Spring flowers

Here in Phoenix it's a beautiful first day of spring! 

I decided it would be fun as an introduction to our spring 

theme if we made a garden of colorful flowers.

I set out  assorted colors of paint, small brushes, and small paper plates.

(I taped a stem to the back of each plate).

I also set out pompoms for the kids to glue (tacky glue works best)

 to center of the their flowers.

The flowers came out so cute, full of  bright colors! 

The kids had such fun painting 

 that we ended up with quite a large garden of flowers!

Supplies needed

 washable tempera paints 

paint pots and brushes

small paper plates

green construction paper

pom poms

tacky glue

Sparkly  rainbow paintings

Today we got out our watercolor paints, spray bottles and salt shakers

and ended up with colorful  sparkly paintings that are worthy of framing!

I first had the kids use the spray bottle of water and spray their paper.

 Then they went to work painting on the wet paper. 

It was great fun watching the colors run together.

Once they were pleased with their beautiful rainbow

 paintings they took the salt shaker and shook salt all over the painting. 

So much fun, such lovely pictures! 

Supplies needed

watercolor paints (I like a good quality paint such as crayola or prang)

water cups and paint brushes

salt shakers

white construction paper.

Ww for worms

The kids had such fun dipping their "worms" in shallow bowls of paint and 

laying them across their paper. Makenna liked her worms to dance and bounce.

Ashley had ballerina worms that moved slowly making lots of shapes.

The boys had army worms, they loved  dragging them across

 the paper  as they watched the colors mix up.

 We ended up with some beautiful art work that the

 kids were so very proud of!

Supplies needed

washable tempera paint

shallow bowls for the paint

yarn cut into pieces

construction paper 

Planes, cars, trucks, and trains!

What fun it is to run vehicles through a plate of paint and then across a sheet of paper!

Today in preschool we learned about different ways to travel. I set assorted vehicles in the plates of paint and asked each child what vehicle would you pick if you wanted to fly in the sky? What would you climb into if you were traveling on railroad tracks? I had a boat, bike, plane, train, car, mud bog truck, and a skateboard! The kids had such fine naming the vehicles and even more fun racing them on their paper!

For added fun I set out giant Tt's for them to paint across with the vehicles 

 as they shared their favorite way to travel.

Supplies needed

assorted small vehicles

paper plates of washable paint

paper

Vv for Veggie prints

What fun the kids had printing with vegetables today. We first talked about which foods were vegetables and which were not. We played "guess the vegetable" game  where I would describe the vegetable in my  vegetable basket and they would pick which one I was talking about.  We used long sheets of paper and assorted colors of paint for the kids to print with. For less mess and nice prints we took clothes pins and pushed the top of the clothespin  into the vegetables to make handles. They stayed in wonderfully! The cucumbers, bell peppers, and carrots we just cut in half as they are easy for the kids to hold on to. We left the seeds inside the bell pepper halves so the kids could observe them before painting with them. The kids were so creative with their vegetable  prints turning them into beautiful gardens of flowers!

                                 

Supplies needed

   assorted vegetables
washable tempera paints
shallow bowls or paper plates(for the vegetables and paint)
clothes pins for the handles
white paper (I used strips of butcher 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