watercolor gingerbread men

 

How could I forget our watercolor gingerbread men? The children loved drawing and scribbling with the oil pastels. I love how the liquid watercolor really covered their people, splotches and all! I used our cardboard gingerbread person as a template and fancy-pants watercolor paper. I traced the outline with an oil pastel and then cut out the gingerbread person once the paint dried. We looked at the pictures in Gingerbread baby and talked about our facial features as we painted. Here are two of our people. Aren't they fun?

on sorting and set ups...

I teach threes in a literature based school. We focus on one book for the week, pulling out theme and curriculum ideas from the book. No matter the theme, I will always have one or two sorting activities out along with fine motor fun, our sticky easel, maybe a felt board, a story basket, the mystery bag, a sensory bin, play dough, and art stuffs. Repeating these projects and actions using different materials is a great way for children to learn and stretch their growing minds and fine motor skills. The success and anticipation of knowing how to use the materials builds their confidence and autonomy while allowing for creative play when they engage with the materials in ways of their own choosing. Each time they succeed or stretch those thought processes connections are made in the brain. It's really cool! So whether or not the children put the correct amount of pom-poms on the corresponding gingerbread person there is still development happening. If the children color sort the poms (like one did in the picture) while another simply throws them all in the air, that's okay, the brain is still working and growing and the child is learning about the world around them.

 

The pretty set ups in my classroom are to engage and invite the children in and create a pleasing environment for myself and their parents. The set up is the photo-sell of a classroom but the real magic happens when the children arrive and create new ways of playing and manipulating their environment. Those photos don't really show the magic but it is there in super leaps and bounds. It is the main reason I work with children, that magical moment of learning that happens when nothing seems to be happening at all.

These gingerbread people were picked up from the dollar section at Target. I'm not a big foam fan but thought these could last a few years. There are numbered dots on one side with the number written on the other. One of my children immediately ripped a leg off of poor number six. After we discussed what was suitable for tearing, we figured out a way to repair the leg and then grabbed some tin foil and construction paper  to create a tearing station. For the sorting pieces you could use pom-poms, stickers, punched pieces, small counters, beans, or even wrapped candies though with a room of three-year olds you may find one hiding out in the gingerbread house with their cheeks full of peppermints...ahem.

sorting gingerbread people

 When we go with a theme for the week, we GO with a theme. Our week of gingerbread touched on all areas of our curriculum. We painted, we mixed, we did experiments, we read stories, we told stories, we played out the story, we sang songs, and we sorted. I picked up these fantastic gingerbread people from etsy seller How We Learn at Home. I didn't have a plan but loved them so I put them out on the tray. I then rediscovered a color carton made by my co-teacher and loved how they matched so I put it out as well. I walked away and began setting up other areas...

When I made my way back around the room with camera in hand, I found this! I love it when they do this. I thought for sure the people would end up all over the place but there they remained nestled in their colors, occasionally dumped and resorted, or put to bed as one of the children kept saying.

gingerbread houses and people

The children got an opportunity to explore a recipe. I wrote out a recipe card using drawings and explained the different tools we would be using. Mixing cups, measuring spoons, and ingredients were discussed. Our goal was to make puffy paint and so we did!

Each child got a cardboard cutout of a house and a gingerbread person and go to squeezing their designs. The challenge in this project was to NOT squeeze to much as the paint was pretty sloopy and too much paint would prevent our house and people from being "baked" in our microwave.

 

We used this recipe now pinned to pinterest and the children added a dash of cinnamon and spice as well. Once they were ready we popped 'em in the microwave for 30 seconds to cook/puff the paint.

 

 

Once their houses and people were dry (the next day) we got our our squeezy glue bottles and added candy accoutrements.

 

Good enough to eat! Which did happen when a younger sibling spied upon a becandied house. We later discovered it minus a skittle or two.

more gingerbread man fun

Our week of Gingerbread Baby was full of sugar and spice and everything nice. Take a lookise:

 We painted in gingerbread colors. A little gold, a lot of brown with a dash of pink and red....

 Our Gingerbread Felt Person got a lot of makeovers. He even took to hiding in the clasroom and at one point became a pirate. Aaargh!

Our gingerbread spice cloud dough got a lot of play! More and more spice was added throughout the day with some extra bits of glitter and flash. Even the clean up was loads of fun for the children. It helps to have a wee sized broom and dustpan.

gingerbread man science

I work at a literature based preschool with emphasis on play. Each week we focus on one title and tie in our math, science, art and sensory areas together using the book. Last week we read Gingerbread Baby and our classroom was all sugar and spice. One of our projects was gingerbread man science. Working with young threes is always interesting and their focus on our gingerbread experiments was really great!

 

We began with a gingerbread man cookie for each child and reflected on the story of the Gingerbread Baby. We discussed what would happen if the gingerbread baby had fallen in the water instead of floating on the ice. After each child made a prediction, he or she could choose to have their gingerbread man jump into the water or not. Observations were made and conclusions were written down. The children used the word melting. I gave them the word dissolved.

The children also made predictions regarding their cookies and a rolling pin. We talked about how the dough is like playdough and is soft and maleable before it is bakes but hard after. The children talked about the textures and sounds their cookies made when crunched with a rolling pin (and with their teeth when they got to eat a cookie).

