I hope everyone had a great weekend and stayed nice and warm during this bitter cold winter. We did a lot of fun art projects and activities last week that I cannot wait to share the pictures. I have started to decorate the classroom with the beautiful artwork created by both the toddler and pre school group students. I have also started gathering some paintings done by each classes that I am going to give to the hospital so that they can auction it off as a fundraiser and raise money for the daycare and the hospital in general.
The past few weeks I have been focusing on basic skill sets to see where everyone is at. We are practicing colors, shapes, and the alphabet. I switch between using flash card techniques, group game activities, the use of the iPAD and individual 1:1 assessments. So far, it has been working out really well. On friday, the pre-school class did a great job identifying colors and shapes. I am confident by the end of this upcoming week they will have all of their colors and shapes down...and that I hope to focus more on letter recognition and the alphabet. This will be a bigger challenge for the kids because they are hard concepts, but I plan on making everything fun and keep them interested in learning.
Despite the snow day and holiday, we had a lot of time to still do fun art activities in the middle of our lessons. This week we used straws to blow water color paints on a piece of paper. We used only the three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red. The students were amazed to see what happens when they mix those colors together. Collectively, the class seems to love making the color orange the most. The paintings turned out really cool especially because they all look so different. This was definitely a hard skill for the students to master at first. I had to really explain the concept of slowly blowing air through a straw to make the paint move on the paper. They were really amazed like it was magic! It was a lot of fun.
On Friday I introduced a new lesson on making marbled paper that I think I will continue tomorrow and throughout the rest of the week. It was really messy but....kids love mess and learned a lot doing! So, in order to make marbled paper you only need a few things: white plain shaving cream, paper plates, popsicle sticks or tooth picks, and tempera paint. First, I laid a flat square layer of shaving cream on each students paper plate. After they had their shaving cream down flat and their sticks ready, I asked them to specifically ask me politely for the colors they wanted. Once again, they were only allowed to pick from blue, yellow and red because we are learning about primary colors and the science behind color mixing. I then would place droplets of colors on the students shaving cream and let them mix. Some students were clean and neat and just used their toothpicks while some students were more curious to get the shaving cream all over their hands. The classroom smelled really clean and as if someone just shaved! They had a lot of fun with this sensory art experiment and the paper turned out amazing, everyone was impressed. The best part is after the paper dried, it became extremely soft to touch (and smelled good too!).
Everyone enjoyed this project and did not want to stop playing around, mixing colors, and seeing what they could achieve next. It was a great way to tie in what we are learning about color theory into something spontaneous and fun. We will definitely continue with this throughout the week! Besides that, I hope to introduce students to one of my favorite artist: Jackson Pollock. We are going to do some more experimental painting to learn about color mixing...but I won't spoil any surprises quite yet. :-)
To end this post, I just wanted to post a few reminders. We have an upcoming field trip February 3rd at 9:30 to go on a tour of Fenway Park. Please get the permission slips in! I have extras, so just let me know if you need anymore. We also have a field trip on February 24th to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston - I also need these slips too!! Please let me know if you have any questions: aaubry@fhfc.org
ENJOY THE PICTURES AND HAVE A FANTASTIC WEEK!! :)
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