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This is DIY art material week at our house! Today I tried making chalk using plaster of paris and paint. I used an ice cube tray and they popped right out when the plaster hardened! Baila tried a piece on the front porch tonight and it was great! She wrote a huge “I love you!”
I’ve been working on creating lessons for my kids and for my preschool students based on famous artists. We have studied concentric and aligned circles in class recently and I came across this painting by Kandinsky:
Baila and I made a small painting with acrylics and it was fun to work on together! I decided to try a variation on a larger canvas that could go in our breakfast room. The reception was luke warm in the family. Oh well. (you can see the little painting Baila and I worked on in the lower left)
Ever since I found the recipe for DIY watercolor paint, I have been making them alot! We’ve gone through the first three trays and the results are really nice! Here are the next three trays ready for painting tomorrow:
Today we tried an interesting form of sculpture using plaster of paris and latex balloons. This project was fairly easy, not too messy, and really great for sensory seekers!
First we mixed the plaster in a cup and the transferred it to a disposable squeeze bottle:
Next, we placed the balloon over the opening to the bottle and poured the plaster into the balloon:
After squeezing out the last bits of air and making a knot, we played with the balloons and squeezed them in all different ways:
After 10 minutes or so, the plaster begins to harden and get warm. This is when we chose the final forms for our sculptures:
We let them dry for the remainder of the morning and after lunch we peeled off the balloons to reveal the plaster sculptures:
Here is one of the sculptures after it was painted and sealed with a gloss acrylic sealer:
This is a great project, even for little hands, and inexpensive too. I think we will be making quite a few more of these! Today the kids and I tried a new art technique that I spotted on you tube called pour painting or tall painting. I prepared a small plastic tray with a wooden prism screwed into it. We placed the tray on top of some paper and gathered all of our old acrylic paints to pour onto it. The kids and I took turns pouring the paint onto the top of the prism and we loved watching it slowly ooze down the sides! The patterns the paint created are so amazing and we have been studying them all evening! It is going to take this thing forever to dry, but when it does, I will slice the plate out of the paint and we will have an interesting painted sculpture to display!
On Friday, Baila and I had the day off, but Mechel had a half-day of school. We drove him in and I spent some much needed time cleaning and preparing my classroom. Baila asked to come along and was quite content to do some “works”. At one point in the morning she asked for the bow-tying lesson which I happily gave her! She had attempted it toward the end of last year, but her classroom this year does not have it. She went on to do an amazing job. It was magical to watch her tiny little hands go about completing the bows. She was in the wonderful state of concentration that we carefully watch for in our Montessori classrooms. When a child is ready for a particular lesson, and repeats the work that they have freely chosen, watching them work is magical. I was so happy to have captured her work on video. The following clip is about two minutes and is sideways – sorry!. Baila is 5 years old and this is the first time she has succeeded in tying bows:
Last Sunday we tilled the garden and amended the soil with mulch and the “treats” from the chicken coop! Today, we finally had a chance between raindrops to get some of the seedlings in the ground. We planted eggplant, ocra, peppers, red cabbages, and beans today! Here I am with a student planting some peppers:
HH and CW are preparing a bed for planting:
Here I am showing the girls how to mark out the bed for planting:
Hard at work!
I went to an open house at one of my children’s schools recently and was excited to hear about the teacher’s “hand’s on” materials. Sadly, many educators get caught up in what I call the “semantics of pop education”. No, counting out a pile of twizzlers at your desk is not really meaningful math when your are 7. But hey, at least he got a nice sugar infusion before he had to finish the next batch of worksheets. Today, I had a chance to introduce some actual, meaningful, hands on math to a couple of four year olds. A couple of the girls have mastered their teen numbers and are up to place value work. We have been working on identifying 1 unit bead, 1 ten bar, 1 100 square, and 1 1000 cube. We also matched the number cards to those beads. Today, it was time to do a big layout. We count out each set of beads like this: 1 unit, 2 units, 3 units, etc. Then 1 ten, 2 tens, 3 tens and so on. After having successfully completed laying out the number cards, it’s time to layout the corresponding bead material. Number card layout in progress:
Layout of the beads in progress:
1’s, 10’s, and 100’s completed!
I know I won’t be able to post every day, but e few amazing things happened today that I want to share! One child chose the knobbed cylinders today. She is just turning four years old and had worked with this material last year. She created her own variation today! First, she took out four rugs and aligned them across the room horizontally. Next, she placed one cylinder on each rug. She then went to each rug to complete the cylinder work. She also selected the blindfold because I guess she was going to attempt the entire feat with looking! After, she replaced everything on the shelves neatly and rolled her rugs. Sometime later she called me over to show me that she had rolled all four rugs together! She was very proud. 🙂
Another exciting thing that happened today highlights the importance of a mixed-age environment. One child had selected the broad stair and once completed, checked her work by rolling a marble down the “steps”. We have a heavy marble for this work and it actually sounds
musical as it goes down the stairs. It has been a big point of interest in our classroom! The child was having a bit of trouble guiding the marble properly and an older girl saw her struggling and came over to help out. They worked very nicely together, and both girls felt successful! After a few (nearly) sleepless nights of preparations, the big day arrived! One of the the only drawbacks of having the school in our home is that there is always “one more thing” I seem to need to do. The biggest change for this year is that I moved Mechel out of his room and created additional classroom space. We now use the room for Practical Life, Art, and lunch. New Practical Life Area:
The New Art Area:
The room also serves as our new lunch area! A few girls are able to prepare the tables while the other girls continue working in the other room. Today we changed our lunch routine from last year by creating two lunch tables for six girls each. We are also using real tablecloths, placemats and napkins. After Sukkos, we will also switch to real plates, cups, and silverware. After a short demonstration, two of the girls happily set the tables for lunch:
A peek around the class:
The library Seasonal work Language area
Future geography area Sensorial Area Special banners
Hard at work on their first day:
It was a wonderful first day. The three new girls are a wonderful addition to our class and the combined energy was extremely positive! I was especially pleased with the way the returning girls included their new friends so easily! |
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