Easter egg painting and pastel paint mixing

This is a work I normally have out from now (March) until the rest of the year.  During spring its' fun to add a white bottle of paint (in addition to the primary colors) to make spring colored pastels!  

Here's the colors all mixed up

Stirring them with a toothpick seems to work the best.  When stirred with a paintbrush the paint typically gets all stuck on the brush not leaving a lot left to paint with.  The small toothpick helps keep it neat as well.  There is a wet sponge on the tray that they can wipe the toothpick off between colors so they just need one.

Then they make whatever design they please!

Easter Egg Sewing

These burlap sewing works are always well loved and easier for the kids to do (rather than sewing on solid fabric).  For this one I traced the oval metal inset.  I drew designs on some of the eggs but the older children are making their own.  

A 5 1/2 year old traced her own oval as well as drew the design.

In the end she decided to draw some more dots on the bottom.  I love how she used both colors!

Rainbow Painting

Rainbow works are so fun this time of year!  This is a new one me and my director came up with and it works great!

The eye dropper bottles are filled with tempura paint (I thinned it out a little with liquid dish soap as I usually do with tempura paint for better consistency and easier clean up!)

There's white pom-pom balls for the clouds, a small bowl of gold sequence (we just used what we had on hand), pre-cut pots, and a paint brush of the size you wish.

For a bit of control of error, I drew small circles as a guide as to where to put each dropper of paint.  It doesn't have to be exact, just close to your brush's width.  

One drop at a time

It works great!  If their drops aren't big enough they go over it (carefully) twice.  But if you use an eyedropper per color it should work in one swoop. We put an emphasis on putting a little pressure on the brush.  It's a pretty easy clean up as only the tip of the brush and one side of it is dirty

Sponge Squeezing With a Garlic Press

This works comes from my friend Tiffany!  She's always thinking!

The sponges are cut in small rectangles and are in a bowl of water. 

They pick one up, put it in the press and close the top (holding it over the bowl of sponges and water)

They squeeze all the water out of it and put the dry sponge in the empty bowl!  

Easter Practical Life

These are a few of my favorite Easter practical life works!  It's so fun and easy and it seems there are small Easter themed objects at almost every store right now.  At our school we celebrate Easter as the coming of Spring!  

This one is from my oldest Montessori friend and Mentor, Miriam.  

I color code the beads inside the eggs so it doubles as a sorting work when they are putting it away.

 They tap on the bowl, then twist to open!  It's also fun to put a little wire whisk on the tray for stirring.

The rabbit shaped tongs are perfect for transferring any egg shaped object!

These eggs are the ones meant to hang on the Easter trees found at Michaels.  I just cut off the strings.  

The tongs are from a kitchen store.  

The suction cup pad information can be found here

Just a simple egg sorting with tongs.

I found these little creme containers at a kitchen store last year!  so cute!

Water pouring out of egg holdlers

Rainbow Beading

Found this perfect container that has six compartments!  

Some kids are just putting on one of each color and one of  my little friends spent a long time filling up the whole string in a rainbow pattern!

When she was done and showing it to her friends, another little girl said, "It looks like it's from Africa!"  She's right :)

St. Patrick's Day Practical Life

My shelves are filled with St. Patrick's Day works right now.  These are just a few of the most recent one's I've put together and love :)

Paper Bowl Turtle Art

 This is a great project when studying tortoises, turtles, and/or reptiles.  For our Animal Kingdom study we focused on the tortoise for our reptile study and even brought a real one into the classroom for a few weeks!  What a great hands on learning experience!  We discussed the tortoise's life cycle and had parts of the tortoise classification cards.  We also read many, many books on this topic!

Here's how the work is set up.  I just photocopied on construction paper the head, legs, and tail shape.

 They first use Tacky Glue to glue down the bowl in the middle of the paper.  Then cut (or pin push) out all the parts to attach to the underside of the bowl.  Finally they paint the bowl.  I used green and brown paints.  We had our live tortoise right there as we did this :)

Here he is!  Everyone named their tortoise as well!

This is Herfy.  He's my friend's tortoise who let us borrow him for our reptile study!  This is a picture of him crawling all around the circle rug!