spinning pretty

I had an idea for a crafty preschool project that needed a bit of testing first. After a spin for the project, I let the nephew-a-go-go go for it with my stash of happy paint.

Salad spinner as a painting tool is a favorite of mine. I have done this with twos, threes, fours, fives...sand now a ten year old.

 

 

The simple process of placing the filter or paper into the basket, squeezing the paint onto the paper, placing the lid onto the spinner, and then manually making it all spin uses all sorts of both fine and gross motor skills. We've used three different types of spinners at the preschool and each one offers up a bit of a challenge for each child. The cool part is once they master one spinner, they can move on to a different design.

Once all designs have been mastered, you can extend spin art through dialogue, estimations, and predictions. There's also a slew of art and science words you can use. While the nephew a-go-go was going for it, we discussed how keeping it to three colors would keep the art interesting. We spoke of the color wheel and I introduced complementary colors.

We also talked about placement of the paint and how the paint moves to the edges of the paper. I gave him the term centrifugal force and we then talked about that.

But mostly we squirted paint and spun ourselves silly.

Check out this nifty video on color. Yay for Bill Nye!

playing with stones

Back in June when we hit the beach and crafted up a storm, we spent a lot of time with rocks and stones.

We drew pictures on them with pain pens.

And we wrote messages across their surfaces.

 

The colors of the paint pens were so happy and cheerful, I scooped up a pile of rocks and got to making itty bitty people parts (complete with seaweed hats). I also borrowed a face or two from our resident artist, Ander.

I drew parts on both sides of each stone for more mix and match fun. Now I need to put them together with a tin or box.

Can't you just imagine all the fun to be had?

hoop-la!

Back in June I got to sub a prek class at the school. I have had these burlap hoops hanging around the casa for a long while and was eager to see if the kiddos took to them.

The burlap (an awesome thrift score) is glued to the inner rim of the hoop and the yarn is knotted to a plastic embroidery needle.

We went through a few rounds of yarn color. Some kiddos went long and loopy.

One or two opted for tiny stitches.

Success! 

we wrapped more stones with string....

and left them on the beach....

select a stone

tie some string around it

continue wrapping

add a second color if you wish

go crazy and have fun! 

4th of july in a jar

 

 

 

Okay, this simple sweet treat was meant to be posted BEFORE the 4th. It's a french soda, with a twist. All you need is a favorite juice, milk beverage, and whipped topping of choice. The magic comes from your candy straw and a smattering of sprinkles on top. We made the blue potion using fizz water and snow-cone syrup. Had I been on it, we would have used pop rocks instead of sprinkles. Yeah, we did.