THANKSGIVING ON MARS

At Make/Believe, we are all about weird food (see also: this and this). This season, we brought back Thanksgiving on Mars, which asks students to imagine what a big feast would look like on an alien planet. As you can see, this year's intergalactic spread includes bubble soup, smooshed snake, a pretzel man, lizard meat, and sooooo many eyeballz! YUM. Happy Thanksgiving!

FILE UNDER: THINGS WE LOVE HEARING

Unrelated artwork by Shaun O'Dell

This recent note from a parent completely made our day!:

"I want to say THANK YOU for making this club so fun and exciting.  Lilly has never liked art very much...I think because she had fine motor issues when she was younger and she always thought her art work was "bad" so she never wanted to spend any time on art.  I signed her up for this club without her even knowing because I was hoping it would make her excited about art.  And...it HAS!!!  Your project ideas are so creative that she is coming out afterward RAVING about it.  She wanted to explain every last detail of her cave drawing to me and was so proud of it.  I am so pleased with what you are doing with the kids.  Thank you so much!!" - Sarah, parent of Art Brains student

Thank you, Sarah!

THEMES FOR FALL 2014

Photo by Florian Maier Aichen

Too soon to talk about the upcoming Fall semester? Never! We have a creative season planned for the Art Brainers for Fall 2014, including:

- Action/Adventure movie making
- crystal balls/wheels of fortune
- houses for mouses
- cave drawings to be explored in makeshift caves with flashlights
- neo-rainbow paintings (that's "neo" not "neon"!)
- a Jekyl/Hyde Halloween project
- and "Thanksgiving on Mars" makes a comeback

Projects for the entire year are all planned, and include a couple recurring themes: theaters and/or cinema appears every season (including a "3D movies" project and one called "Shadow Show") as well as some seriously collaborative group projects involving city planning, print making, and art games. 

What's up, 2014/2015 school year! We're comin' for you!

Please visit our website to bring an Art Brains program to your school.

MORE HYBRID CREATURES

Newly released information about the slugcheetah, gregiesna, shreins, and tarantula stingray.

THEMES FOR SPRING 2014

image via

Our Spring 2014 session is underway! Project activities include but are not limited to:

- mini museums
- treasure boats
- telling stories inside forts
- detective work
- postcards from space, and...
- more!

SAFARI BINOCULARS AT LANGLEY

Check out these exotic safari scenes spotted through our personalized binoculars at the Langley School! We had underwater safaris, as well as safaris in outer space, Lego lands, and more. Kinda sorta like homemade Viewmasters?

PET MONSTERS IN PROGRESS. . .

. . .at Chevy Chase Elementary!

THIS JUST IN: WE ARE TOTALLY AWESOME!

At the top of my inbox this morning was an email from T.A. artist and Art Brains teacher Emily, congratulating Make/Believe for winning the "Art Classes" section of Red Tricycle's 2013 Totally Awesome Awards. Needless to say, we are STOKED, honored, and super grateful to everyone who voted for our little (but awesome) art program! Thanks so much for voting, and thanks to Red Tricycle for promoting us and the other excellent nominees and finalists. You can see a list of the latter here on the Art Classes for Kids winner page.

Yayeeee!!