Treasures from the secretary

One day, I made a trip up to the office to ask the church secretary if she had a empty box we could use- she led me into the office to get me a box, and there I saw a treasure of all treasures- a box FULL of poppers (aka bubble wrap) in all different sizes!  I carefully asked "are you going to use those?"

"No," she answered, "do you want them?"  Did I want them? Why, yes; Yes I did.  "I have a whole bag of them over here," she said "take as many as you want."  So I took all of them.  Treasure!
The children used most of it in a half an hour popping frenzy!  It was fantastically fun.

A few weeks later she came downstairs bringing a hard plastic packaging thing that she thought one of the classrooms could use.  I was lucky enough to run into the director first in her search for someone who wanted it.  Of course we did!
I knew as soon as I saw it that it would be great for prints; So today we used that and some of the left over bubble wrap to make prints.

For anyone unfamiliar with printing, it is really simple.  Allow the children to paint the object, then put  a clean sheet of paper on top of it, press, lift, and presto! A beautiful print.  
In the past I have also used the plastic candy holders from the inside of valentines day chocolate for prints (take out, flip upside down, and paint) and they have come out really well.











Here are some samples from the day:

Several children chose to do only one, but two of the girls made a dozen or so a piece.  

Hope you enjoy!

Some fun painting from the week

At school, we paint almost everyday.  Usually there are either water colors or tempera paints at the easel (although sometimes I will switch out paint for oil pastels or I will tape something textured to the easel and give them peeled crayons to make rubbings). In addition to this, several days a week I will put out some "art materials" for painting, collages, or other art opportunities on the table.  Sometimes they are minimally teacher directed, other times they can just walk up and start working.  In any instance, while they seem perpetually interested in painting on the easel, it is still important for them to have a wide variety of art experiences.  Thusly, I am always searching for new ways to paint (and perhaps you are too).


Here are two hits from this week:
Ice cube painting

to create these paints just use half liquid water color and half water in ice cube trays and freeze with popsicle sticks

This class did not like this as much as classes in the past.  A few of the children grew impatient with waiting for the ice to melt so that they could paint.  In years past, however, the children typically would paint until we were out of ice! Every class is different, though.  At the end of the day they asked if we could do it again, so maybe we will have a second go of it on Monday.








We have been experimenting with ice for the last few weeks, so this is another cool way for them to experiment with ice.

Painting on aluminum foil

I truthfully have not done this in the four and fives class before, although I did do it almost four years ago when I was teaching the threes! Fours and fives seem to enjoy this just as much, however.

Even children who are not usually remotely interested in the art area, (except occasions when we are painting with cars), did a few paintings on foil like this one to the left.  You can see a "stage of scribbling" in his painting.

Some of the children also created some really cool textures when painting this way, although they were as much interested in the sound that the foil made when the hit it with the head of the brush, as was required to make this kind of texture.  Some of them also liked the sound of the foil when they went around and around the sheet with their brush, while others were simply fascinated by painting on the shiny surface- making this an overall interesting sensory activity as well as art.    

For some more ways to paint see these entries as well:

thing painting

painting six ways

If you have some suggestions for painting, I'd love to hear them!  Feel free to leave a link to your blog post about painting in the comments section! 

In the Heart

"Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head, and learning wiser grow without his books." -William Cowper

One of my children started painting the other day.  She painted one painting, she painted two, three, four, five, and continued painting until nearly the entire drawing rack was full.  What she learned from this I do not know, but if she only learned to love creating all the more, then it has served enough of a purpose. (Enjoy the sampling).

"a giant Valentine"

"Rainbow"

"Stained Glass"

You may also enjoy reading:

Evolution...

Painting Six Ways...

"thing" painting

One of my favorite things is to find new ways to paint and new things to paint with.  (I also love finding new interesting tools for discovery the sensory table).  The honest truth is that if I gave children the same paints in the same way, there are some of the kids in my class that would NEVER tire of it.  There are others, however, that only want to paint when I come up with a new way for them to paint or a new thing to paint with. So it is for them (and admittedly for my own amusement) that I search for new ways to paint all the time.

While shopping at Target the other day (this was probably a quick trip in for toothpaste and dog food), I stopped in the "one spot" bargain section (where they have treasures for either a dollar or sometimes 2.50). It was in this section that I found some dish washing tools that you will see below and thought immediately of painting.  I put in each container 1/2 liquid tempera paint and 1/2 water, and shook well then put it out on the table with paper to paint.  Now, I did end up telling them that they had to push the button on the top to get the paint out after hearing several complaints of "it doesn't work!"  Once they had this working, however, they really had some fun.

