Preschool Art Lesson: Light and Perspective

A book we recently read together for our Five-in-a-Row preschool co-op, Storm in the Night, has lots of nighttime pictures in which the light shines dramatically from various angles.  This seemed like a good opportunity to discuss light and perspective in art.

Nocturnal Animals Project: Watercolor Resist

For our Five-in-a-row homeschool co-op recently we read the book Owl Moon.  One of  our conversation topics afterward was the concept of nocturnal and diurnal animals.  My husband suggested that we also talk about the special reflective eyes that God gave night animals.  Nova has a good article describing the science of a nocturnal animal's eyes.  

I was really tickled to find this lightning bug project from Toddler Approved that provided the inspiration for our art project.  For our co-op project I:

1  Printed off a page of nocturnal animal pictures I found on the internet.  

2.  Gave each child a yellow crayon to color in the animals' eyes (Coloring around the eyes a little is a good idea to make them stand out better) and the word "nocturnal."

3.  Allowed the children to paint over the whole picture with dark watercolors.  The yellow crayon resists the paint and makes the eyes pop out.  

Snowy Evening Watercolor Resist

For our homeschool co-op the other day we read Robert Frost's classic poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.  For our activity we did these watercolor resist paintings using masking tape.  I found the tutorial on Art Projects for Kids' site and added a cardinal (scanned from the book).  The kids painted him red and glued him in one of the trees.

It was a pretty involved painting for preschoolers (probably better suited to older children), but the results are really striking.

3 Russian Crafts for Kids

In our Five In a Row co-op this week we read the book Another Celebrated Dancing Bear which takes place in Imperial Russia.  I believe this is the first book we've read with that setting; so I was pretty excited to see what kinds of crafts I could find to illustrate Russian culture.

1.  Printable nesting dolls.   I love these adorable Russian nesting dolls.  You can print them out in full color or in black and white outline to color them yourself.

2.  Faberge eggs.  I am honestly shocked that I have been unable to find any children's nonfiction books containing the story of the Fabrege eggs. Their history is all about riches, surprises and lost treasure- just the kind of thing kids love, and such a great way to teach about Imperial Russian and the 1917 Revolution.  If you want to tell your children the story and show them a few pictures, this link from PBS has a pretty good summary.

We used a really fun silk technique to dye the eggs.  They don't actually look all that similar to the historical Faberge eggs, but they're fancy- which is basically what we were going for.  I'll be writing about how to make them in an upcoming post.

3.  Russian Architecture-  The colorful onion domes on the Orthodox churches in Russia are so striking. I thought it would be fun to let the kids design their own churches in this style.

My husband (who has a much steadier artistic hand and loads more patience for historical accuracy) sketched some historically accurate domes and spires for me on a piece of card stock.  I used those as templates for cutting out lots of domes and spires from different colors of construction paper, along with some other basic shapes.  The kids could then arrange them like building blocks on their page and glue them on once they found an arrangement they liked.  They used markers to draw on details like windows, stripes on the domes, and crosses.

Any other ideas for Russian kids' crafts?  

We Made Butter!

I've seen people making butter around the internet for a while now and always in the back of my mind thought that it probably takes forever and doesn't really turn out that great.  But when our homeschool co-op recently read a book that was a perfect tie-in for the activity (When I was Young in the Mountains), I figured it was time to give it a try.

Materials:
Heavy cream (the higher the fat content the better)
Jar or tupperware container for shaking (smaller containers= less time shaking) I used a salad dressing shaker because it was easy for little hands to hold while they shook
Marbles (optional, to aid the mixing process)

Directions
Fill the jar half-way up with the heavy cream, drop in the marbles and shake, shake, shake.  You don't have to be super vigorous; just keep it moving.

The cream will first turn to a thick whipped cream; shake for a little while longer after that- and suddenly you will see the butter curds separated out from the rest of the liquid.  (It will be obvious) Shake until it doesn't seem to be changing anymore.

Drain the buttermilk off of the butter and reserve for pancakes or something else delicious.

