I got this gorgeously illustrated and colourful book from my subscription to The Little Bookworm and both my children and I enjoyed it so much I knew I had to read it in class! It's a picture book version (with a twist of course) of how Ganesha came to write the epic poem of Hindu literature the Mahabharata. Reading through the pages of this book gave us the opportunity to talk about lots of things. like Hindu sweets, Hindu Gods and the bright and beautiful colours of India. Take a look as they use collage to recreate an image from the book. Each child hit the pieces to make Ganesha in a little jumble and they had to sort through and put the pieces together to make the complete picture, then they stuck and decorated!
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My Doodlebugs started off the term listening to Not a Box by Antoinette Portis! From mountain to rocket ship, a small rabbit shows that a box will go as far as the imagination allows and I thought... what a perfect way to set the tone for the term! To send the message that we must all dig into our imagination and let ourselves dream! They followed a directed line drawing of the simple rabbit illustration from the book and then we talked about what they wanted to turn their boxes into. They got to see how they could transform their 'box' into a number of different things just by adding more lines and shapes! Hooray for expanding imaginations and stretching the creativity of our kids! This week we've traveled all the way to the other side of the world to find the inspiration for our art. The story The Koala Who Could is about a little koala named Kevin who is afraid of change. This story teaches children that even though change may be scary at first, it can open their world to new and exciting things! The Doodlebugs drew along with me and followed step-by-step instructions to get their Koalas looking just right. They added details and of course got to paint and add texture. Which also happens to be our ART WORD of the day!
Nugget and Fang is a funny little story about friendships, stereotypes and starting school. The book is also beautifully illustrated so it on top of hearing a terrific story the Doodlebugs got to jump right in to making some wonderfully messy art! They made some painted papers today which we will use to make our Nugget and Fang characters for our collage. While they made these papers we explored texture and we also explored colour! They also created their lovely watercolour undersea backgounds. On our second day they pieced everything together and the result is absolutely fangtabulous! 😬 This beautiful little book is the story of a fish who learns that sharing his most prized possessions (his beautiful shiny scales) can bring an even deeper happiness than holding on to them ever can. It's a powerful message that true beauty comes from within and is not found on the outside. The children really enjoyed listening to this story and they loved looking at the pictures! With all it's great morals, the real winner here is that Rainbow Fish is so darn gorgeous and we get to use every colour of the rainbow and throw in some glitter guys! Yup... we love our glitter :) Tar Beach is a children's book written by Faith Ringold who is also an artist who creates quilts that tell stories. Tar Beach is the story of young Cassie who lives in the heart of New York and her favourite place to be is up on the rooftop of her apartment building at night where she can look at all the twinkling lights and see buildings from up high. The rooftop is covered with tar, which is why the story is called tar beach! It tells of a child's simple wish for a better life and how dreams and fantasy can help us all to escape and to create a world that makes us feel happy and hopeful. The Doodlebugs will create their very own Tar Beach collage. Today they created the sky and the George Washington Bridge and coloured in a picture of themselves arms and legs outstretched like they are flying over the city just like Cassie in the story. My Picassos are getting into the whole Dr. Seuss celebrations too! In honor of his birthday we talked about our favorite Seuss stories and favorite Seuss Characters! Who doesn't remember learning to read (or for some of us more recently, watching their toddler learn to read) Green Eggs and Ham?!? There are soooo many to choose from! Each character of course has its own look and style but they are all distinctively Seuss. So we looked at a few popular ones and talked about what they had in common and then the kiddos got to create their very own Dr. Seuss character which they drew and painted. They also had an additional exercise today... they each had to complete a little worksheet of sorts that gave a bit of description to their characters. Let's hear it for Dr. Seuss! Dr. Seuss strikes again with his fun rhymes and hilarious sentences that can always provoke a giggle! I introduced the Doodlebugs to Red Ted before we read the story and asked them to look out for him so they were all leaning in waiting for him to make his appearance in the story! Of course they were repeating the rhyming words and then we got down to our directed drawing of Red Ted and his crazy hairdo! They also got to cut him out and stick him onto a very Seuss-styled background that we created with glitter! Whaaaat? Scissors and glitter in one class... what was I thinking? LOL Oh my goodness! Or should I say "Oh Dios mio!" When I came across this little picture book I was over the moon! It's a Mexican twist of the classic The Little Red Hen... with all the repetition and morals of the old story, but with the added benefit of introducing some Spanish words! I don't have to tell you that we had a blast repeating; "Yo noooooo! I move tooooo slooow!" and "If I grow arms tonight, I'll help you manana igauna!" Then we painted our desert background and drew and cut out Tortuga the lazy tortoise who refused to help Iguana prepare for her fiesta! |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
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