This activity didn't appeal to everyone, but it had a few visitors that don't frequent art opportunities, and a few of the regulars made dozens of paintings.

The letters on the paper above, by the way, are actually created by a child attempting to spell dog on her painting for some reason.

Collages: A sticky topic

I used to have trouble finding the right type of glue for collages, and I wonder if others have had this trouble too.  If I gave them bottles of Elmer's glue it often would end up in puddle size blobs all over their paper- it would run, it would drip, it would spill over the edges as I took it to the paint rack, and in the end the collage "materials" would slide right off the edge with it.  Glue sticks didn't always keep things on the paper, especially weighty things like shells.  Paste was sometimes not the greatest to work with- stick materials to their fingers rather than their papers and not easily be moved to the papers, and would create globs all over their paste, that when dried looked like a clear version of  something that might come out of their noses.  (I apologize for the unpleasantness of that last statement, but it is true).
Finally, I came up with this idea:  I put Elmer's glue (we buy it in huge bulk containers) in paint cups for them and added a little liquid watercolor and paint brushes.

I put it on the table with whatever materials I had for collages. 

The materials above include mixed dried beans, buttons, colored pasta, scented rice, and a plate of sequins, beads, foam shapes, shells, little wood pieces, and other random things from the dark depths of the bottom of my collage bin.  Of course there are hundreds of options for collages; Although I really like to give them a variety of materials for them to use as they want to, it is very easy to do theme collages for theme type teachers; For Valentines day I recently saw some cute collages done with heart sequins, ribbons, heart buttons, and heart foam shapes.  (For instructions to make scented rice and colored pasta- see my entry here). 

 This truly has worked better than any glue substance that I have used yet.  I have been using it for about a year now.

They spread it over their paper in reasonable amounts (without any guidance) and it held everything to their papers.

Some of them actually use it like paint and then just put a little button here, a little paper there, but this also comes out looking very nice.

(Here is a picture of some voluntary sorting one of the kids was working on today that I couldn't resist putting up).

As far as clean up goes, soaking brushes and cups gets the glue off nicely, and works for the table too, although if you let the glue dry on the table it peels up in big pieces which can be fun- the kids always help me do that.

Enjoy!

Painting six ways

#1: Drizzle painting: for this I gave them three containers of tempera paint with pipettes.  I used powdered tempera mixed to a consistency thick enough to stick to the paper towels, but thin enough to run down the paper.

This girl was particularly interested in how high up on the paper she could put the paint and get it to still drip on the floor.  (Process!)

The girl who made this painting was persistently trying to make vertical lines; she said to me, in only a slightly exasperated voice, "even when I make lines across, they still drip down." 

#2: Color mixing. This activity is pretty self explanatory, but I cannot say enough about it.  They loved this activity (boys too) and created some fantastic shades.  See at the end of this section for a Bev Bos video that inspired it.  

video:

#3:  Dough Paint:  I found this in the Science Arts book.  The paint is made of equal parts salt, flour, and water, with a little paint added.  The book calls is "Sparkle Dough Paint," but I wouldn't say it actually "sparkles."  None the less it is a fun art activity.  They helped me funnel it into squeeze bottles and off they went.

Most of them chose to do "fold over" paintings, I did not suggest it, but one child did it and it caught on like wildfire.  (The term "Fold Over Painting" is borrowed from Bev Bos.

I love the one above.  It took forever to dry (three days) but I thought it was such a creative use of the materials. 

I love how this one (above) was folded at an angle to make an interesting shape.

#4:  Salad Spinner Art: This is one of everyones' favorite ways to paint at school.  All it takes is some precut paper, some liquid water colors, pipettes, and a salad spinner.  Like most of these painting options- no instructions are needed.

Add as much or as little paint as desired.

Spin for as long and and as fast as desired.

Ta- Da!

#5: Bubble Painting:  Some children a little older than my class did this project and was fascinated by making really cool designs on their paper with the over flowing bubbles but my class wasn't really interested in what was happening to their paper.  They were interested in what was happening in the cup: the bubbles building, the bubbles overflowing, the bubbles popping.  This being said, we switched from paper to paper towels so we could do more bubbles faster and clean up faster.  

#6:  Incline Painting (with cars and marbles!):  This activity was inspired by one of my favorite blogs:  Teacher Tom's Blog.  Now, mine was not as complex as Teacher Tom's, but I am not a builder, or a "tinkerer" or anything of the sort.  

My simple solution was to adjust only one side of our adjustable table.  I put a sensory pan at the bottom to catch the cars and left the roll of paper on the floor by the legs, pulling the paper over the top and cutting it off for the next group.  

This was pretty fun, and kept the boys interest for more than ten minutes!