Spring Mural
Materials: water color, markers, butcher paper, construction paper, creep paper, Styrofoam
“peanuts”, pipe cleaners, tempera paint
Lex asked teacher Fay what was the art activity one day. Teacher Fay asked Lex what HE wanted to do. “I want to make eggs. Easter eggs!” Lex replied. Fay helped him to trace an oval shape. Lex cut it out and painted it with water color. As Lex was painting the paper eggs, more children came and participated. Pretty soon we had a bunch of eggs children cut and painted on their own. Some eggs even had little chicks drawn by the children!
Thinking about displaying the eggs, I laid a piece of butcher paper on the floor. The children painted it with blue and green water color. Then we glued paper on top of it. Next the children created green leaves with tempera paint and construction paper (finger paining).
The wisteria in my garden bloomed like a sea of purple bells. Inspired by the graceful shape of the flowers, I prepared pipe cleaners and white Styrofoam “peanuts” for the children to create their own wisteria.
We put everything we made together in two weeks on the bulletin board outside our classroom. Vola! A spring mural started from a request of a child was thus accomplished.
Recently, the children in room 35 became very interested in talking about Halloween, the pumpkin patch, and what their costumes are going to be this year. Also during the group time, teachers have talked about the season of autumn, falling leaves, the harvest of apples, pumpkins, and etc.
Paper Pumpkins
On October 6, when children got to know they were going to make their own” Paper Pumpkins”,
they cheered and strove to be the first one helping teachers set up the materials.
Children and teachers worked together to fill the “Foam Packing Peanuts” into the white lunch paper bags and then fastened them with masking tapes. These little great helpers worked really hard and looked forward to seeing how their pumpkin would look like.
Before doing their painting, some children were so fascinated with mixing red and yellow colors. They liked to share and express their find outs,
“Wow, look at that！It becomes orange.”
“I think it’s orange red. Oh, no, it’s still orange. I need more paint. ”
Some kids talked about their stories and experiences of pumpkin or pumpkin patch while doing their painting,
“I am gonna paint the stem because the stem is green.”
“I went to the pumpkin patch and they have jumping house. They have the shark one, too！ ”
“I saw a pumpkin in my grandma’s house and it’s black！Really!”
“Will we have a pumpkin patch at school？”
“Teacher, I wanna a real pumpkin…. Can I bring a real one home？”