April 4, 2012  by

New Sculpture Class! Pinch Pots and “Nature”

This session we have introduced a new sculpture class for children ages 3.5-6. Taught by professional sculptor, Jhaya Warmington (one of our regular toddler teachers), this class will focus half of the session on ceramics and the other half on a variety of sculpture techniques and materials. How lucky are we to have a sculpture specialist create this awesome class for us!

The first week of the session, the children worked on some basic elements of hand building, learning about pinch pots (and elbow pots!), coil making, and how to attach two pieces of clay together.

In one class, the children decided they wanted to make birds nests out of their pinch pots and add “nature” to the nests. One child suggested they collect “nature” from the garden outside. So off they went to find some more materials for their projects. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, we are always open to emergent curriculum and letting the children lead the project in a new direction. This way, the project takes on more meaning for the children and allows for a deeper learning experience.

Sometimes birds nests need a little glitter to make them sparkle!

The next class followed the lead of the previous class, when they saw the birds nests and natural materials drying on the shelf. They expanded on this by creating tall sculptures out of sticks and clay.

A mommy and daddy bird made by one of the students:
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March 28, 2012  by

Wacky Painting To Kick Off The New Session

Our new session began last week so, as always, we started it off with a messy painting exploration. The new children got to know the qualities of the tempera paint and investigated some of our wacky painting tools, while the returning students dove right in to this familiar scene.

In addition to our textured toys and tools, the children tried painting with an onion bulb, freshly plucked from the garden outside. The long dangling roots were especially fun to use like a brush!

The 3s class also experimented with the onion and wacky painting tools, but they first worked on color mixing and creating some multimedia paintings with their new colors and tissue paper shapes.

Every spare wall was utilized this week while the kids moved around and found new surfaces to check out.
Looking forward to a great session!
If you want to try out some wacky finger painting at home, check out our Make+Believe Finger Painting Fun! Supply Kit.
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March 23, 2012  by

So Many Ways to Make Prints!

Here are some fun photos from our last two weeks of the Winter session. Both weeks were dedicated to a variety of print-making techniques (because there are so many great ones to try for young children!) I would like to go into detail about each of the techniques, but I am on maternity leave and trying to take it easy. Our healthy baby girl, Ora, was born March 11th. She’s adorable, full of love, and sleeps really well :)
Enjoy the photos and I’ll be back with more documentation from the new session next week.

Check out our Make+Believe Magnificent Monoprint! Supply Kit if you want to try scratch foam print-making at home.
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March 7, 2012  by

Mask Making

For the past two weeks, the 3s, 4s, and 5s classes have been working on making plaster masks. Each child began with a child-sized plastic face form (older kids can actually use their own faces and have someone else apply the plaster, but preschool-aged kids are still too young for this method). They first dipped strips of plaster bandages into water, then smoothed them out onto their face form. This took a lot of concentration and commitment to cover the entire face, but the kids were super into it! I’ve used paper mache with this age group and it seems like the plaster bandages were easier (or more appealing) to work with.

After covering the face forms, the masks were left to dry until the next class. The following week, the kids worked on decorating their masks. The teachers, Kory and Jhaya, first helped to cut the eyes or mouths out for anyone who was interested. To decorate their masks, some children began with markers or glue, while others began with paint.

During the first week of mask-making, some of the kids discussed how they wanted to decorate their masks while Jhaya wrote down their ideas. The next week, Jhaya reminded the children what their original ideas were and provided them with specific materials to help them execute their plans.

After adding the final details, the kids decided whether they wanted to add string or a stick to hold up their masks. A few masks were kept as is, but most of the kids were really excited about the idea of actually wearing their masks!

A few of the final pieces… so impressive!

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February 16, 2012  by

Beading, Building, and Messy Fun

For our beading week, we started the 2s classes off with a simple bracelet making activity with large beads and pipe cleaners. The stiffness of the pipe cleaners make it easy for the little ones to practice their hand/eye coordination. Some kids were super into the beading and finished it off by twisting the pipe cleaners into a circle to make a bracelet. Other kids had absolutely no interest in beading and preferred to go straight into painting or gluing instead.
After their beading exploration, each child was given their watercolor paintings from last week to continue their work. With the watercolors dry, the kids could now add to their paintings with markers, glue and fun Valentine collage bits. Some kids decided to use the beads for the collage instead of the bracelets… great idea!

Our hope was that the kids would use glue sticks for their collages so that they could take them home in time for Valentines day. As it turns out, 1 and 2 yr olds would much prefer to to squeeze white or colored glue rather than rub an unfamiliar clear stick onto their paper- imagine that!

For the last part of class, the teachers brought out our super fun floor painting tools and a canvas for some gross motor painting. The toilet plungers made really cool circle prints, but the child-sized broom was probably the hottest commodity.

After each class, we added painters tape to the canvas to preserve some of their work before the next class got to the painting. Once all of the classes have had a chance to add to the 2 canvases, we’ll peel off the tape and see if we can find the contrast between the classes.

While some kids got messy on the floor, the table was full of various tools for more collaborative painting.

The 3s, 4s, and 5s classes worked on an entirely different type of beading project. They began with a block of wood, markers, paper shapes, nails, and mallets to make the base for beaded sculptures. Of course they loved the hammering part!

