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.

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.

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!

Papermaking

Last week's art class was all about paper. We played with paper, ripped paper, glued paper collages, and even experimented with making paper! The teachers prepared the paper pulp, by blending up white newsprint with water. When the children arrived they were offered a mixing bowl, spoon, white pulp, liquid watercolors and glitter to create their own unique paper pulp.

At first we tried spreading out the pulp onto a screen with cheesecloth to drain the liquid, but that didn't seem to work well (and didn't capture the children's attention like we thought it might).

So the teachers adjusted their process and offered each child a tray with a towel and a piece of fabric to soak up the pulp juice. Being able to work individually at their seats helped get the kids excited about the pulp.  They used all kinds of tools to squish it, pound it, roll it and color it!

To really flatten the pulp and get the excess water out, the kids placed a piece of fabric over their pulp to continue the pressing and rolling process.

For the final step, children could shape and decorate their paper with flower petals and sequins- check out this paper pulp man!

 

 After drying for a few days, the papers were firm and ready to take home. They looked awesome!