A Beautiful Mess

We had a painting kind of day on Friday and that is my favorite kind of day in kindergarten.  I love creating a beautiful mess.  I realize that many parents cringe at the idea of painting at home.  I know, it's messy, clean up is horrible, and it can create more stress than it's worth sometimes.  Well, I will happily create messes in my classroom and take on a bit of that chaos for you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you shouldn't paint at home.  It was truly one of my favorite activities with my kids when they were younger.  Here are a few of my favorite tips and tricks for painting at home with kids:

*Buy a vinyl table cloth at the dollar store and cover your table with it each time you paint.  It won't matter if the kids spill, makes clean up faster, and protects your table.  It will be the best dollar you have ever spent.

*Have a paint box and fill it with water color paints, finger paints, and washable tempra paints.  These are the three easiest to clean.

*Save small jars to store brushes in and use as a water jar.  Having a designated jar for washing brushes is a must.

*Always have baby wipes in your house.  Even if your kids are past the stage of needing wipes, they work perfectly for wiping paint off of hands and wiping a glob of paint off of the floor.

*Paint with your kids.  I always found that my kids focused longer on their piece of art if I was focusing on my piece of art at the same time.  (No, I don't really consider myself an artist, but I tell the kids that we are ALL artists and just need to keep practicing our different forms of art.)

In kindergarten, we create a beautiful mess each and every time we break the paints out.  The kids need this time to explore and let their creativity shine.  I would encourage you to try a few painting days out at home too.  I hope you will see what a beautiful mess you and your child can create together.

Happy painting!

Painting Pumpkins

One of my favorite art projects to do with Kindergarten students is a pumpkin painting project.

I love this project because all kids can be successful.  I don't claim to be an artist, but by seeing things in shapes and drawing those shapes one at a time I'm able to make my chicken-scratch-drawing actually look like a real artist might.  If I can do it, anyone can!  

We started this project by playing around with oil pastels.  It's a new medium for many kids and the texture is a bit different than regular crayons.  I let the kids draw anything they wanted and then encouraged them to draw skinny lines and fat lines, just to experience the pastels.  Then, we moved on to the pumpkin lesson.  We looked at real pumpkins and talked about the ribs, or lines, on the pumpkins.  We started our drawing with an oval (after a little practicing with drawing ovals in the air).  After that, we drew the ribs of the pumpkin along side of the oval.  After adding a stem and some leaves on the side, we were ready to paint.

The painting is the fun part because we break all of the rules!  Up to this point, we've used mostly water colors.  I tell the kids to BE SURE to wash their brushes before changing colors and remind them not to mix the paints because it will turn our paint trays into a muddy mess.  Well, in this project, the kids need to create their own shades of orange.  We use red, yellow, and orange paint and mix them all together.  Kids load up their brushes with two different colors and paint away!

I can't wait to have the kids cut these out, add their leaves, and hang them in our pumpkin patch!  I'll be sure to post a picture!  The kids did a GREAT job cleaning up after themselves too.  I was so proud of our little artists!