same but different

I'm sorry for the blurry photo but really wanted to show you these two paint palettes as poured by two different kiddos. Both were three at the time, one a few months shy of their fourth birthday, the other a few months into their third year. What a difference a few months make! I love this so much.

gingerbread men round 2

This year the children whipped up their own puffy paint to paint their gingerbread men and/or houses with. After reading more than a dozen recipes for diy puffy paint I came to the conclusion that the ratios did not need to be exact and that all you needed was salt, flour, baking soda, and a little water (plus liquid water color).

 

We mixed up our paint at circle time. Each kiddo was given a small container and spoon on one of our white plates (I LOVE these plates). Then I talked about the paint we were going to make and how it was a recipe. We've been working on recipes almost every week. The children took turns scooping out their desired amounts of the ingredients and got to mixing.

There were a lot of comments when the children found their paint to be too thick or too thin. After a little experimenting they each came up with their perfect pot of paint.

 

I poured the paint into small squeeze bottle that made it difficult for the children to get all squeeze happy. They really had to work those squeezing muscles!  Even though they each mixed up their own color we talked about sharing the paint with the rest of the class and how we could accomplish that through kind words and questions.

 

While I love the idea of using real candy to decorate their cardboard people and houses (like we did last year) I wanted for them to make something that could possibly be kept without attracting critters. To remedy this I spent one television program using various paper punches and a paper pad of holiday paper from Michael's to punch out circles, stars, and hearts of various sizes.

 

 

The children delighted in their creations and use oodles of thinking skills when they realized their paint would not puff up when we cooked it  (pop into microwave and cook for 20 seconds or so)if it was covered in paper. I loved seeing and listening to their collaborations and discoveries. Some layered circles and told me it was like "Disky" back from when we did our Kandinsky study, while others talked about shapes, size variations, and practiced their one to one correspondence with one paper shape to each blob of paint that they then counted out.

I mean, lookie how happy these creations are (blurry photos and all)! I used a template the mister made for me last year. I need to transfer to the computer so you all can have a copy if ya like.

Also, the clean up was so pretty I had to take a picture of it as well. We kept the paint out and available for the day. Oh my goodness! I just realized the sticky bottles of paint are in a zip bag somewhere in the casa...where did I put them?  I better find them before they get super ickified! Yikes! Enjoy!

bubble wrap butterfly prints

The week before we did this activity we had bubble wrap on the easel. It was such a popular center that I wanted to keep it but felt hat it needed a fresh twist when I remembered back to my toddler art class days and how we covered the table with bubblewrap and pulled prints from the colorful mess! Let's make butterflies! We had our bubble wrap in two parts taped together. I took advantage of the taped seam, folding it all in half and free cutting a butterfly half from the seam out to the edges. Once unfolded I had a nifty bubble wrap butterfly waiting to be painted on!

The children were really excited to practice painting butterfly designs onto the bubble wrap. One of my kiddos got really into our lessons on symmetry and painted/printed up some awesome symmetrical butterflies! Another kiddo must have painted/printed up over a dozen butterflies. Our classroom looked so festive!

We changed out the colors each day to add a bit of variety to the project. I wish I had more photos, they looked so nifty! I'm glad I captured these small moments. A three year old classroom is always a very busy place!

paint with bear bottles

 We kind of had a field day with books of threes. We began with The Three Little Kittens, then moved on to The Three Billy Goats Gruff and ended our adventure with The Three Bears. For our week of The Three Bears we explored oats, size and mass, and of course...bears! My favorite was painting with bear bottles, really it was less about painting with the bottles and more about the presentation. 

Rather than remove the entire seal from each bottle, I punched a hole or two in the seal with a toothpick. This kept the paint from being squeezed out completely on the first try and made the children work a little hard for their results (though the bottles are super sturdy and not exactly the easiest to squeeze). Setting out primary colors only had the children working from memory to mix up the colors they wanted. I had thought originally they would mix the paint onto the paper plates but they, of course, had other ideas.

There was a request for glitter and other bits of pizazz. I never refuse glitter or pizazz.  They found that their plates, when painted, looked like planets while the paper underneath was outer space.

We will be revisiting this again as more talk of planets came up recently. I need to get some books and maybe I will read this one again, it's a rest time favorite.

 

 They each spent a longer than usual amount of time on their creations often going back to the window where we place our artwork to dry to bring their art back to the table for a little bit more paint of pizazz. The large bits of foil pizazz is a bit like this while the bear bottles came from here.