Archive for Art

Catching Up…

Posted on December 22, 2014 by

Well, I am obviously behind on my posts. We have been keeping up with our ‘studies’ of the world by reading picture books, making ethnic food, and making art projects. I will try to bring out the highlights here.

We finished North America a while back. We made a sequoia tree out of cardboard :

Here she is attaching green paper to the branches to serve as leaves. This turned out pretty neat!

The ‘ethnic food’ we chose to make for North America included homemade lemonade and Canadian pancakes.  I’m not entirely sure what made the pancakes Canadian, as they were just like the pancakes we make here in the states, but they were delicious nonetheless.

Here are some books we read!

Desert Song by Tony Johnston to read about animals in the Southwest:

The Sugaring-Off Party by Jonathan London to read about making maple syrup (this story is set in a French Canadian family):

The Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews is a story about how Inuits in Canada chop holes in the sea ice and walk underneath it at low tide to harvest mussels. I was fascinated by this book:

We read many more about life in various areas of the North American continent. I think picture books are probably my favorite way to tap into another culture for a small child.

We finished reading about monarch caterpillars and watched a documentary from the library called The Butterfly King. It’s about a college student who collects monarch butterfly eggs from milkweed to raise them. It highlighted how many caterpillars are killed by pesticides and herbicides, and then provided close up video of them growing up.  Here’s a picture of Curly looking for more caterpillars.

Speaking of caterpillars, my husband found an incredible looking caterpillar in our garage and we brought it in. After consulting the internet and an entomologist friend, we concluded that it was a species of Sphinx moth caterpillar. It is currently in a pupa in our fridge, waiting for spring. Here is a not very good picture of it:

I didn’t know if it was poisonous or not at first, so I didn’t want to let it out of the bug case we had it in. It was the largest caterpillar I had ever seen. When it turns into a moth in the spring it should be enormous!

Coming back to North America activities, Curly did this coloring page:

She also did a lot of art not related to North America. Here is one painting in progress.

We continued Kinderbach, which is going well, and did lots and lots of coloring, pasting, and counting. Our K4 year is going well!

I noticed that the look of our backyard had changed dramatically since my last post. Here are a couple of pictures.

Our yard in autumn.

Our yard in autumn. My favorite time of the year!

Our yard right now. A frosty, beautiful morning!

Our yard right now. A frosty, beautiful morning!

Next up is a post about our studies of South America!

No comments Posted in Art, Build Your Library (BYL), Preschool Age 4, The Great Outdoors

Preschool Study of North America, Week 1

Posted on September 8, 2014 by

This week we started our study of North America using Build Your Library (BYL). We also continued our Kinderbach lessons, did some painting, and kept our ourselves pretty busy with summer activities.

To start our study of North America we took out Curly’s atlas and read about land features of North America. We had fun inspecting a few maps. Moving on to the people that live there, we started reading in Children Just Like Meand read about children from all over the Americas. We focused on Omar, a boy who lives in Mexico. From there on out, we focused on Latin America for the week. We then raided the library to find some relevant books. One was this book:

I enjoyed the illustrations and all the references to other Latin American animals.

Speaking of animals, we read in our Animal Atlas  about animals and ecosystems in North America and chose an animal to do extra reading on at the library. We chose the monarch butterfly after we went on a walk and discovered monarch caterpillars all over milkweed near our home. We got some cool pictures!

After reading so much about Latin America, we did an art project to make a Papel Picado, a colorful banner often hanging in Mexican markets.

The instructions to make the Papel Picado are in the book recommended by BYL, Around the World Art & Activities by Judy Press. This is a simple and easy project – I hope the projects continue to be so!

We took advantage of some nice summer weather by heading outside with the watercolors. I showed Curly how to splatter paint, which may just be her favorite art activity yet.

Painting outside! I love not having the mess in the house.

Painting outside! I love not having the mess in the house.

 

The finished splatter painting project.

The finished splatter painting project.

 

We really enjoyed ourselves! Next week we move on to reading about the United States.

No comments Posted in Art, Build Your Library (BYL), Preschool Age 4

Spontaneous Learning

Posted on December 20, 2013 by
Curly is definitely more into art than me. I remember quickly becoming bored with art as a preschooler. Not Curly! If she had a mantra, I think it might be something like "Art is Life!".

Curly is definitely more into art than me. I remember quickly becoming bored with art as a preschooler. Not Curly! If she had a mantra, I think it might be something like “Art is Life!”.

We haven’t been doing our themed preschool weeks lately, and I was trying to think of a reason why. Honestly, I think it’s because I got bored. We have still been doing art projects and reading books and doing science experiments, so it’s not that I’ve given up on preschool; I think I simply prefer to be more spontaneous. This being my first time teaching preschool, I am still finding my stride as to what works for me and our family. Perhaps in time I will figure out a way to keep my enthusiasm  for themes going strong. In the meantime, we will continue to do what we find interesting at the time!

 

This color mixing science experiment quickly turned into an art project of squirting the colored water onto paper towels.

