Seahawks!!!!

With the hype of the 12th man being such a huge piece of the Seattle culture, of course I had to add a bit of that to the classroom. Our school had many children who come to school all dressed up for "Blue Fridays" and we had many fans. A couple of simple blue and green works have been very fun!

Solar System Art

Solar System Art Project

This is a well loved, super fun, and visually satisfying planet activity!  We have 9 different colors of pom pom balls for the main planets (including Pluto), a small, white one for Earth's moon, and a small brown one for Jupiter's spot.  There are plastic bracelets for Saturn's rings and we cut out half circles and put orange, sparklie tulle material over it for the suns (we pre-made these).  

Tacky glue works best for this project and we cut black poster board into strips for the night sky.  In addition, we traced a circle to make each planet's elliptical path so the children knew where to glue each planet. (the circle used to trace the hemispheres for the world map worked nicely)   We included the asteroid belt in this.

The pom-pom balls are all different textures and sizes.  We tried to do our best to make it relative to the real planets! 

Moon Exploration Work

Moon Exploration Work 

We are spending a couple of weeks on the moon within our Solar System unit.  We have read many books on the moon, the exploration we've done there, and various facts.  This work is on my practical life shelf. 

I made play-dough with and used my Wilton's frosting dye to make the grey color (I used black)

There are two different sized marbles to make the craters, an American flag, an astronaut and a lunar rover in the basket (these two items are from the space Safari Toobs)

They first make a sphere out of the play-dough to represent the moon's real shape. Then they flatten it out with their hands to form a circle.  Using the marbles they make craters and let the astronaut and the lunar rover explore.

We did put emphasis to not squish the lunar rover or astronaut into the play-dough as it will get all stuck in each crevice!  We have other play-dough on the art shelf to explore with in that way :)

Thanksgiving Feast Place Mat

Each year in addition to our daily family style lunch (each family brings lunch for a week and we eat family style daily) we have a Thanksgiving Feast.  The lucky family who gets that week get's to bring at the Turkey Day Fixings!
To make it extra special the kids each make their own place mat. Below is the tray with all the supplies.  These include short and long strips of paper (for the place mat boarder) dried and pressed leaves, different colored large square, rectangle, and triangle shaped paper  I use all fall colored/themed paper and it's all geared to fit a standard 9x12 piece of construction paper.

 Here is one being assembled

 The children choose the construction paper base they want as well as all the different choices of shapes.

Here is a finished product!  They all turn out different and depending on the size of their hand, you can sometimes trace both hands.

I will laminate them all to use at our feast and then they can take them home to use for their own!

Leaf Rubbing

This is a fun and simple leaf rubbing project that is easy to pull out every year.  I dried and pressed an assortment of leaves then glued them around a 8 1/2 piece of paper- carefully placing them where the poem wording would not be.  I then laminated it.

I printed out the Autumn Leaves poem.  (Print out multiple copies of this for the shelf)

Paperclip all four corners onto the laminated copy and rub with the flat side of the crayon.

 It looks great every time and you can really see the stems and the veins of the leaves- which the children are almost always sure to point out!

Oak Tree Art

This is a really fun, 3 dimensional art project using mostly natural materials.  We have an Oak tree at our school so gathering the acorns was easy!  We put them in our dehydrator overnight to dry them out.

I got the oak leaf punch at Michaels.  The trunks (thicker pieces of wood) and the branches (the thinner pieces) I gathered off the playground with the kids.

They first cut the grass by making "snips" in the green paper.

Then they use tacky glue to shape their tree.  I had them lay the trunk and the branches out first then glue it on the cardboard backing.

Add the acorns (with tacky glue) and the leaves (regular school glue works for this)

These look very cute hung up in our classroom!

Play Dough Snowman Sculpting

I always have play dough out on the art shelf all throughout the year.  I make it fresh each month and dye it a different color according to the current season or holiday.  For January I dyed it light blue and put glitter in the water before mixing it all together to give it the shimmery, snow effect :)

Along with a roller, play dough knife, cookie cutters, etc. I put a small dish with 5 black beans, a small plastic carrot (from the school's practical life objects) and a coffee stir stick cut in half.  It has been very fun for them to create their own 3 dimensional snowman at work time!

