Preschool Art Lessons Part 2: Bruegel and Cool/Warm Colors

(This is an ongoing series of casual art exploration I am going through with a few preschoolers. 

You can see my first post here.)

This week we continued to use the Usborne Children's Book of Art and do a little learning about Bruegel.

Because, understandably, as soon as they arrive, my little students want to begin getting messy, I reserve some of our "history" until later in the lesson. We started out by watching this little video about warm and cool colors (which they giggled about!).

I pulled out the liquid watercolors and we began painting our color wheel. I used some printables from  an art lesson on "Hot Dogs and Cool Cats" from TPT that you can find here.

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After mixing our paints and enjoying the process of seeing new colors come alive, we talked about how cool it is that you can divide the color wheel in half and have one side with WARM colors and the other side with COOL colors. We also talked about what colors make us feel certain things.

Then we colored our dogs with whatever choice of warm color they wanted, and our cats with whatever cool color they chose. The lesson has some other activities that could extend this activity, but today we just kept it to these. We may re-visit some of them other activities later. 

We began working on this project from Deep Space Sparkle, using warm and cool colors. The girls all colored/painted two sheets of paper: one with nothing but warm colors, the other with nothing but cool colors. 

While they were drying, we watched a little video about Bruegel and I encouraged the girls to shout out when they noticed warm colors or cool colors in his work. 

Next week, we'll finish up their warm & cool piece and begin on our next topic (Rembrandt, Veneer, and Everyday Scenes)! 

I really liked this power point and simple instructions on atmospheric perspective with Bruegel, and I had planned on us doing it too, but we just ran out of time. We will probably use it when we study Caspar Friedrich and oceans/mountains. 

This post had lots of links and good info on Pieter Bruegel, too. 

First Week of MDO - check!

Having our first week of MDO begin while the rest of my kiddos are out of school definitely lends itself to chaos, but God's been gracious in allowing lots of smooth transitions in the last week (not to mention some kind friends who have taken turns entertaining my bigs while I've been at work for most of the days). The other days they have been willing and great helpers. :) It's a juggling act for a bit, but soon, we will all be in our regular routines... whew. 

I will be posting our daily schedule here for anyone who is interested, but the first few days we have been focusing on our rythms of the day... and what's expected in our classroom. I have to say, this class has been amazing at transitioning into a new year already. I'm so proud of them! 

A favorite activity for the older twos/younger threes during these still hot days of August- a bowl of water, paintbrushes, and chalk. They are entertained for a very long time with this! 

Our My Father's World  curriculum covers the days of Creation during the first month. These are our Day 2 sky/water pictures for our Creation book. We made the clouds by dipping pom poms clipped with a clothespin into white paint. It made a fun cloud shaped paintbrush. :) 

I recently discovered the glue sticks that dry with colors... it makes a fun other medium for the kids to color their pictures with and add texture to. 

I had to do a little rearranging, but this is my now my little art station. I'm hoping to cycle things out here as the kids learn what's allowed and how to use things (with supervision). ;) Hoping to have many happy moments here! 

Changing up my two and three year old MDO classroom

I've been teaching at the Mom's Day Out that my kids have all attended for several years now, but this is the first time I've actually been in the same classroom for more than one year in a row! We have expanded each year and moved things around, and it's nice to finally figure out my groove in a room and get to tweak it. 

As you all know, I have an affinity for birds, so my theme is all birds/owls related. 

I know. Why do all teacher things have to be corny and punny? I have no idea. But I secretly love it. 

I've gotten a lot of inspiration from the blogs Teaching Two and Three Year Olds and Teaching Preschool, and one of the ideas I'm incorporating this year is having a basket and notepad/pen by the door for parents to leave me notes at drop off. That way, their child can be dropped off and then they can slip out and leave me any important information that they needed to tell me. I'm hoping this will make the first few times of drop off a little smoother (when the little ones tend to have more anxiety). 

My classroom is blessed to have a full kitchen in it. The cabinets really need painting but it's a large job I'm not ready to tackle yet. I figured twinkle lights and a happy little window frame perks up that side of the room. I'm thinking I may add some tulle or something else with the twinkle lights to soften the edges. 