This color mixing science experiment quickly turned into an art project of squirting the colored water onto paper towels.

 

I have really been focusing on nursery rhymes lately. There are lots of reasons to teach your kids nursery rhymes; one is so that they can be culturally literate. Another is that there is much evidence to show that children that are used to hearing the rhythm of language and know what rhyming words sound like do better once they have to learn to read. Cool stuff. So, there’s lots of rhyming and singing going on most of the day at my house. “Pease porridge hot” is STUCK in my head for the foreseeable future. So we can be in this together, here are the lyrics:

Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

I am very proud of Curly’s progress in math. She can pick out straight lines, curved lines, and angles. She knows all her shapes and colors.  She can finish simple patterns that I make with pattern blocks. She can recognize the numbers 1-10. A couple of these she couldn’t do just a few months ago, so the sudden jump in comprehension is very noticeable to me.

I could go on and on bragging about my kid, but I’m not sure most of you would find that very interesting. 😛 We have been up to a lot lately, besides preschool. We went on a family road trip to Utah and Nevada. Here is a picture of us in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

 

It was extremely foggy while we were there. At first we were really disappointed we couldn’t see the full panorama of the canyons and cliffs, but everything being shrouded in mist was stunning in it’s own right. Plus, the fog created super cool frost on all the plant life! You can’t tell in this picture but it was lightly snowing, too. It was quite pretty against the red rock.

I am going to try to be more regular about updating my blog now that we are back from the trip and there’s the long winter ahead of us. Curly keeps asking to go outside to play in the snow and I keep telling her the windchill is dangerously cold (at times -25 or colder). We take advantage of the warmer days and go out, but otherwise we are stuck at home a lot when it’s this cold. So, I should be able to keep with a blog, right? We will see how I do.

No comments Posted in Art, Blogging, Preschool Age 3, The Great Outdoors, Theme Activities

Autumn Leaf Butterfly

Posted on October 15, 2013 by

I originally saw this over at No Time For Flashcards  and thought it would be a fun and easy craft for us to do. Here are the instructions!

This craft is super simple and fun - it took us maybe 10 minutes.

This craft is super simple and fun – it took us maybe 10 minutes.

First, go out and find leaves that still have the stems attached. Pick leaves that would look like good butterfly wings! I had to search a little bit through all the narrow leaves to find some nice broad ones.

Draw the body of the butterfly on a piece of cardboard. While your child decorates it, cut the stems off the leaves and save them, as they will become the antennae for your butterfly.

Once your child is done, cut the body out of the cardboard and flip it over. Attach the ‘antennae’ to the back with glue or tape. Do the same with the ‘wings’.

Flip back over and add googly eyes, a mouth, and other decorations if you wish. Curly added glitter glue to the body to add some necessary sparkle.

  And walla! A leaf butterfly.

Do you have any fun and easy autumn crafts you would like to share?

No comments Posted in Art, The Great Outdoors, Theme Activities

Preschool ‘Trees’ Theme

Posted on September 11, 2013 by

Last week we started our Forest theme, which I have broken up into a few different sub-themes. Last week we learned about trees!

This post contains affiliate links.

Here is our book list. There are many, many books about trees – I tried to stick to ones about temperate forests.

You will notice the Lorax by Dr. Seuss is on the list – we also watched the video (the original cartoon, not the new animated one), which has turned into a favorite here.

I found a printable from www.kidsunder7.com for Curly to practice tracing the letter T. She only made it for a couple letters before tiring of it, but I didn’t push it. She has plenty of time to learn to write the letter T! Here is the worksheet.

I appreciated the fact that this printable had a spot for both uppercase and lowercase, even though Curly didn't use them. I will remember them for future use!

I appreciated the fact that this printable had a spot for both uppercase and lowercase, even though Curly didn’t use them. I will remember them for future use!

 

Lately we’ve been focusing on the spelling of Curly’s name. I write her name for her on her projects and always have her spell it as I’m writing it. She gets confused by the end (her name is 6 letters long) but she’s getting better. She never let’s me forget that her name goes at the top of her workbook sheets, so we are getting lots of practice.

For science we headed into our back yard to do some bark rubbings. We have mostly the same species of tree in our yard, the box elder, but we have many trees at different ages, so we were able to get a few different rubbings.

For math, I found a printable from www.lifewithtoddlers.com for Curly to practice tracing/writing the number 1. She enjoyed this one.

We did a couple of different projects for art. Since The Lorax was a such a favorite, we did a truffula tree craft with popsicle sticks, cotton balls, and paint.

The brown figures on the bottom are barbaloots.

The brown figures on the bottom are barbaloots. We used black marker on the popsicle sticks to make them look like they do in the movie.

 

We also did a forest project. I traced Curly’s forearm and hand several times on a large piece of paper, then she painted them. Once they were dry, she used a round foam brush to stamp on some leaves.

We hope you had a great week!

 

One comment Posted in Art, Preschool Age 3, Theme Activities
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