Study of Jackson Pollock

Who doesn't love to throw paint.  That's why Jackson Pollock is our favorite artist!

The Pre-K class went outside to splatter the paint on paper.  We talked about various techniques we could use to splatter that might minimize getting paint on selves or others such as keeping the brush low and aiming the paint at the paper.  The brush should always be below our heads.  Some of the children even tried drizzling the paint over the paper for another cool effect. We used many colors and got some amazing results. 

Look at how beautiful this splatter painting is!

Here's another. 

And another. 

We went with a canvas for the toddlers.  I set up these various colors in bowls and some smaller brushes.  I showed them how to splatter the paint. 

Surprisingly, most of the time, they just wanted to paint. 

We still ended up with a part splatter painting. 

Here are the preschoolers also doing a combination of splatter painting and brush painting. 

I love the splash of color and the surprise of what the final product will be with splatter painting. 

Frozen Oobleck

As the weather warms up, I thought it was about time we explored something new from the freezer.  

I froze corn starch, water, and liquid watercolors in ice cube trays last week.  This week, the infants explored the ice cubes on watercolor paper in the sensory table.  

As the infants held the ice and moved it around the paper, it began to melt and left goopy Oobleck on the paper which became another sensory experience. 

After all the ice melted, we were left with this colorful and soft work of art. 

Recycled Materials Art Project

I use recycled materials a lot.  There is so much out there to reuse in new ways. And I'm collecting materials all the time. I try to use these materials in most of the work that we do in the art studio. 

 

Today's project involves wood pieces, plastic container lids, and colored glue (one of my favorite materials) 

This was a toddler project this week.  They worked on their fine motor skills to squeeze the glue bottles until the glue came out.  I use liquid watercolor to color my glue because the colors are so bright and vibrant.  They added wood pieces as they pleased and more glue. 

It was amazing to watch the colors swirl and mix together as the children used many colors one on top of the other.  After these dry, we'll pop them out of the plastic lids and have some colorful sun catchers for the windows. 

Recycled Materials Art Project

The preschoolers used recycled materials from the art studio to make vertical sculptures today. 

The children were given a piece of cardboard, wood pieces, and colored glue.  

They were asked to make a stacked tower out of the pieces on the table.  We talked about putting the big pieces on the bottom and smaller pieces on top so that the sculpture would not fall over.

We used many different colors of glue which we poured over our sculptures.

The children made some really colorful and amazing sculptures today!

Clay Exploration

As the classrooms use play dough a lot, this week we explored clay.  We noticed that clay is dense and heavy unlike play dough.  It is cold and wet feeling.  It dries up quickly and smells like dirt. 

But it holds shape and sculpts well.  It's fun to poke, scrape, roll, and squish. We used clay to make coil and pinch pots which we will later paint when they dry.  

In addition, we used some clay tools and pouch caps to explore the clay in a different way.  The children had fun creating designs and patterns in the clay as they tried all the tools on the table.  They watched each other try new things and tried them themselves.  They shared their ideas and thoughts on how to make familiar and unfamiliar shapes. 

Clay is an amazing and versatile medium and one we will explore in new and challenging ways in the future.  

STEM plus Art

In an effort to include STEM into some of my art lessons with the Pre-K(STEAM), I decided to let them be color mixing scientists today. 

I picked up these cell trays at a recycle center a while back and have been wanting to use them for a while now. 

I put out jars of liquid watercolor in primary colors and eyedroppers.

We discussed primary colors and how to combine them to make secondary colors. 

We also discussed using control with the eyedroppers as the cells are very small and the eyedropper holds a lot of liquid.  We will be doing this again soon.  The children wanted to spend more time than we had on this project. 

Hair Gel Paintings

Recently, the children and I created some hair gel paints using clear hair gel from the dollar store, liquid watercolor, glitter, and sequins.  It was a great lesson on color mixing. We used these paints this week to create mini masterpieces.  The children created some beautiful paintings.  The hair gel smells great and it dries leaving behind a cool textured painting.

This is an image of a painting before the hair gel was dry.

This is how the painting looks after the hair gel was dry.  Some of the gel evaporates so you don't know how it will look when its done.  The children really enjoyed this project. 