You'll be left with a soft, spreadable butter- slightly wetter than what you would buy in the store.

The Verdict
So...it DID take a long time.  The five kids shaking it had worn themselves out before it was done; so the adults finished it up.  Altogether, it took about 20 minutes of shaking for the butter to form.

But, the results were super satisfying.  The kids were fascinated by the dramatic change from cream to butter, and it was tasty on the skillet cornbread that we made to go along with the lesson.

If you're on the line about doing this activity yourself, my advice is that it is worth it, but be ready for a good arm workout!

Works for Me Wednesday!

File Folder Puppet Theatres

To make an easy, foldable puppet theatre, tape two manila file folders together at the edges, cover this new wide flat surface with a piece of paper, and cut a large opening to be the "stage."  I used a blank piece of paper for the front of the stage so that it could be decorated to go along with the story.

I didn't cut the normal rectangular hole for my stage because it was a go-along for the book Down, Down the Mountain (part of our Five in a Row Co-op).  I wanted the kids to be able to reenact the journey down the mountain to town.   I scanned the characters from the book, printed them, and taped them to popsicle sticks.   I taped a little pocket on the inside of one of the sides to store the puppets.

This would be a fun way to encourage kids to retell any story they had just read.

Check out Fairy Dust Teaching for more detailed instructions and inspiration!

Learning Laboratory

Amazing Balancing Butterfly Craft

It's so fun to find a unique craft that uses common household supplies (no trip to Michaels!).  This balancing butterfly really is very simple, and the kids at our co-op this morning were fascinated  by them.

Supplies:

Watercolor Paper (optional- you can just use cardstock if you just want to color with crayons or markers)
Watercolor Pencils (optional)
2 pennies
 
You can make your own template (just make sure the two sides are symmetrical so it will balance, but if you'd rather print and cut, here is a link to the template I used.

For some of the butterflies, I glued the cardstock onto cardboard from a cereal box.  The stiffer cardboard did make the balancing effect a little more dramatic, but the floppy card stock was also fun because it made it look like the wings were flapping when the kids lifted their fingers up and down.

Brushing too much water on the butterflies does not turn out well.  One little girl this morning soaked hers so thoroughly that it fell apart, and another girl's ended up a bit warped (but still worked actually), but the watercolor effect is pretty!

You can use a gluestick or tape to affix the pennies on the underside of each wing.  We preferred the glue because sometimes you need to slide the pennies around a bit to find a good balance.

Be sure to make multiple butterlies so your kids can have fun seeing how many they can balance on themselves at the same time!

The nose is cute!

We did this craft to accompany our discussion of the science of balance going along with the book Mirette on the High Wire as part of the Five in a Row curriculum.  (Very fun book, by the way!)

Five in a Row: A New Coat for Anna

Today was the first day of a homeschool co-op our family is participating in this year.  My job is to teach the preschool literature based program Five in a Row.  (By the way, if you have a preschooler and haven't already, I would definitely look into this curriculum if only for the children's book recommendations)

This week's book is A New Coat for Anna, a sweet story about a girl in post- WWII Europe who needs a new coat.  The stores are empty and no one has any money, but Anna's mother is full of cheerful resourcefulness and trades things from around her house to obtain the materials and labor for having a coat made.

For our activity I had the children practice bartering with one another.  We printed off pictures of resources from the computer (wood, glass, milk, etc), laminated them with packing tape, and glued them on to popsicle sticks.  Each child received four resources which they were allowed to trade with one another.  At the end of the trading time each child got to practice being resourceful and tried to think of things they could make for their family using the resources that they ended up with. (They drew pictures of the things they decided to make).

The activity went fairly well, but  the children didn't get as into the trading as I had hoped (I don't think the kids were completely comfortable with each other on the first day).   I love that A New Coat for Anna helps children see the work and processes that go into things that are easy to take for granted and felt that this activity helped them to ponder those things a bit more.

Are you part of a preschool homeschool co-op?  As a newbie co-op teacher I would love to hear about the kinds of things you do with your preschoolers, and any tips you have found to make things go more smoothly.