My goofy little assistant one night as I was working on putting supplies away...

The other side of the room is my centers side. I originally had all my toys pushed up against the walls, but after watching this video I found on Pinterest, I had a lightbulb moment. I don't know why I never made true centers in this room before, but while it may look crowded to a full sized adult, these little areas are perfectly sized for my older twos/younger threes! 

My home center is pretty much finished. I plan on introducing several things here throughout the year. One of our favorites is a muffin tin pan with real cupcake liners and real paper plates. It's so funny how something simple like that make these little guys feel so big in their pretending! 

Next to this area is my reading nook. I had been looking for some sturdy book shelves to organize my books into baskets on when I realized one day that I could just take the cabinet doors off of the cabinet shelves and voila- instant built in shelving! I am also experimenting with keeping my puzzles in this area- we'll see how that goes. 

Adjacent to this area, building a "wall" to the nook, is my "Construction Zone." Here are our wooden blocks, magnetic blocks, and tools. I will probably rotate different things on top of the shelf, but we're going to start with our castle for now. 

Across from the reading nook is our dress up area. I think it will probably flow together nicely. I'm flexible though and willing to change up centers as I see how the kids use them! 

The little green chair is going to be our birthday chair, but I still have to decorate it. 

My gallery wall is almost complete. I'm still contemplating what to put above our art table. This is another new thing that I'm trying out this year- a table that will rotate different art/sensory/motor skills manipulatives. 

The other side of the art table is our pretending area- lots of little people, dinosaurs, trains, houses, trucks, tracks... I imagine it will be fairly popular. ;) I want to add something to the back of that door (it's locked and won't be used). I'm thinking a felt board. Any other ideas from my creative friends? 

It took me at least 6 hours and one friend to get my shelves organized and sorted how I wanted them this year. It makes me a little giddy to look at everything labeled and sorted nicely. Yep. Total nerd. 

I will continue to update here as we continue into our new year. I'm so excited about my little group! We're going to have a fun time together. :) 

End of the year

Today marks the end of my kids' first and second grade years. All of a sudden I feel like they are growing up too fast. If I could freeze time, in some ways I think I'd do it right now. They are all in such good stages.

(Sabby registered for Kindergarten)

(Em's first Girl Scout camporee)

(Atticus' awards day)

(Ariana's end of year craft- oh my heart!) 

I can't freeze time, but I can scrapbook. My creativity time has taken an all time slow down lately, due to my family time taking a major increase. Not a bad reason- I just need to figure out how to balance in a little "me" time. It's harder and harder to find these days. I feel more of a sense of urgency to record all these sweet moments, though. I realized the other day that some of my feelings of routine and being stuck in a rut had to do with the loss of sitting down at night and doing some artful recording of our days. It helped my perspective of life a lot. And I miss it.

Tomorrow marks the last day of my MDO teaching year as well. Goodness me, my class this year has been incredibly precious. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better group of kiddos! They all started out as little two year olds and have grown into funny, independent, kind three year olds. I went to college to get my Elementary Education degree but never wanted to really teach in a "big school" because the whole school politics thing bogs me down tremendously... but teaching preschoolers is so up my alley. I feel like I'm really in the place I'm supposed to be. And on that note, I'm planning on sharing more of our weekly activities and crafts on here through the year. I've struggled the last few months on what to share on here, what to write about... and it is a big part of my life that I think should be added here. :)

Inexpensive Owl Valentine Bags for Preschoolers

I teach a three year olds class at the Mom's Day Out at our church, and I was trying to come up with an expensive, simple project the kids could do for their "mailboxes" for Valentines day. After looking on Pinterest, everything that I found was either too hard to try to do with 12 preschoolers, or would end up costing too much.

I stumbled across this project from Oriental Trading Company, but didn't have enough time to order the pieces... but it DID give me an idea.

Enter my collection of scrapbook punches and two-for-a-dollar red gift bags from the Dollar Tree.

I helped the kids add on glue and they stuck the pieces on. My scalloped circle punches and pennant banner punches were perfect for the eyes and ears, and I freehanded the wings. A sparkly heart foamie sticker made a great nose! 

I love seeing all the little wonky eyes. They make me smile. We are really excited to use our bags on Thursday!