mouse paint: drawing mice

 

When we do guided drawing in the classroom, we first talk about breaking down the thing we wish to draw into manageable shapes. The children tell me how to draw it first.  I use this part of the lesson as a tool for guiding descriptive and prepositional language. Where do the eyes go? Is this the head? Does the nose go above or below the eyes? For Mouse Paint, we drew primary colored mice. We used crayola markers to draw the mice, then painted them in with liquid watercolors. Not every child chooses to join us when we do projects like this. While we encourage participation, we do not buckle down and force anyone to do it. Generally, a child who may be apprehensive about such a task in the beginning, will eventually show interest. When they are ready, we will sit down and invite another firend to help. They always turn out so cool, and the children are always so proud!

guided drawing: watercolor butterflies

an elephant parade

Back in October we did a guided drawing project that I had to do twice because I simply could not cut out these amazing elephants like we did last year. So, they drew their elephants and I swooned and then I had them draw a second elephant that they then added their paint to. I have to find those photos but for now lookie what these wee artists drew!

turkeys drawn by threes

 

I asked the children if they wanted to draw some turkeys thinking of our elephants. We sat down with paper and crayons and looked at pictures and illustrations of turkeys. It was decided that a turkey body was a circle, the head was like a thumb, the waddle like an oval and the tail feathers were lines. I love how they turned out. So much fun!

guided drawing with three year olds: elephants

We spent a week with Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. We spent a lot of time on elephants. The different types, their color, habitat, etc. In the book we talked about how most of the elephants were grey except Elmer and one of the children asked "What is grey?" And so we made our own elephants.

 

 The first thing we did was a guided drawing exercise. If the children were a little older (these are new threes) I would have a book out with pictures and we would discuss the colors and shapes of an elephant. Instead, I showed the pictures of the elephants in Elmer and showed them the bodies and asked about what shapes they saw. We did a big circle for the body, a small circle for the head, triangles for the ears, and lines for the trunk and tail.

 

Next I talked about our previous color mixing experiences and how we made tints by adding white. I explained that grey is made by mixing black and white. I let them squirt their black and white paint onto a tray and then had them choose one other color to mix in. As they were mixing, one of the children told me "this is a tint of black!". Before painting, we flipped the drawing over so that the children would paint the back of the paper to allow me to cut around their drawings.

 Painting in action! We would hold the paper up to the light to see if we could still see the lines of their drawings If they did, they would add more paint. This one here has a little bit of red paint mixed in.

 

Here are two of our elephants. Aren't they fantastic?