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.