Spring gardens

Today at the art table we sponge painted lovely gardens. 

I decided to add white paint to the primary colors of  paint which made 

nice shades of pastels for the gardens.Whenever I put sponge

 painting out I always hot glue my sponges to cups or  medicine bottles

to make handles for sponges. This way they are much easier 

for the kids  to print with and the paint does not end up all 

over their hands! I set out large pieces of construction paper 

and encouraged the kids to fill up their paper with lots of colorful flowers.

They enjoyed  sponging the flowers close together so their  flowers

 would touch each other. They figured out how the small  flowers could be 

the centers of their large flowers. They had a great time with 

sponge painting, and were very proud of their gardens!

Supplies needed

flower shaped  sponges

washable tempera paint

shallow bowls for the paint

large white construction paper

Crafting with letter Tt

                            

                           

Tiptoeing turtles in tall grass.

Today the kids had lots of fun  tearing, painting and gluing tiptoeing turtles into tall grass. I started out by adding  construction paper and tissue paper in different  shades of green to the art table  for the kids to tear. Tearing is a great fine motor skill for little ones. And oh how they love ripping and tearing paper.  Once we had ripped up lots of tall grass we glued it onto our brown construction paper. Next it was off to get  smocks on and begin sponge painting our turtles. I clipped  pieces of sponges onto clothes pins, and added them to shallow bowls of paint . We chose green and brown paint for our turtles.The kids loved covering their turtles with both colors of paint  and seeing the paint mix together. Remember its the process rather than  the product that matters in art. We didn't worry about how the turtles looked instead  we allowed them to enjoy mixing the greens and browns if they wanted to. Some kids do and some don't! After they were dry we added eyes, nose, a mouth and glued the turtles in the tall grass.

Supplies needed--

Brown construction paper

Assorted shades of green paper

Half a paper plate for each child (we added a head and feet  before the kids painted the turtles)

Brown and green paint

Sponges clipped on clothespins

Winkey blinky eyes

Glue sticks