Paint Your Way Through Pre-K

  It's summer time and school is out.  It's time to plan for the upcoming school year, and I am excited to see the theme come to life.  I am hoping it will be lots of fun, but I will hold off on writing about it until school starts in August.

  Until then, I thought I would flashback to my favorites from last year for the next few weeks.  We had a wonderful time bringing a new curriculum to life.  Our school system adopted the Pearson O.W.L (Opening the World of Learning) Preschool curriculum.  We were not familiar with the curriculum, so we just adapted as we went along.  We taught the units of the curriculum, but also interjected holidays and other subjects within it.  

  The classroom theme for the year was "Paint Your Way Through Pre-K".  To start out the year, I made a big banner for the hallway outside of the classroom.  I painted the words on it, turning each "o", "g" and "a" into a paint palette and the sticks of the letters into paintbrushes.  I also splatter painted all over the banner to add color. The sock monkeys were added for cuteness.

  Throughout the year, the children had several different experiences with painting.  They painted with many different painting tools, as well as many different paints.  We used tempera paint, fingerpaint, watercolors, paint dotters and tempera blocks. We tried out metallic, glitter, textured and pearlized paints.  Their first paintings were marble paintings.  They had fun rolling the marbles around on their paper through the paint.  They also painted with textured rollers and bright colors at the beginning of the school year.  

  I did several foot print and hand print paintings with the children as keepsakes for their portfolios.  The children painted regularly at the easel in the Art Center.

  

   Painting our way through Pre-K was just the start of our creative adventure last year.  I look forward to sharing more of what was created!

~Christa~