Paper Mache Planets

Let's preface this by saying this is my first attempt at Paper Mache since my own school days.  Since I'd forgotten exactly what was involved, I found lots of great directions from different preschool bloggers.  All of them saying how much fun this project is.  It's not that fun.

The hardest part of paper mache is getting the kids to touch the mache mix.  Even after they helped us mix the 1 Part Flour to 1 Part Water.  Sure, now you guys turn into a bunch of compulsive hand washers!

Then there's the patience piece.  Each balloon needs at least 2 layers (up to 4).  This turned into a teacher project where the kids handed us pieces ("no! I don't wanna get my hands dirty!") and we got touched the mix and covered the balloons.  And it was a lot of work!

 Painting them was the fun part! 

 I guess these could be Jupiter...

Mars and Earth were the two top choices. 

A beautiful finished project! I'm not sure how to hang paper mache from strings yet, so I left the balloons blown up and tied the string to that!  It's a great effect - just warn parents before they walk in and bop their heads!

Saturn's Ring

What shape are Saturn's rings? Circles! We created art using big circles, little circles, all sizes and colors!

 "Saturn"

Saturn's rings are made of rocks and ice (sometimes pieces as big as a car!)  We didn't have ice, so we used colored sugar to represent it. 

I'm not sure why, but salt and sugar has a tendency to make our paint melt and look quite messy.  But it's more about the process than the product!

Colors of Neptune

Neptune is one of my personal favorites! Look at those colors!


To begin - we brainstormed what will happen when we mix oil with blue paint (liquid watercolor).  Then we added glitter for effect!   

We decided to use vegetable oil to create the affect of the translucent Gas Giant!

The paper plates turned out beautiful!  

Painting with oil is a mistake that I have made more than a few times.  It's actually a real bad idea.  Not only will it never dry (it is greasy forever so don't send it home!), it drips on other art (leaving greasy stains on everything on the drying rack), and will start to smell quickly.

The Colors of Mars

Mars - the Red Planet!

Our open-ended art project today was painting with the colors of Mars: Brownish Red

Not only are these adorable - they smell delicious!

Planet Mobiles

Being a teacher means having to make the tough choices.  For me, this meant deciding to teach Pluto as a non-planet (aka Dwarf Planet).  I spent the first twenty years of my life believing in 9 planets in our Solar System, only to have to teach 8.  Anyways...

These are open-ended Planet projects, so the children chose their own shapes and colors to create their own planets.  This child really liked rocky planets:

 This child got a little more accurate:

Moon Art

After learning about the surface of the moon, we devised our own mix to recreate the rocky, crater pocketed moon!

We used white paint splashed into a dash of flour, mixed until lumpy but paintable.

 After getting the surface painted, we used different size circles to create our own craters.

 Viola! Adorable moon art!

It's Okay to Do Art Upside Down

This week we've been talking about emotions/feelings - so we started off by reading It's Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr.  

Although the kids decided that it's not okay to eat macaroni and cheese in the bathtub, they did agree that it's okay to draw upside down!

Some kids took this artistic challenge very seriously...

Everyone enjoyed wiggling around on their backs...

And I realized that it's okay to clean the underside of the tables sometimes....especially when they need it.

More Body Art

Okay, I just thought these were hilarious. 

Inside My Body Self-Portrait: (include hearts, lungs, stomach)

One of my personal favorites.... 

Eeee! Look at how good we're getting at self-portraits!

Our Bodies

We traced our bodies, traced our hands, painted with various parts of our bodies, and are now getting into the squishy stuff - our insides!

After using our X-Ray book and body chart, we used the pieces to create art:

They were all excited thinking we were going to do something with Gingerbread Men.  That's just my awesome cutting skills though.

After finding the heart, lungs, and stomach on our body and using our senses to touch/feel/listen to our different parts, we were able to glue them into semi-accurate positions on our little people.

Penguin Week Activities

Penguin Week (and then some) has finally come to an end! Culminating in our first ever "Save the Emperor Penguin Day" today!  The kids worked hard...and here's some proof:


Learning the Letter "P":
We use Handwriting Without Tears and work with "big lines", "little lines", "big curves", and "small curves" to write letters.  We cut out big lines and small curves, and then glued together to practice our letter "P."

"P" is for penguin! (hmmmm....that one must be looking up :))

We LOVE to paint our feet! It's new to me, so I am still working out all the kinks on how to make it look cute. The paint always becomes blurred and it's never as cute as it is online, but it's still ridiculously cute! And it tickles their feet and makes them giggle. If you haven't painted feet yet - do it! I line up 3-5 chairs and they eagerly take their shoes off and wait (and usually more sit around on the floor and wait for their turn). After they dried, I cut them out, colored on an orange beak, and placed them on a cut-out iceberg for room decorations. Super cute!

Are You As Tall as An Emperor Penguin?! We measured our heights (see iceberg on left) and saw just how tall an Emperor Penguin can be (4 ft! 6 inches for a baby!). They got a great kick out of seeing how they measured up (and comparing hand sizes to the Baby Penguin) and comparing their heights with each other once they were all measured on the iceberg.

There were LOTS more activities (seriously, I had to fill a whole week!) but these are some of my favorites (and one's I snapped photos of). More to come!