"Elephant in Jungle" by Stella
This is what Maia and her friends have been doing for the last couple of weeks - scratch art, or sgraffito. They love it! I bought a big stack of scratchboard from Discount School Supply the last time I placed an order with them and we've already made good headway. I actually put off buying some for quite a while because I really just wanted a few sheets to try it out rather than 100 sheets. 100 felt like such a commitment. What if we didn't like it?! Luckily we do.
You can buy special little wooden sticks to go with the scatch boards but we just used toothpicks and coins and they worked fine.
Maia's friends mostly drew pictures on the scratch boards.
Maia, on the other hand, systematically scraped off all the black coating of almost every single scratchboard she worked on. I found this very interesting and not at all something I expected! She kept commenting on all the colors and saying, "I wonder what color is under this spot?" as she worked.
Maia and Marlise in leis that match the colorful scratch boards
As someone who is not always the most patient or thorough, she worked on these very patiently and thoroughly (even when her friends lost interest and begged her to come play).
So while this is not exactly how scratch boards are meant to be used, I love how she took ownership of the art material and used it her own way. And I also love the more traditional scratch art that her friends made.
These scratch boards tie into Maia's continued love of the rainbow and so we may use them as an activity for Maia's upcoming birthday. She's requested a rainbow fairy, princess, and unicorn party (??!!) although I may focus on one of the three, rather than trying to wrap my head around all three themes.
More scratch art stuff:
- I think we may have to try making our own scratch boards soon. Perhaps like these simple crayon on crayon ones at Made by Joel.
- There is some pretty amazing scratch art out there. Check out these google image searches for scratch art or sgraffito.
- These boards were kind of stinky which makes me wonder what's in the black coating. I kept the area ventilated and cleaned up all the black crumbs pretty quickly.
