Sand Painting

Our children are talented artists and it's always interesting to offer different materials for them to explore. Today we added sand to our regular tempra paint. The children immediately noticed that the sand added weight to the paint, making it more challenging to brush on the paper.

 

The gritty texture was noticed by many.

 

Many children wanted to try this sand painting right away upon entering the classroom.

 

The paint had an interesting texture as the sand had different sizes of pebble bits and grit in it - the bright colours mixed together nicely and some lovely art emerged from the children's explorations of the 'heavy' paint.

 

 

We noticed patterning too (math is everywhere)!

 

"Even the paper is heavy when I carry it!"

Rainbow Sand

We had some left over coloured sand and I thought it would be neat to explore it on our light table . I covered the table with a clear garbage bag in order to protect the surface from getting scratched and also to make clean up easier. 

The rainbow presentation made it immediately appealing to my son, who couldn't wait to get his fingers in it.

As he slowly and carefully swirled his finger, he mixed the colours together. They looked like a 'colour explosion' he observed!

The light from below shone through the sand, illuminating it in places where it wasn't as thickly layered. My son loved the feel of the sand and spent a great deal of time grabbing it and letting it trickle through his fingers.

After a while he decided that he wanted to do some writing in the sand. We practiced the first letter of his name over and over.

We also used other materials to create the letter "c". Here we layered rocks on top of the "c" he had already printed in the sand.

This would be a great tactile experience for anyone wishing to engage children in some small group or individual letter writing/identification work, especially those of you who engage in RTI experiences in your classroom. Children would be motived to participate by the nature of the messy materials, use of the light table, and tactile experience of constructing the letters.

Illuminated Sand Art

We found an interesting way to create art with our light table - illuminated sand creations!

Cadence drew a picture of a butterfly on a clear garbage bag using a permanent marker.

 
Once she was happy with her design, we placed the picture on the light table. Slowly and carefully she scooped and poured coloured sand onto the butterfly.

The result - a colourful picture that appeared to glow as the light from the table shone through it. Beautiful!

After we admired the picture we collected the sand in a bag and are saving it for our tactile bins - it will be fun to use with scoops and funnels!

Red Sand on the Light Table

We purchased some very neat decorative red sand and put it on the light table this week. It was beautiful!

The children were very eager to explore it, using their hands and fingers to swirl and shape the sand into letters and designs.

The light from the light table illuminated their drawings and printings.

Here's a beautiful spring butterfly!

Lots of printing practice too!

Sand Textures

 Today we placed some fine sand from our sand table on the light table along with some texture plates. We invited the children to explore the materials and create interesting lines and designs in the sand.

It was so interesting to see the light shine through the textures as the sand became scraped away revealing the light table below.

Story Sequencing and Retells

Our children engaged in some interesting ways to sequence, retell, and extend familiar texts today. 

A favourite is Where the Wild Things Are by M. Sendak.

After reading it, we had photocopied pictures from the text (copied on overhead transparencies) available with our mini light box so the children could sequence and retell the story orally.

The children liked how the light box illuminated the pictures.

The story was available at the center and the children referred to it often for help in sequencing the pictures.

Another big book we've been reading all week (and that will go home in blue shared reading duotangs) is "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner".

In this story a spider tries to trick different insects into coming to dinner so he can eat them. He ends up being eaten by a bird. We decided to set up the sand table so that it was a spider playscape.

The children began to spontaneously retell the story, which lead to a search in our animal bins for the right characters for the story.

What fun! We can't wait to see what adventures await spider tomorrow!