art closet – my montessori corners

Just as I am not the Montessori teacher to go to for art ideas, I am not the artsy mom either. I can get into crafts, but as I confessed in my last post, I do struggle to find ways to encourage and support art in the class and the home. My general philosophy for most things is — if the materials are ready and easy to put together, it is far more likely I will use them. Following that, at our house we have the our art closet. It’s not perfect, it’s not always neat, it’s not a lot, but it is working.

montessori works - art closet

The shelf is in the linen/laundry/miscellaneous closet off the main room of our house. I have arranged Imogen’s art supplies on the lowest shelf and the floor, where, with a little moving and shuffling, everything is relatively accessible.

montessori works - art closet

This is what the closet holds:

On the shelf

  • tempera paint
  • plastic tempera paint cups
  • watercolor paint, both pallets and tubes
  • two mason jars for watercolors
  • jar of brushes
  • jar of colored pencils
  • jar of sequins, googly eyes, puffy stickers
  • glitter glue
  • sidewalk chalk
  • crafty box (clementine box) – feathers, ribbon, glitter, etc.
  • two pair of scissors (in iPod box)
  • felt
  • model magic

montessori works - art closet

On the floor

  • trays, both large and small. Useful for holding messy activities and for hauling materials to other areas
  • watercolor paper
  • construction paper
  • play dough work
  • stamps and stamp pads
  • wet-on-wet watercolor board
  • various pallets
  • roll of easel paper

montessori works - art closet

I buy most of our materials at Michaels with the wonderful 40% of coupons. At our school we order most our art supplies from Discount School Supply, and I think I prefer their materials. I am thinking of doing a summer art supply order from them soon as we are running out of paint and paper.

Each week I try to encourage or set up various open-ended art activities (I hope for two to three and am happy with one or two). In my mind I keep art in a different category that crafts – which we also do, but usually for gifts and holidays. To me, works that are just art works, focus on method and medium, where craft works focus on a product and usually involve following certain steps to reach a specific outcome.

A few favorite works:

montessori works - art closet

Play dough

montessori works - art closet

Painting a the easel (the easel is a tabletop easel from Michaels). I precut the easel paper from the roll and clip it to the back of the ease, this helps it to uncurl and keeps it within easy reach. We store the easel in the laundry room.

montessori works - art closet

Painting any place other than the easel. Here is one of the large trays from Michael’s holding all our supplies.

montessori works - art closet

Wet-on-wet watercolors. We soak our paper in the large Michaels trays that we have.

montessori works - art closet

Collage – also known as “I’m just gluing stuff mama.” And yes, that is a dog, not just a fuzzy pillow.

It is just recently that I have rediscovered the wonderful blog, The Artful Parent, by Jean Van’t Hul. Jean’s site is such a rich repository of different art resources, activities and insights; I already have the book on my library waitlist and my summer buy list – we will just have to see which happens first. The plan (oh, I have so many plans) is to really make this the summer of art, and hopefully, I will have many ideas to share with you along the way.

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