After drawing on the wood and hammering nails and paper shapes onto their blocks, the kids attached craft wire to the nails (we used Twisteez craft wire, which is super flexible and coated with colorful plastic). Finally the kids threaded the wire with beads before attaching the other end of the wire to another nail on the wood block.

 Some chose to embellish their sculptures with glue, glitter and more collage items.

 We even had a sibling pop in to help her older sister finish her sculpture!

Don’t you love how they turned out?! Once finished, kids can experiment with bending the wire to create all kinds of new sculpture forms.

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February 10, 2012  by

Watercolor Techniques and Valentines

We started off our watercolor week with a bleeding tissue experiment in the 1s/2s classes. The children placed pieces of “bleeding” tissue paper (the colors bleed when wet) onto their watercolor paper and used a variety of tools to moisten the tissue with water. When the watercolor dry, the children will use them as a base for making valentines.

Aside from the basic sponges, the children used droppers, sponge rollers, sponge stamps, and spray bottles to get their tissues to transfer color to their paper. All of these tools provide the kids with  different opportunities to develop their fine motor skills.

The spray bottles are not only a blast (pun intended!), but they also help to strengthen little hand muscles.

 Spray bottles and brushes were used at the easels with liquid watercolor to explore the dripping effect.

After some super wet exploration, the kids were introduced to foam paint (a non-toxic paint with a shaving creme texture). I like to provide white foam paint so the kids can add paint themselves and create their own colors. Adding glitter is fun too!

 Spraying foam paint on the acrylic wall panel offered a different kind of messy sensory experience!

In the older 3s/4s and 4s/5s classes, the children started off with a still life drawing of a pot of daffodils. For their drawings they used black sharpies and oil pastels, which are a great base for the watercolor resist technique. Each child was given a few different sized pieces of watercolor paper so they could eventually turn these works into Valentines.

After drawing, the children were given liquid watercolor and watercolor brushes to add more dimension to their work.

 A finished still life from the 4s/5s class:

If you’d like to try these techniques at home, check out our Make+Believe Wonderful Watercolor Resist! Supply Kit.
After working on the paintings, the kids made different Valentines by gluing small collage items onto bright tag board. The hearts and butterfly paper shapes were made by using a paper puncher on old paintings- a great way to re-use old artwork that you would otherwise throw away!

With our sporadic weather, we occasionally hit a warm day and get to have some fun outside in the garden after art class. It looks like a dance party going on on top of the hay stacks!

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January 30, 2012  by

Making Houses

Last week in art class, while the younger children explored the the paste mixing collages, the older classes worked on making “houses.” They were each given a cardboard gift box and began by discussing what types of houses they wanted to make. Their ideas were mostly about forest animal houses and fairies but there were a couple of underwater houses and even a skate ramp! Once they each decided on their concepts, they went to work using the paints, glues, scissors, and all kinds of craft materials on the table.

 Check out this skate ramp!
Here are a few more of the finished houses. Most of them asked their teacher, Jhaya, to help them write a sign for their house out of glitter glue…

I’ll soon be posting about our recent clay week, where some of the kids decided to continue working on their houses and ended up making furniture and other items to add to them.

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January 26, 2012  by

Mixing Paste for Collage

Last week the 1s, 2s, & 3s classes experimented with mixing their own paste for collage work. This project is super fun because it feels like a cooking and art project combined. First they scooped a cup of flour into a mixing bowl, added water, and then tried their best to stir it into a batter-like consistency.

As exciting as the combination of flour and water was, it got even better when the teachers brought out the colorful tempera paint and glitter!

Once the paste was ready, the children scooped it onto their tag board (the 3s class had frames cut from cardboard) and used a variety of scraping tools to spread it around.

Some of the scraping tools were made for children’s paint, while others were direct from the hardware store- plastic putty knives and plastic notched trowels for tiling. I love to see how the children learn new things by watching each other!

At times this was a very messy project (and not always the prettiest), but well worth the experience!

After the paste was laid down, the children began to assemble collage items onto their boards.

And onto the window… what ingenuity!

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January 18, 2012  by

Tape Resist Paintings

For the first week of our new session, we began with a tape resist painting exploration (where tape is first placed on paper, painted over, then peeled up to reveal negative space). It’s always a fun challenge to come up with an introductory lesson for new students that still offers something fresh and novel for the returning students. I think it’s important to start new students off with finger/object painting so they get to know the qualities of tempera paint and the wacky tools that are available to them each week. This project allows for both the messy, sensory experience of finger/object painting, while simultaneously teaching this new technique of tape resist.

For the 1s and 2s classes, the children started off painting over tagboard (similar to poster board) that was pre-taped with the first letter of their name. So for those kids who aren’t yet interested in the tape, they will still get to see the effect of the tape-resist. The children were also given fingerpaint paper and colorful tagboard to try out new painting surfaces.

Some of the toddlers tried making their own designs with tape before painting over them.

They also explored the studio to find that the easels and the window made great painting surfaces as well!

The 3s, 4s, & 5s classes began with tape and scissors to experiment with their own designs.

Then they focused on painting over their tape work. Some covered their entire paper, while others chose only parts of the paper to paint.

When the children decided that they were done with their paintings, the teachers showed them how to carefully lift up the tape to see their designs- So cool!

Some of the finished pieces:

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