Pre-school Portraits of Mom

Preschool Sculptures

This is the first showcase display of my preschoolers's work . Today they will see it for the first time. I am excited to see their reactions.

Preschool Weaving

I did a weaving lesson with my preschoolers this week.  If you're interested, check out my blog entry over at "Art for Itty Bitties."

Preschool Sculpture

If you're interested in a sculpture lesson for preschool, check out my blog, "Art for Itty Bitties."

Spring Bonnets

This is a lesson I got from Phyl at "There's a Dragon in My Art Room."  I posted more about this lesson at my blog, "Art for Itty Bitties." 

Thanks, Phyl!

Another Blog..."Art For Itty Bitties"

I've created yet another blog.  This one is called "Art for Itty Bitties," and it is for the lessons I have created for preschool art.  Since there is no county art curriculum for my preschool students, I have had to create my own. 

There are many preschool art sites on the web, but they are mostly created for the use of classroom teachers, and not art teachers.  I try to create lessons that are of high interest to four and five year olds, and are more experiential in nature than product oriented.  Hopefully, the end product is pleasing as well as experiential, but the experience is the main objective.

Any preschool posts from Snippety Gibbet have been copied there.  If you are an art teacher looking for preschool art lessons, check this one out.   http://www.artforittybitties.blogspot.com/

Preschool "Winter Coats"

I try to teach lessons in preschool that include pretending.  If I could bring in cardboard boxes for them all to turn into playhouses, I would.  That's a bit unwieldy though, so we pretend to create things in more manageable sizes.  In this lesson they created their own winter coat.

Note the buttons, zippers and pockets.  I reminded them to add details that you might see on real coats.

We looked at photos of real coats and then they created their own in a way that was meaningful to them.

Their favorite part was when they got to wear them back to their classroom.

Beautiful Stuff

I idolize Cathy Weisman Topal. In my mind, she is the #1 art educator for young children. In her book, Beautiful Stuff, she describes a lesson in which children create a face out of found objects.

I begin the lesson with letting the children talk about a painting by Archimboldo.  They point out all of the objects that they see, and we talk about how different it is than a real face.





  I tell the children that we are going to go shopping for goodies to create our own imaginary faces.  They get a blue "shopping cart" (tray) and head to "K Mart" (my table of goodies) to buy their eyes, noses, ears, mouths, hair, eyebrows, etc.

 

At their tables, they arrange the goodies on a purple circle that serves as a base for the face.

After creating the face made from goodies, the children draw the faces as they see them.

I love how this little girl observed the cylindrical forms and tried to draw them as she saw them.

Near the end of class, the children put their goodies back in their carts and delivered them back to "K Mart."  This part of the lesson became a lesson in sorting as they had to look for the container the objects had originally been in.

After all the work was done, the children sat back on the floor.  I held up each piece and they applauded for each other.  Every one looked proud as they heard applause just for them.

Paintbrush Song

A preschool teacher just appeared at my door asking if I minded her teaching the kids my "Happy Paintbrush" song.  I forgot I even made up that song.  I need to collect these things!

If you're teaching preschool or even kindergarten, you might sing this ditty to keep those brushes from the dreaded "pencil hold."

Sing to the tune of London Bridges…and demo the position a "happy paintbrush" would take...

Happy paint brush stands straight up

Stands straight up

Stands straight up

Happy paint brush stands straight up.

All day long.  

This song will make you nuts….haunt you in your dreams….but the kids love it.

Miss Tee's Wild Ride

Hi there.......My apologies for not being around much lately. I've had company which was a good thing. And I've had allergies which have been a not so good thing. (@#$%^&* ragweed.)

This snip is of my granddaughter riding a bike. She and her Mom flew cross country to stay in Virginia for a week. "Miss Tee" was very worried that there would not be a bike for her at my exceedingly bikey house, so my friend, Blink, loaned me one.

Watching her ride was amazing! How on earth that bike ever stayed upright, I'll never know. She would ride with the bike at a 45 degree angle and stay upright. She'd turn her head plumb backwards to look at something, and not fall over. Girls just got balance I guess.

