Circle Prints

Last year's circle prints have generated some buzz, so here is a quick how to...first, these are textured prints -- the black is a mixture of glue, shaving cream, and tempera. Mixed properly, it will leave a raised print. I would not recommend using a brush with this mixture. The older children used this paint mixture on their landscape studies, you can find that <here>. They used paint spatulas to apply the paint over encaustic.

The younger class used plastic lids and cardboard tubes to apply the circles on painted sheets of paper. It is important to note that some of the children were playing catch-up -- they did not have paintings, so they applied the circles on blank sheets and then later applied water color.

Each approach (blank paper versus already painted paper) offers a different perspective and conversation with color and materials as you can see...

Circles first, paint second for "Igloo Made of Snow"

Paint first, circles second for "Day"

Day and Night Forests, p.s. there's glitter

This week we conducted a comparative study of these books...Baba Yaga and the Wise Doll adapted by Oran Hiawyn and illustrated by Ruth Brown (love, love her illustrations and the Leaves LOVE her book, Toad), Babushka Baba Yaga by Patricia Polacco (I am, personally, not a fan of this book, but that is the adult-me talking), and we are now in the middle of Anna and The Seven Swans but Maida Silverman. We read the Wise Doll on Monday because it set up the project for the day perfectly. The children have been working on day and night paintings and last week they collaged trees onto their night backgrounds. These books show three versions of "forest" and the children are creating their own story illustrations. 

The children are adding watercolor paint on top (and beside) the tempera paint.  

We talked about how if the trees are close together or are leaning, the forest appears scarier to a small child (we will revisit this again when we work on the stories next week). Merrick's trees grow so close together that you can only see a hint of the full moon behind them. The trees are also dark in grays, black, and purple. On Monday, they will collage the trees onto their day sky. In case you are wondering why these projects are spaced just so, it is because the backgrounds are layered tempera and watercolor. When a glue wash is applied to these (especially the watercolor) the paint AND the paper used for the trees will bleed. Since each sky and trees feature different shades, the glue and the glue brushes would carry those colors with them and by the time the last children began their projects, their colors would no longer be their own.

Oh and p.s. there has to be glitter.

Eye Candy

Really. Eye popping deliciousness. What else can we call it but 'eye candy'? Enjoy!

Straw Bones, More Ribs Please

On Monday, I split the Tracks into 4 groups to conduct research using a jigsaw cooperative learning format. Each group was assigned a book to review, document and present. The idea is that the smaller groups would become the experts on a different part of the human body and then would report back to the larger group about their subject. In this way, they would become experts on all the different topics, including Guts, Bones, Lungs, and Blood.

It worked beautifully. I certainly learned a lot and I was amazed at how many facts they presented and then retained, ready to present back to our expert from the National Museum of Health and Medicine who visited the next day.

One of the things we learned was that the human body has 12 pairs of ribs. I pointed out that the straw skeletons would certainly need more ribs! Every single one. So, on Wednesday, we added first internal organs using string and pipe cleaners for the intestines (the children really liked those intestines) and left-over Chris Martin Corcoran postcards for the organs. Then finally, they added an exact count of 12 straw ribs.

I have a bunch of surgical gauze pads someone gave me. Don't you think those should be painted red and wrapped as muscle tissue around these little critters? That would be cool.

Straw Bones

We have a case of paper straws. Purchased way back when by the wonderful and wondrous Mrs. Katherine Kriemelmeyer, the director of Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School until the 1980s. She probably had that box for a long time and we certainly have too! And like magic, it is a box that just keeps on giving!

Here is the challenge...take four paper straws and with scissors and glue, create a skeleton to attach to a gray mat board. This year, we added these wooden popsicle stick head puppets that had been collecting dust for 2 years. Of course, those didn't come with skull eyes, so out came the hammers and the hole punchers. We needed a hammer to give the hole punchers that extra wham! to go through the wood.

What Would Happen If...

Several weeks ago, while the Chris Martin painting project was up and running, there was a lot of waiting for turns for the painting tables. While children were waiting, we had our usual table of clay going and for several sessions, we had a table for just cutting. A very therapeutic and relaxing activity for busy 4 and 5-year olds. Snip, snip, snip. We have a large collection of empty apple sauce containers and the child were using these to collect "tickets" small slivers of paper they were cutting from recycled strips of paper.

As I watched the containers fill with shades of purple, red, and turquoise paper in layers, I asked out loud what would happen if they mixed glue and water with paper in the containers and left it to dry? Would it be like a cupcake? Like a sand castle?

Say no more. They grabbed the glue bottles and the water pitchers left over from snack and got to work mixing and measuring. Then we left the containers on the radiator cover to dry.

And forgot about them.

Today, we remembered.

Children popped the shaped papers out of the plastic containers and glued these to 3"x3" mat board scraps. Some of the shaped papers remained intact and others were carefully piled back up onto each other to create sculptures leaning into or away from some invisible wind.

The mat board squares and sculptures are mounted on construction paper, waiting for titles.