This week's projects are inspired by the Rio Olympics! Here are some of the highlights:

Athlete Sculptures

For this project, all you'll need is some scissors & basic tin foil. First, you draw the shape below on a piece of tin foil & cut it out. We've created a template to use in the studio. Simply mold the foil into the shape of an athlete by crumbling the foil. The top three tabs will become the athlete's arms & legs. The bottom two tabs will become his/her legs. The mid section becomes the body. Make an athlete performing your favorite Olympic sport.

Make a Gold Medal

If your kids are like ours, they are loving pretending to be athletes winning the "golden medals" (as Anna's 2 & 4 year olds are calling it). They will love making their own medal to wear. We created a DIY gold glitter paint. See previous blog post here for the recipe. It is super easy to do at home. We picked up some red, white and blue ribbon in 1/4" at Michael's. Kids can use all 3 colors twisted or braided together, or simply pick a color to string through their medal.

Paint & Collage the Brazilian Flag

We couldn't have a Rio Olympics week without creating the host country's flag. We decided to do a mixed media flag using both painting & collage. We cut 4.25" x 5.5" rectangular paper. The flag is formed layer by layer. The first layer is painted green; layer 2 is a diamond shaped piece of construction paper; layer 3 is a painted blue circle; layer 4 is a white piece of construction paper; the top layer is painted dots to represent the stars. To create the dots, we dipped a dried up skinny marker in paint & dotted it on the flag. We're always looking for second lives for dried up markers!

Interlocking Olympic Rings Puzzle/Collage

We love combining art with puzzles. For our Olympic Ring project, we decided to turn the rings into a puzzle. The challenge is to make sure and interlock all 5 rings together. Here are step by step instructions: