Snow People in a Globe

Tomorrow is the last school day we will have with the children before the winter break. Instead of letting our sparkly play dough go to waste, we invited the children to sculpt miniature snow people using the play dough and a variety of little art trinkets like beads, sequins, and ribbon scraps.

The children built the small snow people on the inside of a baby food bottle cap. They turned out so well!

Some children used strategies like building their snow person on a stick so the balls of play dough would hold together. What great problem solving!

By building the snow person onto the lid, it made it very easy to turn each child's creation into a unique, miniature winter globe! Don't they look great on our shelf?

Carving Prints

We love making prints with our children! Using styrofoam pieces and a sharp pencil, we encouraged the children to create their own print plates. 

The first step was to use the pencil to carve a design onto the styrofoam piece. We discussed with the children that the design had to be deep into the plate and encouraged them to trace their design with a finger to test and see if it felt deep enough.

After children were satisfied with their design, they rolled their plate with paint. We discussed how too little paint would not leave a dark enough print and too much paint would saturate the design.

The next step was to press the plate onto a piece of paper and carefully lift it, revealing the unique design!

The children created some amazing designs!

Paint Palettes and Colour Mixing

Today we invited the children to create unique shades of colour by mixing personal palettes of paint to use at the art easels.

We cut a hole in a strong plastic plate to use as the palette.

Children had a variety of paint colours to choose from and used spoons to drop their selections onto their palette.

At the easel there were containers of water for cleaning brushes, and a variety of brushes to choose from.

The children were very careful when adding paint to their palettes to think about what new colours they might like to create. Some had a plan in place and knew what two or three colours they needed to make a certain shade (e.g., red and white to make pink). Others wanted to experiment and see what happened if they mixed unlikely colours together (e.g., brown and green).

Once the children were satisfied with their palettes, they were able to create artwork at the easel. Many of them took such pride in using their artist's tools - it was wonderful to see such self-confidence and creativity blossoming!

Delivering Holiday Trees!

Today during one of our circle time discussions, Mrs. Bombardier and the children talked about how some families cut down a fresh Christmas tree. The children were interested in learning how those families transported the tree back to their houses.  During play time, Mrs. Bombardier added some miniature trees to our block center.

The children were drawn to the trees and immediately began to attach them to our toy cars and trucks so they could be delivered to people's houses.

Some children also made houses too!

Check out the sign that one of our children wrote - trees for sale!