Reflective Light Box for Infants

I saw some similar ideas on Pinterest and thought I'd create my own light box for a new sensory experience in the infant classrooms this week. 

I found a large box and I covered the whole inside and outside with reflective sticky paper that I found at the local recycle center.  I poked holes in the top and stuck Christmas lights in the holes.  The lights I used twinkle so the reflections on the inside change as the infants are inside and looking at their reflection.  This activity kept them busy for a while as they crawled in and out. As the reflective paper was on the outside of the box too, some infants didn't want to go inside of the box so they were happy to look at their reflection on the outside. 

Light and Shadow Play with the Overhead Projector

I love using the overhead projector.  There are so many possibilities.  

The infants visited me in the art studio and we got right to work with lights and shadows. It was great to see some of the older infants get up and touch the wall trying to touch the images reflecting from the projector while the younger infants watched as the images on the wall moved and changed. 

The preschoolers loved exploring the materials offered and moving them around to see how they changed as they were layered and sorted on the projector.  We talked about transparent versus non-transparent objects as we noticed the light passed through some objects and not others. 

Here are some shaped ice cubes and melted bead disks

Various art materials are put on and taken off of the projector

I also put up a giant piece of paper so the children could draw and trace what they were seeing

Canvas Work with Toddlers and Preschool

Frequently, we will do classroom canvas pieces that we display around the center and then have an auction to raise money over the summer with all the pieces we made all year.  Here are some of the pieces we worked on recently.

In the preschool room, we used recycled materials as well as plaster gauze to create this 3D piece. 

Our next step was to drip paint down the canvas and let the paint  mix and fall on its own.  It was very tempting to want to touch the paint as it dripped but the children used very good restraint.

Also in the preschool room, we added these mini tiles that we had previously decorated with tissue squares and glue.  

In the toddler room, we added pasta, lots of pasta and glue to a canvas.  After it dried, we practiced fine motor skills as we used eye droppers to drop liquid watercolor onto the pasta. 

Also in the toddler room, our first step was to paint our canvas with brightly colored paint.  After it dried, we painted again with round objects for stamping such as cups, cardboard tubes, and caps. 

On of my favorite things is using clear glue that I've colored with liquid watercolor.  The colors are so vibrant and layer well.  We used this glue in the toddler room as well as scissors to cut yarn and added it all to this canvas. 

Study of Frank Lloyd Wright

Recently, we did a lesson on architecture and discussed the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.  We looked at blue prints of various buildings as well as images of buildings built by Wright and other architects.  We drew our own blue prints and built our own buildings with recycled materials found around the art studio.  We continued our lesson by discussing Wright's stained glass work.  We looked at images of his windows.  With the preschoolers and Pre-K, we discussed form, shape, color, transparency, and line.  

The children worked together to create "stained glass" work of their own using construction paper, file folder dividers, tissue paper, cellophane sheets, and contact paper.  The older classes cut out the shapes and worked together to create a piece like this one.  So beautiful and creative!

For the toddlers and infants, I cut out simple shapes for them using a variety of papers.  They added the pieces to the sticky paper and we displayed these in the classrooms.  

Study of Eric Carle

I've been looking forward to doing a study of Eric Carle for a while and was just waiting for the right lesson to come to me.  I have a huge roll of window cling that I got from the recycle center and have used on several occasions.  This seemed like a fun and new way to use it. 

For the Preschool and Pre-K classes, I offered them a variety of images from books illustrated by Carle.  I placed the image under a piece of clear window cling.  The children used activity paint to paint on top of the image. (I found that tempera paint does not work on the plastic.  When it dries, it flakes off.  Activity and finger paint work best.)   Some took the image literally and painted what they saw while others used the image as an inspiration and created their own beautiful art.  As this was an open ended project, there was very little direction given on what they were to do.  I was interested to see what they would come up with.   

When the pictures dried, we hung them in the art studio and in the classroom windows.  They make beautiful window art pieces.  They are all unique and super colorful!

I also did this project with the toddlers which ended up being an abstract project but very fun nonetheless.  The toddlers enjoyed painting on a new surface and color mixing as they went.