Over the past few weeks, the children have been participating in various art projects, ranging from painting to beading to making three-dimensional creations! They love painting with different colors and blending them together to see if they can create a new color or simply to see how the colors blend with each other. They’ve discovered that water colors can blend quite beautifully and softly as one color bleeds into another color, whereas with tempera paint, the whole page may turn brown if they mix too many at a time! They have also explored movement and the different ways in which they can make the paintbrush move across the canvas, making large, back-and-forth strokes to fill the entire page; making thinner, more precise strokes that resemble scattered dots; adding texture by layering the paint; and/or creating lines of all shapes and sizes. Using this exploration, they have created their own versions of rainstorms, treasure maps, wildfires, and hearts to name a few. When they are not busy exploring with paint, they are often occupied with glitter art! The children use a paintbrush to paint glue to where they want the glitter to be placed before subsequently scattering the glitter on top. It’s always exciting to see where the glitter actually ends up landing.
When we were stuck inside because of the poor air quality and wanted to unwind with a little fine motor work, the children practiced stringing beads of various sizes to create necklaces. Since the beads were wooden and bare, they decorated them by developing their own designs and painting them all sorts of colors. Though it was challenging to put the beads through the shoelace, they tried their best to stay focused, ultimately creating unique necklaces that they were so excited to show their friends and family. Some friends even strung the beads in patterns based on size or colors. From a teacher’s perspective, it was amazing to see the children refine their fine motor control and manual dexterity while doing something they enjoyed and thought was fun. We will definitely be revisiting bead stringing in the future so that those children who are interested can continue to master it! It will be interesting to see how they work with it in a different way that reflects their current development. Another activity they have really enjoyed is art with loose parts. Using a paintbrush with glue, they carefully decide where they want to place glitter and various items like buttons and shapes, adding to their work as they see fit.
We love seeing the kids explore their own artistic identities and can’t wait to see how their artwork evolves!
