making painter's tape snowflakes

For our week of Snow, one of our projects was making painter's tape snowflakes. I pre-ripped lengths of painters tape for the children to place on their paper after talking about symmetry and snowflakes. We used a sturdy paper for the project and the children enjoyed placing their tape down in a snowflake pattern. We also had strips of paint on the side of the easel if they wished to do more tape resist paintings. Many of the children did and for those they preferred to keep the tape on their paper as they painted only on top of their tape placement. It was really nifty and I wish I had photos of those...I totally forgot!

I added some clear glitter to our finger paints for the children to use. The finger paints were also out for the duration of the day. Most of the children preferred using a paint brush and so they did.

I encouraged them through dialogue to paint over as much of the paper as they could. The painting began with gorgeous colors that slowly got swirled over and over and over again until they met in the middle and became brown. Isn't that usually the case?

We also did another snowflake using watercolor paper and liquid watercolors. We talked about a warm palette and a cool palette and looked at our book for inspiration.

After the paint had mostly dried, we removed the tape, the children loved this part! So happy and sparkly and sadly I only have this photo of two snowflakes and well...the one on the left there is mine. When we sit down to do a led activity such as guided drawing or this snowflake project, I often will ask them to show me how to create lines and shapes etc. I completely believe that children should be allowed to follow their art to wherever it takes them and that sample art is not in their best interest so I never have one to show them ahead of time. I do however do the project along with them if I have not done it before so that I have a sample for my files. Otherwise they are free to create to their art's content which is a delightfully messy and glorious experience!