Are you the kind of kid who loves to mix, mash, mush, and mold? Do you like to get your feet in mud, paint with eggs, and squish bubbles?

If so, fire up your imagination and get ready for some excitement. With the fifty crazy art concoctions recipes plus hundreds of art smart ideas in this book, you can’t help but have a great time !

Concocting is more than mixing up a recipe. It’s experimenting and exploring. What happens if you add sugar or more water? The best answer is, “Try it and see!” You’ll have the most fun through your own creative exploration. The projects following each concoction extend this exploration. No limiting directions here!

Just open-ended projects that invite you and your friends to use your crazy concoction in a way best suited to your imagination, your mood, and the concoction’s unique attributes. Soon you’ll discover that the most important ingredient to add is your own imagination.

Where should you begin?

Skim through the book to see which concoctions recipes look most intriguing and best suit your mood. After each concoction recipe, you’ll find a special project to make with your concoction. There’s no one way to make it and loads of room for your own creative touch. Let the look and feel of your new mixture inspire you. You’ll surprise yourself with an artistic masterpiece all your own.

For Kids ages 4 and up and their friends!

HELPFUL HINTS

PAINT PIZZAZZ

• Homemade Paint Concoctions Recipe
• Homemade Wonderful Watercolors Recipe
• Tempting Temperas Recipe
• Thick Paints
• Special Paints
• Homemade Fabulous Finger Paints Recipe

HANDS-ON DOUGHS RECIPES

• Homemade Flour Doughs Recipe
• Cornstarch Doughs Recipe
• Crazy Doughs

HANDS-ON DOUGHS RECIPES

HOMEMADE STICKY STUFF RECIPES

• Lick-It-Later Sticker Gums Recipe
• Paper Pastes Recipe
• Sticky Art
• Molding Pastes Recipe

PAPER CAPERS 

• Handmade Papers
• Papier-Mache
• More Mash

EARTH-WORKS

• Mudworks
• Homemade Natural Clay Recipe
• Sand Art

HANDS-ON LEARNING

Children learn best when they experience information first hand. As an instructional tool, passive listening just can’t compete with physical “doing.” Measuring, mixing, and then working with the concoctions they’ve created, brings learning to life. Children don’t simply hear about the physical properties of dough, they feel it and know from experience how kneading changes those properties.

From there, children get to solidify their experiences with something concrete — a creative art work representative of who they are, how they feel, how they respond to the medium, and their understanding of what each medium can be used for.

CROSS-CURRICULAR LEARNING

Concoction-making can be a powerful thread that weaves across the curriculum into children’s lives. Here is a sampling of how making concoctions can cross academic disciplines from science to math to literature; can cross cultures, religions, and time; can cross modes of self-expression in music, art, and poetry.

★ How gluten releases in dough by feeling the dough hold together while kneading

★ How colors combine to make new colors

★ How pigment plus binder forms paint by blending them together, and how ancient cultures discovered this property

★ About the art and science of making handmade papers by learning of the properties of cellulose fiber

★ About the adhesive properties of gelatin, gluten, and sugar by mixing their own pastes from these substances

★ About soil differences in sand, mud, and clay

★ How to measure accurately and read carefully by making mediums dependent on these skills

★ How people discovered clays, pastes, papers, and paints by combining ingredients from nature

★ How proportion and ratio can alter a concoction’s properties and artistic applications

★ How interconnected everything we do is with our past and the future by studying soils for concoctions and discovering a lot about biology, geology, and archaeology

★ How trial and error are necessary in all attempts at discovery and creativity

★ The inventive spirit of men and women to create what they need with what they have at hand.