 

We had been playing with gingerbread spiced cloud dough and the children wanted to introduce into their experiments. We decided that the cloud dough could be pretend snow and made estimates on how many scoops it would take to cover their crunched cookies. Children made guesses and corrected their numbers if they needed more or less scoops. It was really pretty great and we wrote it all out and returned to our findings often.

turkeys drawn by threes

 

I asked the children if they wanted to draw some turkeys thinking of our elephants. We sat down with paper and crayons and looked at pictures and illustrations of turkeys. It was decided that a turkey body was a circle, the head was like a thumb, the waddle like an oval and the tail feathers were lines. I love how they turned out. So much fun!

and then we made leaf bowls

This project is ALL over pinterest and the internet. I loved the idea so much that I decided to do it with my school kiddos.

We used a mixture of Mod Podge, white glue and water to start. I prepped the bases (we used buckets) with cooking spray and plastic wrap and set out trays of our glue mixture and dollar store leaves. I also sponged on the first coat of glue so the children could see how what the plan was.

 

 

We used sponge brushes to brush the sticky stuff on. Some of the children loved the sticky but others did not. For those who did not, they selected their leaves and placed them on the base while I held the leaves down for them to do the painting of the sticky.

 

We set them in the windowsill to dry but they were feeling a bit flimsy so I hit up our fabric store for some spray fabric stiffener and did another few rounds of spray for protection (they took about two days to fully dry). The children were super excited about their bowls and their families were also pretty keen. I think I will do this every year if the time and space allows for it. Happy Fall!

thank you pinterest...

...and all you crafty bloggers out there who share your ideas! Last week we read Fletcher and the Falling Leaves and worked on all sorts of Thanksgiving fun found through pinterest!

 This fine motor activity was inspired by Twoodaloo. I used floral foam cut to fit one of our small wooden crates. The picks were made by me, using stickers from Michael's and construction paper. Out of all of these projects, this one took the most prep time but the children loved it! Though it may be that they really loves the sound of the toothpicks going into the foam. Feathers were great too!

 This awesome rainbow button turkey inspired by Raptor Mama. This one I did turn into a color matching game as well as the fine motor aspect of the buttons. My threes had a hard time at first but soon got the hang of it and played with it over and over again.

 This awesome clothespin turkey inspired by Pink and Green Mama. Thank you to mr. a-go-go for drawing me the turkey. I used scrapbook paper for the wings and a glitter paper for the base. I had wanted to do the color matching turkey but our local Michael's was out of rainbow feathers so I went with this instead focusing on the fine motor movement of pinch the clothespins.

And this semi-modern take on the classic handprint turkey from Things to Share and Remember. The children chose their own colors for their turkeys and I painted their hands. They drew in their legs and eyes and selected their beaks and waddles. The backgrounds were painted on the backs of cereal boxes and then hot glue to cardboard. They also painted their noodles for the handles. I love, love, love how they turned out!

art on their own time

 We have a window ledge reserved for drying artwork. My threes know to put their artwork there and I often find wonderful creations like these just sitting there. I'm lucky enough to have a very small class so that I can tell whose art shows up and I am happy that I keep out the different types of glue, paper punches, stampers, and a variety of papers and scraps  waiting for little hands to be turned into art.

guided drawing with three year olds: elephants

We spent a week with Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. We spent a lot of time on elephants. The different types, their color, habitat, etc. In the book we talked about how most of the elephants were grey except Elmer and one of the children asked "What is grey?" And so we made our own elephants.

 

 The first thing we did was a guided drawing exercise. If the children were a little older (these are new threes) I would have a book out with pictures and we would discuss the colors and shapes of an elephant. Instead, I showed the pictures of the elephants in Elmer and showed them the bodies and asked about what shapes they saw. We did a big circle for the body, a small circle for the head, triangles for the ears, and lines for the trunk and tail.

 

Next I talked about our previous color mixing experiences and how we made tints by adding white. I explained that grey is made by mixing black and white. I let them squirt their black and white paint onto a tray and then had them choose one other color to mix in. As they were mixing, one of the children told me "this is a tint of black!". Before painting, we flipped the drawing over so that the children would paint the back of the paper to allow me to cut around their drawings.

 Painting in action! We would hold the paper up to the light to see if we could still see the lines of their drawings If they did, they would add more paint. This one here has a little bit of red paint mixed in.

 

Here are two of our elephants. Aren't they fantastic?

our sticky apple tree

 

Leaves, blossoms, and fruit for our tree....

more painted leaves

 I stitched this garland of fall leaves together to decorate our classroom. The children loved seeing their art hanging like this over the entryway to our kitchen. Along with the watercolor leaves we did some squishy paint leaves. I think I may like these even more.

 The children selected and squeezed their own paint on top of their watercolor leaf shapes. They also selected which leaf they wished to paint. Sometimes painting up two or three more.

 After squeezing their paint, they placed a different sheet of paper over their work are and got ready to smoosh!

 They smooshed and rubbed and rubbed and smooshed!

 

Aren't the colors fantastic? We used bottled tempera from Discount School Supply. Such nice happy colors!