the lion and the mouse: spin art lions!

Back in the fall we spent a week with The Lion and the Mouse. One of our art projects was to make a spin art lion. The kiddos as school LOVE painting with our salad spinner.

 

This was a bit unplanned but I knew we could do it. I pulled out some coffee filters and dis some quick scissors work to create shapes to use for lion faces. After rifling through the yarn box, I found some funky fiber and had one of the children snip a few strips for whiskers. The paint colors were decided by the children as well after a discussion on what a lion looks like (I think tigers may have influenced their choices as well).

 We used three filters per lion. One filter ends up folding into itself as it spins around the basket. The paint usually seeps through the filters so that they stick together. Three filters are stable enough to spin and hold all the paint. Each child took a turn placing his or her filters into the basket and adding paint before replacing the lid and giving it a spin or two or three or seen or twelve.

 

 

Once they were ready, they removed their now paint splattered filters and selected shapes for their features. We dialogued as they went. The paint is wet and sticky enough to hold the shapes down without needing any glue.

 

Here are two sample lions. The one on the top got three whiskers on each side "like a kitty-cat". The artist also selected orange circle ears but then wanted to turn them into eyes by adding paint. The second lion was all about the gold paint, and the whiskers across the forehead.

Can you tell this one is teacher-made? The children wanted to take theirs home after they were dry so I made one for the curriculum folder. I love how our thrifted little salad spinner can make most anything.

make a spin art raccoon!

During the first two weeks of school our theme was The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. We talked a lot about school and feeling and raccoons...

One of the projects we did was to make our own spin art raccoons. First up was a discussion about the different colors a raccoon's fur might be and pulled out some paint to match. We then selected some scrap pieces of construction paper from our scrap box and gathered up our salad spinner and coffee filters. I had also cut out an assortment of triangles and circles to complete our project.

The children placed three coffee filters into the basket of the spinner, we use three because of the viscosity of the paint. It's weight and thickness tend to smoosh the filter into a corner and then all you have is a mess of coffee filter. Using a short stack anchors the filter down and allows the paint to spin about. We used a washable tempera for or paint.

Once the filter was in the basket, the children selected the colors they wished to use and gave great big squirts of paint into the basket (with a little help from me a the bottles were new and not easily squeezable).

 

Next up was placing the lid onto the spinner which is not as easy for a three year old as it is for an adult, and then turning the handle that spins the basket. This part was really fun and interesting to see how each child would approach it. Our spinner has a crank handle and so the children needed to figure out how to hold the basket with one hand and turn the crank with the other. Some children grew frustrated and asked for help.

 

 

After a few checks and maybe more squirts of paint, the children removed their raccoons-to-be and added features.  The thickness of the paint took place of any glue we would need and so eyes and stripes and noses were added by simply selecting their preferred shapes (we used a variety of raccoon images from various flashcards as inspiration) and pressing them down onto the paint with their fingers.

 

 

They were quite proud of their raccoons and really into the spinner and so we made another spin art bit just for fun.