My favorite play dough recipe
(From Miriam)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbs. cream of tarter
1 cup water (add dye in water and glitter if you like)  I like the Martha Stewart glitter the best!
1 Tbs. oil

Combine dry and mix in a sauce pan.
Add wet and mix over medium heat until it forms a round ball.
Take off heat and knead until it gets cool and to the right consistency you like.  (Usually about 5 minutes)

Earth Beads

Earth Beads

This is a very fun project that is great for your geography study, a solar system unit, or Earth Day!  We made these necklaces in preparation for Earth Day as we were going to pick up litter in our town and we wore these on our adventure.

Use Femo or Sculpey Clay (Sculpey is softer and easier for small hands to manipulate).

Put out the colors for land, water, and air.   I also put out the same colors of pony beads.

  

The kids take small pinches of each one and make balls with each.

Make "snakes"

 Twist together

 And roll into a ball!  This is your bead

 Poke a hole ( a paper clip, tack, or pin pusher will do)

I use a muffin tin for a baking pan to separate them all.  If you have a bigger class, use a mini muffin tin.  To keep track I draw a graph on a piece of paper of the circles and write who's is where.

Here's the finished product!

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

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 :)

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!

Valentine inspired easel painting

For a twist on traditional easel painting (which secretely drives me crazy with the big brushes and the mess it makes!)  I put out small paint squirt bottles (in the cake making supply isle at Michaels).  Filled with red, white, and purple the children put small amounts in the supplied paint pallet and tint it with the white creating lavender and pink!  They can use the dark colors too as there's enough compartments in the pallet for lavender, pink, white, dark red, and dark purple.

With smaller brushes supplied they are able to paint more detailed pictures.  Not pictured is a paint holder with water in it to rinse their brushes before changing color and a damp sponge to dab their brush clean and dry.

Owl Art

For our Animal Kingdom study we are doing a week on birds, particularly owls.  This art project is from years ago during my internship where my lead teacher did it for our animal habitat unit.

Fold a paper plate in thirds with the sides being the owls wings.  I have a dish of googly eyes and some small, orange triangles cut up.  These are the kind that you peel off the back like a sticker (you can also use orange construction paper but we just happened to have a sheet of orange sticky foam!) 

They first paint the owl with brown paint.  I demonstrated lots of "drip catching" so it's not too thick as most owls around here have white on them as well.  Then they glued on the eyes and beak!

Friendship Braclets

With Valentines day coming, we've been talking a lot about the value of love and friendship!  It brought back memories of making 'friendship bracelets' from when I was in elementary school!  This is a different version of that geared for the young preschooler!  We're encouraging them to make these friendship bracelets for their friends.  In the small bowl are letter beads to spell their friends name!  If it's friend from our classroom they can go get their name card to see how to spell it!

Heart Sewing

For a variation of a sewing activity we are using plastic sewing cards (found in the sewing/embroidery section of Michaels or Joanne's)  I traced a heart (some pink, some purple) and pre-cut the yarn (in coordinating color) and attached it to the sewing card.  The needle is stored in the little jar in the pink basket.  This work has been fun for the last week as most kids can do it independently and you can see the pattern on both sides of the card!

  In the end I cut it out (if they'd like) for the perfect Valentine to take home :)

Simple and fun Snowman

Of course you have to have at least one snowman work on the art shelf in the winter!  This is ours this year.  Very simple and fun.  I especially like the way it's organized on the tray with the paper holder :)  The eyes and buttons are black beans and the nose is a orange pony bead.  The arms are Starbucks coffee stir sticks.  (Starbucks is very kind to preschool teachers- they gave me a whole box years ago for free!)

The snowflakes are foam and from Oriental Trading- I've had them sitting around for years so here is the perfect place for them!