A Sneak Preview of our Art Center for Next Month...

We are about to take off for a week to visit family up north and while the boys were napping today, I decided to give our Art Center another makeover.  S (and sometimes Y) had a lot of fun with our setup from this last month, and while I've found the S generally goes through longer phases with toys and books, his attention span with particular art and writing materials can be a bit shorter. In general, he loves playdough ANYTIME. He likes to "write" letters and draw pictures now and he also loves cutting and gluing. However, if the same particular materials are out for more than a few weeks, he does not tend to be as interested in revisiting them again and again in the same way. Sometimes a demonstration of using something in a different way can freshen things up and sometimes a rotation is in order. Since Shabbos is on its way, our Art Center is now under wraps, but I'm so excited about the updates that I'm giving you a sneak preview!




This coming month I am using our Art Center to combine a few of my greatest loves: child-led process art, hands-on exploration of color mixing and children's book extension activities. One of my very favorite pieces of children's literature about art is Leo Lionni's little blue and little yellow. In fact, we've done a couple of story stretcher activities with this particular book over the years. You can read about them here and here.

As I build upon exploring colors in isolation and mixing primary colors, and as S's preschool class will be focusing on the third of the primary colors, blue in November, this was the perfect time to turn our Art Center into an invitation to play and create about blue and yellow. I wanted the area to be mostly child-led, although I may take out certain materials to demonstrate or use with S (and Y as appropriate) since they are new. Here's a peek at our Art & Writing Center now--but if you see S and Y next week, shhhhh don't tell them, it's a surprise!

ta da!

I love integrating children's literature into an art and writing center. Sometimes I might set out a small basket or collection of relevant books and at other times, one book says it all, like Leo Lionni's little blue and little yellow. For some great ideas of children's literature about art, check out these suggestions at Mini Monets and Mommies and Art is Basic. Many of the books are available in our library system and perhaps in yours as well. Alongside the book, I placed two disposable clear plastic shot glasses. On one, I used permanent marker to draw a blue circle and on the other, I did the same with yellow. Over-top one another, you can actually see how green is formed. This is such a fun, hands-on way that even very little ones can explore mixing colors alongside the book.

Some folks see glass dropper bottles for essential oils and a tub grip turned upside down and other folks (this one) see a great fine motor and color mixing activity. One bottle has water dyed yellow in it and the other has water dyed blue. It may be a bit confusing at first that both bottles are blue glass rather than clean, but perhaps that adds an element of surprise to the activity as well. The idea is that children practice using the droppers to suck up water (a skill in and of itself), and to drop into the individual suction cups. Naturally, they will explore how many drops can fit before it overflows (you may want to include a rag for that purpose), what happens when they mix and even how to suck the drops back up and into the bottles again! Your colors will get mixed up and there will probably be a few spills before all is said and done, but it's a great opportunity to also teach about wiping up water, filling the bottles and starting again! In my classrooms, my students LOVED this activity. I'm eager to see how S enjoys it when we get back from our trip.

I've kept a set of yellow and blue drawing and writing materials out in addition to a stock (not pictured) of white paper.

I also enjoy using actual art with children for inspiration. I printed off a copy of Monet's "Starry Night," one of my personal favorite paintings and set out a tray of similarly colored chalk pastels to inspire some starry night creations in my own little artist. I also love that chalk pastels naturally mix on paper so that S will further be able to explore the process of blue and yellow mixing together in his own work.

Painting is a favorite activity and S enjoys using different types of brushes. I love these sponge dabbers--they even remind me of "little blue" and "little yellow," and an art smock is ready to go so all S needs to do is grab some paper, an art mat for his table and paint!

Cutting and gluing are always popular with S. This month I set some white index cards on our tray and tissue paper squares in blue and yellow for cutting, gluing, overlapping and exploring. They are great on their own, scrunched up, torn, cut and many other ways that I'm sure my creative artist will come up with. 

Overlapped, children can observe how shades darken and how colors mix...

How much more hands on can you get than playdough or clay? I used some white clay and food coloring in yellow and blue to set out a color mixing station, but you could use store bought playdough in blue and yellow, colored clay or make your own dough recipe and dye it yellow and blue. Your little ones will likely not need any prompting to test out mixing the two colors--it kind of happens naturally around here.

Well, we're over and out and will be back upon returning home...until then, happy playing!