Hedgehog Pencil Holder

Since I don't have access to a kiln at the moment, I used this recipe for an air drying clay.

I found 1 batch made two hedgehogs.

Baking Soda Clay Recipe (courtesy of Mudworks, by MaryAnn F. Kohl, who calls it Play Clay)

1. mix 1 cup baking soda and 1/2 cup cornstarch in a saucepan

2. add 2/3 cup warm water and stir until smooth

3. over medium heat, boil and stir until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes

4. put on a board to cool some, knead it and play away!

5. modeled figures will air dry very quickly and are pure white in color.

Hedgehog Pencil Holders

I added brown color to my dough, but when it dried the color didn't come out well. Therefore, we ended up painting  over them.

Short pencils work best.  At first I bought regular pencils and cut them in half.  That was a lot of work cutting and sharpening all those pencils!  We made over 22 hedgehogs and each one contained 6 pencils.  Eventually, I got lazy and splurged and bought short pencils.  

So. Much. Easier.

Poke the pencils through and let it dry with the pencils in place.  (Also a perfect time to sneak in some one-to-one correspondence and basic math!) 

I took the colored pencils out the following day, so that they would dry more thoroughly.  Also, keep in mind that the holes may shrink a little.  Wiggling them a little to make the holes slightly bigger helps.

Then paint!  We added our eyes on afterwards, using black beans.

Cute!

Shrink Plastic Balloons

I didn't take nearly enough pictures of these as we made them, it was a very hectic week!  It was an end of summer present for our families and it was our biggest session.  It also required a lot of work at home to put together the finished product.  They required daily photo taking, shrinking in oven, printing, hole punching (and if I forgot this vital step back to square one), and then attaching the chain.  Most parents were very appreciative and loved these little gifts! And that is what makes it worth while.

The first part is getting the shrink plastic, or Shinky Dinks, and cutting out a ballon shape.  These ballon where about half a sheet big.  The kids then colored them in.  

Some children just did scribbles and some did very detailed drawings.  It's always important to encourage children when they draw no matter what their ability.  These look beautiful no matter what, so it's always fun to encourage children to explore the medium.  By the way, we used sharpies for drawing, but you can also use colored pencils if you are nervous about young ones and permanent markers!  We actually use sharpies often in our classroom, so children are pretty comfortable with them and understand the rules.

As you can see the trays get marked up quite a bit.

While the children were drawing, I went around and snapped photos of them standing and pretending to hold a balloon.  Lighting was very important I discovered!  Any small amount of backlighting created a very dark picture.  I then used Printshop to crop around their pictures (to save ink), tinted them to about 70%, and printed them out on  special shrink plastic made for injet printers.  I could fit about four kids vertically and a fifth horizontally per page.  Before you cut out the images, make sure you make a hole with a hole puncher first!  Often the hole is bigger than their hand and you won't be able to punch it afterwards.  

Then shrink!  I bake mine at 350 degrees F on parchment paper, colored side up for a couple of minutes.

Add chain from balloon to child's hand, glue gun a magnet on, and voila!  

Cutest magnet ever!  I also wrote "St. Mark's Preschool Summer 2015" on the back of ours.

The children each helped with wrapping their own balloon, and I added the ribbon.  You could tell the kids did the wrapping on the bottom.  

Laura Numeroff

Here are some of the crafts that I made with the afternoon class around children's book author Laura Numeroff.  She is know best for her If you Give a Mouse a Cookie collection.

We mostly centered around Give a Pig a Party.  Everyone needs balloons at their party, even a pig.  The also children helped give the pig a party dress, which is a large coffee filter decorated with watercolors.

Our balloons are aluminum foil, painted on with Biocolor.

We also made cupcakes for our party, because who doesn't love a cupcake?  The kids had so much fun making these, but warning they take at least 3 days to dry!  The puffy paint is made with equal parts glue and shaving cream.

 

As you can see our poor pig lost all but one of her balloons!  Packaging tape doesn't stick to the semi-gloss paint on our walls.  But she has lots of cupcakes, so she's good.

Collage

Our second week of summer session was based on collage and books that are illustrated through collage.  Eric Carle, Leo Lionni, Lois Ehlert, etc.

Here are some of the art projects we did in the afternoon.

Hungry Caterpillar fingerprint paintings. These are mini canvases on mini easels.  I used Biolocolor as paint.  The children used their fingers to make the caterpillars, then when they were dry they added the details with sharpie.

Spray art.  Mister Seahorse was cut out and the children sprayed him with watercolors.  This was a very popular activity and great to strengthen their finger muscles.  It was also very messy! 

White crayon resist rooster, from Rooster's Off to See the World by Eric Carle.

Color changing chameleon.  Kids painted paper plates using different colors.  Then we placed another plate on top with chameleon cut out and fastened it in the middle.  When you turn the plate the chameleon changes colors.

 Boat collage.  This was a multi step process.  But the outcome was beautiful!

First we painted large pieces of paper blues and green using different items, scrapers, brushes, anything we found.

Then we ripper them on the long side.

The next day we painted the background and collaged the boat whith shells.

The background was painted with yellow and orange watercolors.

The following day we assembled our collages.  We put the sea down first then placed the boats, sails, and moon.  We talked about the different parts of the boat as we glued it down.  It would be fun to get more words and dictate a story about were they were sailing.

Dr. Seuss!

Pin the hat on the cat game.  I drew the Cat in the Hat and his fish on poster board.  The hats are printed using a color printer.  Then they were laminated.

I think they are waiting for rain?

Photo board.  Oh, the places they'll go!

Hat matching game.

 Different puzzles made on Popsicle sticks.  This on is The Lorax (obviously).  

Painting truffla trees with truffla trees!

A random door..

Ms. Corinne's truffla forest and her supper cute Horton Hears a Who puppets (complete with clovers!)

And my necklace that I made just for the occasion.

There were a lot of other activities and games that I missed getting pictures of.  I'm especially bummed that I didn't get a picture of Ms. Molly and I in our bright yellow matching Star Belly Sneetches shirts!  Drats!!!