She and Papa rode several times on the beautiful new bike trail near our house. When she rode on the dirt path in the little hills that lead to the trail she would yell, "Look Papa! I'm mountain biking!" It warmed our little bikey hearts.

Tiny Sculptors and Weavers

Though my school system provides wonderful lesson plans for grades K - 12, we have none for preschool. Our preschools are federally funded programs that happen to be in our buildings. The extras that those programs get, such as music, art and p.e., are at the discretion of the school principals. So I teach whatever I think is appropriate for our tiniest students. The freedom to try my own ideas is appealing. Sometimes I feel as though I am just flying by the seat of my pants though.

I love doing sculpture with them. Kids, in general, don't get a lot of opportunity to use their hands and build in any way, so they really focus in when they get to work three dimensionally. I find that same thing in all grades. Sculpture, clay, and fiber lessons are big hits with the kids.


In this lesson, the kiddies were making sculptures with egg crates, cardboard tubes, and boxes. This group is very young, and as far as I could tell, the sculptures were all non-objective. They seemed to enjoy putting the objects together in any way that pleased them.

Sometimes, when trying to brainstorm what media to present to preschool, I use the ideas that the "big kids" are working on. The uppergrades are doing fiber arts right now. Fifth graders are weaving.


So I made tiny looms for the preschoolers and let them experiment with them.


I didn't give a lot of direction, rather, I let them try things on their own.


This wasn't the greatest lesson, but the kids were engaged. I'll have to figure out a way to build upon that next week.

Printin' and Singin'

Beware. I am singing in this video. And the "song" might get stuck in your head. I make up songs for my preschoolers that help them remember small concepts.



Note, the first person singing the tune in the video isn't me. I'm just joining in.

My preschoolers are doing their second printing lesson with me and I am trying to get them to remember that a print is a copy.

To do this lesson you need this:

and this:



I got the idea from The Crafty Crow blog who got it from the Daisy Yellow blog. The kids loved it and left the room singing.

Preschool Clay

Fridays are interminable. I have five different grades with five different media. The preparation and clean up for all of that is exhausting. Yesterday I had kids printing, glazing pottery, working with clay, drawing, and weaving. I remember sitting for only short periods of time, and spending lots of time hunched over the sink, washing. Last night my brain was numb and my back was tired. Most of the rest of the week, my schedule is good, and I am happy with it. Fridays are just tough.

Enough kavetching.

When I last saw my preschoolers they spent their time exploring with clay. I talked a little about clay, but mostly they played. They pinched it, smashed it, rolled it, and built with it. The idea was to get familiar with it a bit. Most kids played abstractly with the clay but there were a couple of representational pieces. When they were done, the clay went back in the clay bag with the promise that in the next class they would make something they could later keep.

Yesterday they made "elbow pots."

To make these, they pressed their elbows in the middle of a big ball of clay. Some little ones had trouble pressing hard enough into the clay, so we had to help them push. They then took texture stamps and pressed them into the clay to create designs.

These were pretty thick, so I might need an extra week to let the pots dry before firing them. After that I will let the kids glaze.

I think that these look better than the pinch pots the kindergarten and first grade make. Pinch pots are the starting points for a lot of other clay pieces though, so I will continue to teach that.

Multi-media

Once again, I'm getting around to cleaning off my photo disk. Here's just a sampling of the media my kids have worked with in the past week. (And this isn't all of it.) One day last week, I had one class working on laptops; the next class worked with chalk; the next painted with brushes; the next one painted with rolling tools; and the last one drew with markers and felt tipped pens. It takes a lot of energy to prepare all of this....clean up after all of this....put away after all of this....grade after all of this......return or hang up the artwork after all of this.

Is it any wonder that my work spaces at home never get the same treatment? I guess I rebel against myself at home.

Fabric Design in Preschool

Wouldn't it be fun to get together with your friends once a week and spend an hour singing, dancing, and just being creative together? I'm in envy! Here, the preschoolers are designing their own look for winter coats.