Thursday, June 7, 2012

Screenprinting with kids. It's not as scary as you would think!



It's art camp week.  It's been a crazy busy, but very good week! One of the things you know about me is that I hate cheapo crafts that don't teach anything.. so for our Performing and Visual Arts Camp, my co-teacher and I really worked at making sure that camp activities were meaningful and not something every kid could do at home!

I think we have done a great job.  Day 1, the kids learned how to sew a vest, they painted a mural, made puppets and learned about stage directions and practiced their play. Day 2 they learned about printmaking and made a brand, they did scratch art, decorated their vests, and learned their lines and practiced the plays. Day 3, they worked on memory books, practiced their plays and finished their vests... and screen printed their tshirts. Yes. screen printed!

Some would call it a nightmare :) It was nuts, but so very, very worth it!  I only have pictures of my girls doing this on the blog, but multiply these intent faces and their joy and multiply that by the 50 kids at camp!!

Now, this is not a project for a novice.  Even with years and years of screen printing experience we still had issues.  At the last moment I changed brands of paint and it was too thick and pulled my first two films to bits. It was crazy.  But, I quickly cut one in vinyl and we started again.

Almost every child at camp pulled their very own shirt.  I think we had a few that didn't get to, so I'm going to let them screen print something today! I want every camper to get to pull paint through the screen. It's kind of addicting.



After camp was over, we needed to screen the volunteer shirts. So my girls and my co-teacher's girls screened those.  New screen, new paint..
The girls each got to pull a couple of shirts and even did one on their own.





I love having these pictures. My dad taught me to screen print as a child and I love that my girls enjoy it too!

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