Drippy, shiny milk pictures

Since we are learning about cows today (within our "Old MacDonald's Farm" unit).....we had our activities based around "Milk". So at our art table we painted with drippy shiny milk!!

Basically, this is sweetened condensed milk with food coloring. I mixed three different bowls with red, blue, and yellow food coloring.

Once they are done painting, we hung them on the wall to watch them slowly drip! The kids thoroughly enjoyed this......."Wow, mine has dripped all the way to the bottom!" "My blue is dripping", "My yellow is beating my blue". I also tried to begin conversation about the mixing of the primary colors - what new colors are appearing?

Some kids enjoyed mixing them all at once for a beautiful brown color. Then folding their paper in half for some symmetry. Awesome! We had a fun painting day today!

ABC Painting

Today we had fun painting with the alphabet. Simply put the colors of tempera paint you want on some paper plates, be sure to have trays and smocks handy (easier clean-up), then all you need are some ABC cookie cutters.......the kids dip them in the paint and place them on their paper.

Be prepared for some teacher guidance as you discuss the letters they are stamping, or words they are even writing. This is a great activity to build your childs literacy!!

Transportation brush painting

For this activity, you'll need different sized brushes and about 4 or 5 different colors of paint and paper!

Simply put the materials out and let the children paint pictures of anything they want. We have obviously been talking about transportation and it seems what we are learning about is where a lot of the children's interests lead. I like to sit with them and discuss what they are painting, what they know about it, why the like it, and I add in little bits of information that they will help their interest grow......it's called teacher guidance and it's wonderful!!!

Brush painting is one of the most child centered, open ended, creative activities you can offer a group of preschoolers. In my classroom, whenever we have brush painting, the children can paint zero or ten pictures a day. I leave it up to them and I don't try and dictate a theme, but it often goes toward what we are learning about. The children may extend our "theme" into the experience for themselves. Or, they may just want to paint a picture of something that happened to them at home and that's great too!!

Happy painting!!

Painting with Variation

Today we had painting with a different variety of paintbrushes. It's so fun to paint and explore with paintbrushes that a different!

This really allows the children to think in ways they might not have before! So lets unleash that creativity - PAINT!!

Watercolor Wonder

It doesn't matter how much paint I put out through the year, the children never tire of it...and why would they, painting is simply AWESOME!! I change it up each time even if it's a simple change like, shape of paper, type of paint brushes, type of paint, how we paint, etc. Preschoolers NEED to paint!!

Preschool Painting

It's always fun to start preschool off with painting. It's something that is usually familiar to all of the children, and also something they absolutley LOVE!! If it's simply filling the whole paper up with colors until they turn black, or actually making a picture - to a preschooler, it's all the same and should be viewed as the same also. It's the experience they are getting, not what they are turning it into!!

Happy Painting!