Young at Art

 This is just a brief post, but I wanted to share these pictures.

There is something so free and wonderful about preschoolers painting.  It is more of a game to them, and the colors and flow they have with the paint is what many abstract painters wish they had.

An Invitation to Play with Light

The magic of light and color to entice curious and playful minds.

Experimenting with Color, Water, and Ice Sun Catchers

Oh the magic of food coloring in water, how it fascinates and amazes.

It really is a beautiful thing to play with and learn about mixing colors.

One afternoon we started to add color to little cups so that we could make ice cubes for an ice sun catcher.  Here are some pictures of our color fun.

Our experiment began with little cups of water and squeezing food coloring into the cups.

We then filled ice cube trays and talked about how water freezes

With our left over water, we mixed our colors in a big bowl to make more colors.

Here is a picture of our ice cubes after they froze.

We also explored watching our ice turn back into water.  As Jasper said: "This is good, but now they're gone."  By this we learned how things alter from one thing that existed into another, and then no longer exists.

We also placed out ice cubes into trays of partially frozen colored water and then froze them again.
This is a project I found in Family Fun.  You take a tray of water, and fill a small cup of water to place in the tray.  Make your colored ice cubes, and then place them in the tray of water, and refreeze them.
The final results are ice sun catchers.  Here are some pictures of ours.  I would like to say they lasted longer then the next morning, but we have been having such a warm winter that as Jasper said about the ice cubes: "this is good, but now they're gone."

Concluding our Celebration of Chinese New year

As Chinese New Year comes to completion, I would like to share more of what the children

did for Chinese New Year

Being that it is the year of the Dragon, and that one of the days of Chinese New Year

is celebrated with a dragon dance, we created our own Chinese Dragons.

Our first step was to cut up egg cartons so that you have a larger section with six compartments, and another with two.  They were painted and became the eyes and mouth of the dragon.  After they dried they were stapled together.

The children then painted large pieces a paper anyway they would like.

These pieces of paper were tapered at the end and became the body of the dragon.

More paintings of the bodies of the dragons

Once all the parts are dry, they then are stapled together.  Some of the children added tissue paper to theirs for more decorations.

Although we did not have a parade, some of the children took theirs outside to run

 around and play with.

Paper Lanterns

On another day, we created paper lanterns.  This is a great project for having the kids practice cutting. 

Start by prepping a rectangular piece of paper by folding it in half lengthwise and drawing a grid  that has a 1/2 inch border on the edge and top, and 1 inch lines drawn in horizontally.

Then have the children practice cutting on the lines, but not the border edge.

After they opened up their paper, it was folded around in a circle and the children used glue sticks to glue it into the lantern form.

After is was secure in it's lantern form, they added a wire and beaded the wire so they could hang their lanterns

Celebrating with a Visitor

*(photo courtesy of Ella)

We were so excited and lucky to have Steffa, one of the mom's of our school,

come for a morning and talk to us about the four years she lived in China.

She brought with her a lovely selection of outfits, books and toys for the children to see during a sharing time. 

I was thrilled to have someone who was immersed in Chinese culture to come and share more about China and Chinese New Year, but Steffa also shared the language with us.  She speaks Mandarin, and was able to write out the children's names in Chinese Characters, which we later added to their art project.  It was a fun and enriching days for us at school, and here are some pictures of the day.

Steffa holding up a Chinese knot, which the girls were in love with.

Steffa told us how a Chinese knot is a symbol of luck, and that it is a continuous piece of rope all knotted together.  She also spoke about how red and gold are very special colors and are also symbols of good luck and good fortune.

Here is Myles wearing an elaborate hair accessory, one of the show and tell items

 Steffa shared with us

Elianna showing off a special dress adornment that Steffa received from a family she visited in China

Blocks with Chinese Characters and pictures that the kids loved playing with.

 

Art Time

 For art time the children painted large water color backgrounds.

Steffa writing the Characters for their names on their water color washes

The children's names written out

Autumn attempting to write her own name

Elianna's name

Mai, Mai...Myles' nickname in Chinese

Snack Time!

Eating our snack with chop sticks

Autumn eating her apple cake we made for snack, too cute!

What a wonderful two weeks of fun we had

A final Gong Hay Fat Choy.

Learning about Molecules and making GAK

Today we had a great time discussing molecules, yup, that's right molecules!

I know they are preschoolers, but since we were doing a science project where we would be transforming a liquid into an organic compound (semi-solid form)

I was inspired by a website that went into details about molecules, so I thought it would be fun to talk about them with the kids.

Molecules are small particles that make up all living and non-living things, and as I told the children this, I asked them to picture the smallest thing they could imagine and that molecules in our bodies were probably smaller than that.  I talked about how we were going to make gak or slime as some call it, and that it would change from water to a rubbery material we could play with.

I also bartered with my daughter to let us use her molecule looking blocks at school today (this is one of her "non-school toys".)  I pointed out that molecules look a lot like these blocks and let them play around with them for a while.  Then we took all the forms they made and made one big one.  I pointed out that we just changed the molecular structure by taking their structures and adding them together to make a new one. I then let them know we were about to do the same thing when we make the gak.  Sounds a bit heady, but really it was just a bunch of play and fun with some big words thrown in now and then.

Recipe for Gak

8 oz. glue (I have a big jug, but an 8 oz. bottle poured out will do)

warm water

1 tsp borax soap added into 1/2 cup warm water

a large bowl and mixing spoon

Ziploc bag for when you are done.

1.  Empty the 8 oz. of glue into your bowl

then empty 8 oz. of warm water into the bowl.  If you are using a bottle of glue, add the water to the bottle and shake it around and then pour it in to get more of the glue out of the bottle.

Stir your glue and water mixture and then add your food coloring and continue to mix

I added the teaspoon of borax into the 1/2 cup of warm water before starting the project, I do not have the children handle the borax soap, and if you use this recipe please only allow adults to.  It is only a laundry booster, but it should not be handled by children.

after the glue mixture is mixed thoroughly, then add the diluted borax and begin stirring.

Almost immediately it starts to change. 

Eventually you have to get you hands in it to stir it, but this crazy stuff can just be peeled off as it starts to solidify.

(photo courtesy of Elianna)

We had a ball playing with it and included some sea life in our play.
One student (J.P.) decided the seals needed scarves, nice touch I thought.

Here are some of the children's observations:

T.M.- "It bounces like rubber."
E.P.B- "It bounces like Scooby Snacks, it's chewy and gooey like scooby snacks."
J.P- "it feels like rubber, isn't it funny."
E.G.H- "It feels gookie."
M.K- "It feels like rubber, beany-bopily rubber."



Snow Fun

It's hard to believe that a week ago we had snow on the ground, but I have proof in

these picture that we did have enough snow (at least once this year) to make a snowman!

 Team work always helps to make the best snowmen

They danced around singing "frosty the snowman"

and finished their time with a hug