the three little kittens: painting with mittens

 

We had two weeks of mitten fun in our classroom. It was all mittens all the time. Our mitten painting accompanied The Three Little Kittens and after they mittens were all paint-goopy, the kiddos got to wash them in a tub of soapy water.

I made our mittens out of a sweatshirt I picked up from the thrift for $2. I used the patterns we made from when we stitched our own mittens and zipped these through my sewing machine. These will get double play next year when we read The Mitten. I also made some from my very favorite now-retired orange muppet sweater...sigh. I set up the table with paper, trays for paint, and a shallow basket full of mittens so that the children could pick out the mitten they wanted to use.

 

After the children chose their paint colors they got work. There was a lot of investigation even before the first print was made.

 

Some made prints across their paper (after asking for more paint). They would comment on how the colors looked on the mitten versus their paper and they would tell me how their hands felt warm in the mitten but cool when the paint seeped through. We talked about how two weeks before we used mittens in our water tray when there were big blocks of ice in it and how at first our hands were protected and warm but then the water seeped in and our hands got cold.

 

It was really fun to watch the variety of techniques the children used for this project. Some chose just one or two colors to start but kept adding more as they painted. Some made prints while other used their mitten hands as paint brushes swiping and dragging the paint across their paper. They had a lot of fun and took these home right away as well so sadly I have no finished photos.