Independent Art Center

Our classroom has always had a center for independent art. It is always stocked with paper, glue, markers, and scissors. I never put anything else in this center because I was afraid that the children wouldn't know how to use other art supplies on their own without making a huge mess. I always saved paint and other messy supplies for project time when a teacher would be supervising their use. The problem with this was that it didn't always give children the time they needed to explore different art supplies and techniques because the teacher-led project time is usually confined to a half-hour period. Some children wouldn't even get a chance to do the art project because they would be busy with something else during that half hour.

In order to give the children in our class more time to do involved art projects and the freedom to choose when to do them, I set up a new independent art center in the classroom. I choose a spot near the sink for easy clean up. Then I printed out easy, step by step instructions with pictures so that the children would know how to use the new art supplies. Today's art project had four steps:

1. Choose a coffee filter

2. Drip some colors

(we used eye droppers to drip liquid water colors onto the coffee filters)

3. Hang it to dry

(I provided clothespins and a line to hang the finished products on)

4. Wipe up your spills

(because it is important to clean up the center for the next artist)

We kept the center open all morning and the children really enjoyed the freedom to choose when they would do art and how long to do it. Besides allowing the class to try out our new liquid water colors, this art center encourages independence and self-reliance. It also promotes reading skills as the children make connections between the words on each instruction card and the action in the pictures. This art project itself helps to develop small muscle coordination and control as the children squeeze the eye droppers and clothespins.

Here are some of the finished products hanging to dry.

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Dinosaur Footprint Painting

As part of our dinosaur theme this week, we made dinosaur footprints by walking our toy dinosaurs through "mud" (black and brown paint) and across paper.

Of course this quickly became finger painting.

In the end, we had to give the dinosaurs a bath to wash off all that mud.

 

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Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

We've had lots of fun getting ready for Valentine's Day this year! Here are some of the things we have been doing.

Tie-dye Hearts

This is a fun and simple activity with beautiful results. The children painted coffee filters with watered down paint. As they painted, the colors ran together to produce a lovely tie dye affect. When they dried, I cut them into heart shapes and we hung them on the window.

Glitter Hearts

This one is also easy but can be messy. Our class loves glitter and glue so they had a blast making these. I cut out heart shapes and had the children glue a smaller heart onto a large heart. Then they put glue all over and sprinkled glitter on top. We hung these from the ceiling in our classroom and I must say they look very pretty!

Sorting Valentine Shapes

I bought most of these shapes at Target last year and decided to bring them out again this year. There are some hearts, Xs, Os, and other shapes. Last year we used them on the sticky board but this year we decided to sort them in bowls.

I also found these heart shaped bowls that are fun for sorting.

Valentine Art Center

I set out art supplies, hearts, and stickers so that the children could create their own Valentines. This free art encourages creativity and was a big hit with our little artists.

Pink Rice

I added pink rice to our sensory table along with some more of the shapes we used for sorting.

Pink Play Dough

I love this microwave play dough recipe because it is easy to whip up in the classroom with the children. We made a batch of pink for Valentine's Day and used heart cookie cutters with it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Dry Erase Faces

I saw this idea on the Play At Home Mom blog. It looked like lots of fun, so I decided to try it out in our classroom. I searched through my many pictures and found nice face shots of all our students. I printed them out on regular paper and laminated them. I had lots of help with this because our class loves to use the laminator.

Then I cut out the pictures and got out the dry erase markers.

At first, the favorite thing to draw was glasses...

but soon we got creative.

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Monster Emotions

 One of my favorite children's books about emotions is Glad Monster, Sad Monster  which we read many times this week. The book came with monster emotion masks for the children to try on.

After reading the book, we decided to make our own monsters using an idea for blown paint monsters that I found on Pinterest. I gave each child a drinking straw and a glob of watered down paint. It took a little practice, but eventually the children were able to blow the paint around on the paper with their straws.

Once the pictures dried, we used googly eyes and markers to make faces on the monsters. Then I asked each child if their monster was glad or sad. 

 

Our glad and sad monsters made a very colorful classroom display.

Painting with Bows

This is a fun and festive alternative to painting with paint brushes. Last week, I bought a bag of gift bows at the store, and I had some paint stirring sticks left over from all the painting we did when we were getting the school ready.

I attached a stick to each bow so that we could paint without getting our hands dirty (although some of us still did). Then I put red and green paint on plates and we started painting.

Happy painting!

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Pine Cone Turkeys

A few weeks ago I was taking a walk and found a whole bunch of pine cones that had fallen from a tree onto the sidewalk about a block from the school. Later in the day, I went back with some of the children to gather up the pine cones. At the time I didn't have a plan for them but I was sure they would come in handy with the holidays coming up.

Today, we used some of the pine cones to make Thanksgiving turkeys. I showed the children how to squeeze some glue onto them and tuck feathers into the pine cones.

Then we added eyes and a little piece of orange pipe cleaner as a beak.

Aren't they cute!

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What Will the Ants Eat?

Last week we found a whole bunch of pill bugs under some rocks in our playground, and ever since then the class has been all about bugs. Every time we go outside we turn over all of the rocks to look for bugs, though the bugs seem to have learned their lesson as we never find them under the rocks anymore.

 

Still, we look for bugs outside every day and yesterday we found some ants marching around looking for food. We wondered what kind of food the ants would like to eat and decided to find out. I put together bits of random food that we had in the classroom to make an ant food platter.

Before taking it outside, the children predicted what they thought the ants would eat. Then we took the ant food platter to the spot where the ants were crawling around. We took everything off the plate, except for the honey, and put the food in different spots around the ants.

After watching for a few minutes, the children realized that the ants weren't going to start eating right away, so they went off to do other things. Every few minutes someone would check on the ants to see if they had started eating yet. After about ten minutes one little ant found the apple slice.

Everyone was very excited! As we watched, the ants also found the goldfish and the honey.

We left the food out during nap time and came back to look at it in the afternoon. It turned it that once the ants found the honey, they forgot about the other food and all starting feasting on the delicious, sweet honey.

I printed out a picture of the food we had put out and typed up the predictions the children had made before the activity, and hung both in the science center. I also wrote down the outcome of the experiment. The children kept coming to the center to "read" about the experiment. They were also very excited to show it to their parents later in the day.

 

This experiment made such an impression that the children started talking about it again first thing this morning. So I came up with this art project to go along with the science project.

I made paper cut-outs of the foods we gave to the ants and let the children glue them onto construction paper. Then I gave them black paint and showed them how to make fingerprint ants. It didn't matter that the pictures weren't exactly accurate. What is important is that the class was learning about the scientific process by making predictions, experimenting, and recording their findings!

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Building Bird Nests

This week our class has been interested in birds. On Wednesday we watched a video of a bird building a nest and talked about what birds' nests are made of. We talked about how birds collect twigs, leaves, and other things to use for their nests. When we went outside, we pretended we were all birds and collected lots of small sticks. Then I gave the children paper and glue...

and they set to work...

Here is one of the finished products:

Today, when all the glue was finally dry, we made these little Pom-Pom birds to sit in the nests.

It may not be apparent at first glance that they are birds but, if you look closely, you can see that the blue one has two pink eyes and a purple beak.

 

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