Recreating Famous Artworks with Elmer’s Board Mate

Thanks to Elmer’s for sponsoring this post and providing the Board Mate materials to complete our project.  All opinions, as always, are honestly my own.

One of the things I love about Little Crafter’s school is that they make a real effort to familiarize even the smallest students with important historical people, events, and places.  Over the course of the year, he’s learned to recognize various U.S. landmarks and symbols, identify countries, continents, and oceans, and name a number of U.S. Presidents.  This month, they are focusing on famous works of art, which is pretty exciting for this artsy mama!  He has six paintings to recognize by sight, and he was given the assignment of recreating Van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” in any way he wanted.  The kids could use markers, construction paper, paint, or whatever supplies they’d like in recreating the masterpiece.  Here’s a simple and fun way to do it, using supplies from our stash!

TIME REQUIRED: 25 minutes
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: easy!  Perfect for kiddos {younger ones will need some guidance}
SPECIAL TOOLS: none
SPECIAL SKILLS: none

Materials:

– Elmer’s foam board, 8×10″
– Elmer’s Board Mate Permanent Markers
– Elmer’s Board Mate Glitter Shakers
– Elmer’s Board Mate Extra Strength Glue Stick
– coffee filters
– scissors
– blue, yellow, and brown/grey cardstock

Step 1: Create the background.  Trim a piece of blue cardstock to 8×10″ and glue it to the foam board.  Cut a piece of yellow card stock and glue it across the bottom.

Step 2: Create the vase.  Trim a vase shape from light brown cardstock and cut another piece to fit at the top of it from light yellow cardstock.  Glue together, then onto the background.  Trace around the vase with brown marker.  Use yellow marker to add some highlights and shadows on the top of the vase.

Step 3: Create the flowers.  Color on coffee filters with yellow marker, then cut out circle and oval shapes.  For full sunflowers, use scissors to cut a fringe around the edges.  Add centers with brown marker.  Glue each flower onto the background, then use green marker to add leaves and stems.

Step 4: Add glitter!  Of course, Van Gogh’s original doesn’t have any glitter, but we’re creating our own version here and in this house, we believe glitter makes everything better!  Just a touch of gold glitter on a few of the centers and some white glitter on the vase top is enough to make it extra snazzy.

Not too shabby, huh?  I think this is a super fun and interactive way to teach kids about famous works of art!  I’m thinking about having LC recreate a few other favorites too, because it will help him connect with the paintings in a very hands-on way and remember them for a long time.

What do you think?  Is this something the little people in your life would enjoy?