Our past few weeks.....painted paper collages

We have been so busy these past weeks! I am incredibly impressed by how much the kids have poured into their collages. We will be into the 4th week of working on these and none of them have complained about working on them for so long (??!!)- how is that for stamina?! I'm very proud of them!!

They had the choice to trace things that I had set on the table (blocks, cans, craft templates) or draw their own creation and then they laboriously place tiny pieces of painted paper into the drawing.

I have reviewed with them that they have to cover up all of the white paper (gasp! those papers are pretty big) but I promised on the last day I will give them oil pastels and watercolor pencils to add background color and details. We will finally finish these up this week.

I'll post the final pieces when completed. Fabulous work kids!!!

Teaching the 3 year olds...."B"

I had the pleasure of teaching one of our preschool classes during my planning period for a couple of weeks. This week their letter was B and their shape was a square. So we made square "B" pillows. I talked to them about choosing light or dark colors while they were using their fabric markers but I have a feeling that they were just super excited to color on cloth ;). So, so sweet!! Thank you EC3 teachers for letting me come in!!!

An update on the completion of our community painting-

We finally finished our painting! I sure love walking up in the lobby and watching children and their families looking for their little personage-----so wonderful!!!

Books about color ;)

 I had a few extra minutes in a couple of my classes these past few weeks due to missing so many Mondays as well as starting late often during the first week of school. It opened up time in a kinder class and a first grade class to make these color/feeling books.

I made the books before class- super easy. Just cut, fold, punch holes and add brads. During their color review we discussed how colors make us feel or things that certain colors remind us of. I encouraged them to think of those connections as they made their secondary colors. I also grabbed at the chance to review the spelling of color words.

In each page they painted their colors, wrote the color word and the connection they made to the color. I have one wonderful little guy "T" who got the kids excited when he said that his deep red reminded him of "really HOT lava!!!"....which he said with great enthusiasm ;). His connection cracked the ice and got the other kids creative juices flowing. Good stuff!!!! Thank you "T"- you are awesome!!

Mixing color with paints

The week after the color wheels we worked on mixing colors with paint. Each class used different types of paint and we all painted on three kinds of papers....plain white paper, this thin sandwich wrapper paper that is like thick tracing paper and we ripped out pages of a book that was the printed version of the Nixon transcripts ;). I wanted them to experience how paint works differently on different paper surfaces. Most of them thought I was crazy ripping pages out of a book to paint on.

Depending on the grade level we either mixed secondary colors or secondary colors as well as making tints or mixed secondary colors and added textures.

I've spent many days now cutting up all of the papers so we can collage with them this week (we started doing that today- lots of fun!!). Thank you to the sweet moms who helped me with the cutting!!!

Review- mixing colors

Aaaah- "review".....I have to admit the beginning of the year is tough for me. I am so ridiculously excited about jumping into everything that I have planned to make with my kids but I am held back by the need to run through "boring" things like procedures, art room rules and "how to" use the sink, clean paintbrushes, put lids on glue sticks, etc. etc.....my one silver lining is reviewing color. Color NEVER bores me!!

We have reviewed color in a few ways already in the past few weeks. I took these shots of some of the younger grades color wheels that they made by mixing oil pastels. I have to confess that I switched to mixing colored pencils instead of pastels mid-week because the mess was already getting out of my hands ;).....I have many messy months ahead of me! The mixing skills were pretty impressive though- well worth the mess!