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!!!

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.