Creative Corner - Optical hands, a pastel fox and a muddy pig

My weekly reports have been getting rather long, so I've decided to break off our art work into a separate day each week. 

For the girls' art lesson this week, I was researching middle school art projects and came across a photo of an optical hand project.  I thought the girls would enjoy trying to recreate the optical illusion.  Lightly trace on hand on a sheet of paper.  In the area outside the hand keep the lines straight and curve them upwards slightly inside the hand.  It seems that the narrower the bands of color the better the illusion. 

Here's my own attempt

Jessie's hand

Violet's didn't come through quite as well in the picture, but it's there in real life.

Benny drew this fox on black construction paper and colored it in using oil pastels per these instructions.

Henry wanted to paint, so I found a cute farm craft.  I printed a pink pig and cut it out.  Henry helped me glue the pig on construction paper and then giggled as he used a sponge and some washable brown paint to make it thoroughly muddy.