in wrong compartment I asked for example “Is it orange?”, then he usually revised and matched properly at the second time. Later I gave him another box containing 1 object of each color to sort, then 2 objects. It is important to give children time to revise – I often observe M. putting something in a wrong compartment, then putting another thing (proper) in the same compartment and comparing… Then he usually see there is something wrong, takes out the wrong object and looks for the right place for it. When the color box is full I ask him to give me object of specific color (e.g. “Could you give me something red?”). When I know he recognise the color I can ask “What’s the color of this …?”.
mapart.me: Color matching box
Have fun!
Cool. I’ve done some similar stuff and I love to see what people are doing with maps.
Hi, I love your works, especially those paintings on maps/plans like skateboarder and cyclist: http://artsurgency.com/artwork/2819361_Skateboarder_1.html
I love that painting “Warsaw”. I couldn’t buy anything just now but I see it is no longer available on Etsy – does that mean you sold it. If so, I’m not surprised.
Thanks! It disappeared because I forgot to renew it in my etsy shop.
