Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.....

How does your garden grow? Well, let me show you!


As of day 7, here is the progress of our raised bed garden.

Peas

Baby Spinach

Tomato plants with bamboo supports

Eggplant blossom

Broccoli

So, Easter has come and gone. The candy has been eaten and now I have all these plastic eggs hanging around. 

It seems that each year they multiple while they are in storage, so I wanted to use them in sensory art in an creative way. I sorted through all the eggs and decided to use the ones that had a safety holes in them. These are originally meant to ensure that if a half were to get lodged in a child's mouth, they could still breathe (a possibility with my group of kids). Today these holes will also serve as pre-made lacing holes.

I had all the eggs in an Easter basket, which was passed around the table. Each student was asked to choose 6 eggs. They were then asked to separate the halves and sort the big and little halves. I asked them to trade halves so that they all had the same sized. I passed out pairs of pipe cleaners that were twisted a few times approximately 2 inches from one end. They then threaded the pipe cleaners through the all the egg halves. I then secured the pipe cleaners by twisting the last inch together. I handed out an opposing egg half to connect with the last piece. Finally, we spaced out the eggs to give the worm some "wiggle room".

Part of my sensory art class is not only trying to find different ways to use common art materials, but how to use everyday items in an artful way. Here's an example:

I had prepared some cardboard shapes (an egg and a bunny) which we traced them onto cardstock with marker. The students identified six different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. I prepared three palettes with pairs of primary colors and passed them out. Instead of paintbrushes, we used plastic Easter eggs! Using the rounded top and bottom as our vessel to transfer the paint from palette to paper, the  paint started to blend into secondary colors. Once the students were done painting I traded the used eggs and palettes for clean eggs and palettes with glue. I had the students open the eggs and differentiate the big half and little half. Another layer of texture was added to their artwork by dipping the open circular edge of the plastic egg into the glue and stamping it onto their paper. We then sprinkled, shook, and tapped glitter onto the page and the excess into the trash. 

After we create, we always share our art with our friends and compliment each other by using our new vocabulary. This class we got to highlight tracing, paintstrokes, primary and secondary colors, stamping and definition.

It's Spring!

As of 12:57 pm yesterday we are officially in Spring! Even though we had several inches ow snow fall on Monday, it is nice to know that warmer weather is soon around the corner.

 To celebrate I planned a 'Seasons' art project for my group today. Here are the masterpieces!

We started with a printout of four trees that I made. I do minimal preparation with materials, so the kids have as many opportunities to practice their fine motor skills, as well as follow instructions. The spring trees were decorated with tissues paper squares that were crumpled into small balls, summer trees with green construction paper that was pinched and torn into small pieces, fall trees had strips of scrapbooking paper prepared with cut marks on the back for them, winter trees with cotton balls and optional glitter. We used both glue sticks and white glue to adhere the materials to the tree.