Our PreSchool Blog

play-dough sculptures

The kids had a wonderful time with play dough this morning!  They were using their creative minds to turn their play dough into many different things.  Morgan turned his play dough into a pair of glasses and Audrey made hers into a hat!

Today we talked about how important it is to brush our teeth!  For our art project today, the kids decorated their very own tooth brush!  As you can see here, they are having fun using the dot paints to make their tooth brushes colorful!

using dot paints to talk about brushing

Ms. Penny joined our class today to talk about a famous Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai.  Hokusai loved to draw when he was child and as a teenager loved to make woodcut engravings.  The children learned today that he was famous for his block printings.  He made his art by carving a picture onto wooden blocks, rolling them with ink and pressing them onto paper.  He would use one block for each color.  His most famous print was The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.  The children followed in Hokusai’s footsteps today and tried their hand at block printing.  They made their own carvings, rolled them with paint, and printed a picture that will be presented at our Art Show on November 13th.  Here’s a sneak peak…

Block Printing

Preparing our Block for a New Color

The Great Wave by Hokusai

We talked last week about how trees change during each season.  We sequenced these seasons during group time after reading A Tree is Nice.  We discovered that a tree “sleeps” during the winter even though it may look dead without the leaves.  We also discovered that all the rain in the spring brings small buds on a tree, which are the beginnings of the leaves.  Summer trees are full of bright green leaves but they begin to change colors during the Fall and tumble off the branches.  Some of the children in our Wednesday class had the opportunity to create their own seasonal tree using their arm as the trunk and fingers as the branches.  We added details to the trees with our fingerprints whether it be fall foliage, white snow, small green buds, or a full green canopy.  We are still working on these and our seasonal forest will continue to grow throughout the next week.   Check them out!

our seasonal forest project this week

Our Tuesday Class used their hands and feet to create their own herd of Moose.  It was a great sensorial experience!  Don’t forget to check them out!

Shape, pattern, and texture are properties important not only in art but in science and math as well. Preschoolers need engaging opportunities to explore these concepts.

Evelyn is very concentrated on exploring the pumpkins and gourds from our science shelf!  She is using her magnifying glass to really study the different bumps on the pumpkins.  She was talking about the different colors and shapes on the pumpkins and even moved positions to get a really good look!

practice with letter recognition and developing fine motor skills

Today we made the first name of each child’s name with pumpkin seeds!  We guided them as they traced their letter with glue and then they placed the pumpkin seeds on their pumpkin.  Walter is making a “W” for Walter!  This is great practice for letter recognition.

Today the toddlers got to turn their orange painted pumpkins into Jack O’ Lanterns!  We talked about all of the different shapes we can use to make the faces.  We used triangles for eyes to reinforce the shape of the month and let them choose between triangles or circles for the nose.  The last step was to make their pumpkin happy or sad.  For the most part everyone choose happy but there were a few that went for the sad pumpkin!

teaching shape recognition with the familiar pumpkin

Our Tuesday class did step one in their two part art process to make their first forest animal…the moose.  The kids giggled and laughed their way through getting their foot painted with brown paint and stepping down to make the head of the moose.  We will complete the project on Thursday by adding our handprints for antlers.  Look for these cool creations to be hanging in our classroom next week and don’t be surprised if your little one comes home with a yellow tinged foot!

Mixing primary colors to produce secondary colors with the toddlers

The toddlers this week have been practicing their color recognition and experimenting with primary and secondary color mixing. It is a wonderful experience for the children to see how primary colors mix to form secondary colors. The objectives of these exercises are color recognition, the ability to demonstrate creative expression and creating fine motor development. This exercise is one of the favorites of the toddlers. They get to manipulate the different colored solutions in the ziplock bags without creating a mess!