Mirror Portrait

Our city has many family-friendly activities, including a children's interactive museum. We visit a few times a year and have lots of fun when we go. This summer, we decided to visit a "sister" museum in another part of the state. It was fabulous. It had enough activities to keep us all engaged for 10 straight hours... and there were even a few exhibits we did not get to visit. 


I fell in love with the art corner..... actually it was an art wing! We participated in a pastel lesson, dabbled in painting, created origami animals, and produced quite a few interesting rubbings. My favorite was the do-it-yourself portrait activity. They had 4 mirrors hung on the wall, with chairs in front of them. The children were encouraged to use wipe-off markers and create their own self-portraits by looking at their own reflections  in the mirrors. I thought it was the most fabulous idea so I purchased a mirror and tried it at home.


I am going to do a quick disclaimer on this activity... it is not for every child. My Sunshine really enjoyed this activity and repeated it several times. My Little Angel enjoyed creating one portrait and was done. My Young Thinker was not interested at all. He would rather have taken the mirror out back and hit it with a hammer to see what would happen when glass shatters.

Before we do this activity next time, I will definitely hang the mirror and set a chair in front of it, although Sunshine enjoyed this activity, I think it would have been easier for her if she didn't have to hold the mirror.

Here is one of her self-portraits. I do have to say that it was more difficult to take a picture of it than I ever imagined. I had to reflect it off the ceiling in an obscure spot in the kitchen not to get anything else in the picture (other than the camera/my hand)....professional photographer I am not!