As the warmer weather approaches it gives you the opportunity to take paints outside and go crazy...
This session was during the summer when there are often very few children attending preschool... just two this day... so I really took advantage of that... I filled two big plastic boxes with warm soapy water so the children could use them to rinse themselves off at any time - these became very popular to climb in and out of and add an extra layer of wetness to the whole art experience... We looked at the colours of summer.... and started off with green, blue, white and yellow (more colours would come later)... these were the colours the children observed first. A huge piece of paper was taped to the ground - the bottles of paint were put close by... and the children were given free reign to experience and create with the paint (a few encouragements here and there, to challenge and deepen the experience). At first one of the children was not keen on getting messy and asked for a brush... but I kept to the plan of it being sensory and said no to see what would happen - as there were other tools around the outdoor space, would the child think of those, or dare to use their body?... it did not take long for the child to watch the joyful sensory experience of the other child and give it a try himself... and enjoy it too. The paint was experienced with the whole body, and I got to see (just about) a whole body print being made... it was a headless print! Just before lunch I took the art in, as I suspected it might rain... and just as well I did as the heavens open with a big thunder-storm. The children slept through it... In the afternoon I mixed paint, washing liquid and a little water together in pots and got the children to blow bubbles.... the idea being the bubbles would create new patterns - and also be a work-out for their mouths and aid pronunciation. It was an experiment to do it directly on the paper.... usually I catch the bubbles on a paper from a above (and that I think is much more successful when it come to capturing the bubble patterns) - but today was a different experience... One of the pots got knocked over , so the pool could be blown on to make splashes and rivers... and at the end we threw the foam and last bits of paint onto the paper with our finger tips to make wonderful raindrop sounds... (I was covered with paint then so I didn't get any photos of that process... having fun with the children too) So now I will let the photos do the talking...
