Ben's Bells Kindness Mural

Last week parents and teachers came together to put up a "be kind" mural at the front of our school.  Ben's Bells is an amazing non-profit in Tucson, that promotes the importance of kindness.  

The mission of Ben's Bells is to "inspire, educate, and motivate people  to realize the impact of intentional kindness, and to empower individuals to act according to that awareness, thereby strengthening ourselves, our relationships and our communities."  Learn more about Ben's Bells here:    https://bensbells.org 

Our school, St. Mark's, is what is called a "Kind Campus".  We promote kind actions and words within our school.  At this time there is no real curriculum through Ben's Bells at the preschool level.  So how does our school teach young children at this age kindness?   We believe that it is necessary at this age to give children the vocabulary they need to express themselves.  We also believe in the importance of promoting a child's social-emotion well-being.

Basically, we promote kindness at this young age through literacy, through modeling positive words and actions, and by constantly positively reinforcing kind behavior.  As Jeanette Maré states, kindness is a learned behavior.  It's not taught in one day.  By starting early the power of kindness has the ability to become something wonderful and affect and motivated everyone around us.

Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me

This craft is based upon the book Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle.  We began by reading the book, a lot!  We re-read at least once every day that we did this craft.  It was a great conversation starter about waning and waxing moons, and we even went into solar systems when one child asked me if the moon was bigger than the sun.  We also touched on collage a little and how Eric Carle's pictures are all done using collage and paper.  In this craft we only used collage for the moons, which the kids did collaboratively.

We started by painting the sheet of paper.  I gave them both green sparkly paint and blue sparkly paint and the just combined them and smeared them around as much as they wanted.  I really like how the brush stokes added some twirls and lines!

We then collaged a piece of paper with white tissue paper and a grey paper.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that process.  When it was dry I cut out the circles.  The children then glued down the moon, stars, and ladder, which was small sized Popsicle sticks.

I took pictures of the children from a ladder and added them on.

Cascarones

Making cascarones with children.  Cascarones are hallowed out eggs filled with confetti.  They are often used in celebrations to hit people on the head with, having confetti fall on them.

School Silent Auction

Here is some documentation on some of the collaborative art pieces that we did in our classroom for this years silent auction.  

Prickly Pear Mosaic Mirror

Children rolled out pear shaped pads and then used pointed sticks to create the needles.  We let children use their imagination, so that the needle designs we all very unique.

 

Our friends at Borton Magnet Scool were kind enough to do our first firing.

We then glazed the tiles.  After the glaze was added we fired them a second time.

We had traced all the pads and labeled them, so that as they were being fired we could start with the mosaic.  We arranged the pads and glued down our mirror.

We bought square glass mosaic tiles and I broke them in half and discarded any sharp pieces.  While letting the children mosaic I explained to them that it was like a puzzle and the trick was to get them close together without touching.  I also explained that there was a flat side and a bumpy side and we wanted the flat side up.  I mostly worked with two at a time, so that there was a lot of individual attention.  The children did an amazing job!  

Because of time, the teachers had to do the grouting and cleaning.

Then we stuck in the pads and grouted.

Wiped off and sealed.

Here they are hung up and ready to be auctioned off.  We got about $450 for both of them, although they were auctioned separately.

Hands Around a Heart

In this item, we started by tracing handprints onto black paper and had them used metallic makers to write their names and then decorate them.

Then the hands were paced around to form a heart and a quote was added inside.  This was then framed.

The quote reads "we hold our children's hands for a little while... But they hold our hearts forever."

Handmade Felt Garden Bed

This was my personal contribution.

And here are some of the other classroom's finished art projects.  They look amazing!

A rainbow made of recycled bottle caps!

A lamp made with colored plastic cups, that were then melted in an oven.

Children's water colored hearts arranged in a tree.

Dove made from everyone's handprint over a tissue paper decoupage background.

Fingerprint dove that come with a corresponding list of all children and which color fingerprints are theirs.

Watercolor flower pot.

Water colored paper that was punched out in shapes of butterflies and then put into a shadow box.

Corinne's beautiful artwork in different forms.  Cards, framed pieces, and a tote bag.

One of the dads, Alan, made both of these incredible pieces!  A rabbit bike lock and a ladybug garden trellis.

Beautiful artwork and classroom collaborations.  

And these are only preschoolers!  

Wow!!!