Hello!
It’s great to be back teaching our young ones again! Thanks to Meghan for filling in while I was on maternity leave!
In our Evergreen and Forest rooms this semester students exercised their imagination and fine motor skills by tracing hands in creative ways. Ms. Meghan taught them to go slowly and feel the colored pencil on the side of their hand – the students loved that the pencil tickled their hand just a little bit! They got to work on coloring in their traced hand print, adding fun colors, smiley faces, or maybe little earth worms crawling on their traced hand.
Later the students worked on using art materials and tools in a safe and proper manner by working with stencils and colored pencils– the students and I like to refer to this work as “Stencils with Pencils”! Students were able to build on to their fine motor skills and become more familiar with using stencils. They used large wooden stencils that had many different traceable shapes. They could work on coloring in the shape or adding scenery around the tracing. For example, students could trace the car stencil and add a grassy hill, road, house, or whatever their hearts desire!
After a couple of fun Autumn apple, pumpkin, and jack-o-lantern collages on paper plates where students continued honing their collage, fine motor, and listening skills they got to explore how lines and color can convey feelings. Many students thought that purple was a happy color and yellow was a sad color. Also discussed how a zig-zag line might be an upset feeling and a loopy line might be a happy feeling!
Your preschoolers are now working on the mysteries of crayon and watercolor resist painting. Students discovered the magical way white crayon on white paper is revealed when watercolor is applied to the work. They used the white crayons to make dots and zig-zag lines, then used the watercolor application to magically reveal a mountain-scape snowstorm! Ironically, a snowstorm started outside while we were making this artwork!
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This Fall Kindergartners learned about the artist Paul Klee with Ms. Meghan. The students practiced using shapes to “build” a town-scape, house, or castle. They used stencils, colored pencils, and watercolors to create their very own “Castle and Sun” artwork!
During the Halloween and Thanksgiving holiday seasons the Kindergarten students learned about collage technique. They made a group jack-o-lantern collage and individual Haunted House works. They exercised their creative minds to use shapes in their spooky works.
Most recently the Kindergarten class worked on using the shapes of mosaic tiles to first plan and design, and then assemble a real mosaic. They learned about the artist, Diego Rivera, who was mainly popular for his murals, but was also an accomplished mosaic artist. The students observed his work “Quetzalcoatl” and other pictures of mosaic artworks.
Happy Winter!
🙂 Ms. Emily