Sunday, January 30, 2011

Yikes! Stripes!

Children ages 3-5 helped me explore the OKCMOA to find stripes. First we talked about lines. Lines are all around us. Then we took a look at a few books to find stripes. Simply put for them, stripes are lines that are next to each other.

The class is only an hour so we had to get busy. Each child had a paper plate palette with several colors of tempera paints to choose from. I supplied q-tips, one for each color. Q-tips work great for some projects because they are quick and disposable. If we had to wash a brush between all the colors it would have taken forever.

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We paint horizontal stripes with our paper set horizontal. I encourage the children not to mix colors at this point, but to put the colors in any order using whatever colors they want.

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This child only used two colors. He was proud that he was making a pattern.

We left our painting to dry while we left the classroom to explore the galleries. We viewed several works taking a closer look at pieces by Frank Stella and Gene Davis.

We played a game of I Spy and went back to the classroom to create a new piece using our original painting.

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Here we cut our paintings into more, you got it, stripes! We use glue sticks to put our strips of paper on black tag board leaving space between each strip in order to create yet another stripe. I tell them they can lay the cut strips of paper down in whatever order they wish. Some left them in the same order as they were cut and others turned pieces around and mixed it up.

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Great use of fine motor skills today for these kids!

So much fun!

You will need:
-Student grade watercolor paper
-Tempera paints
-Palette and q-tips or brushes
-Black tag board several inches wider than size of watercolor paper
-Glue sticks
-Scissors

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p.s. I have some pretty exciting news to share with you soon!

10 comments:

Kat said...

Great idea. I'm going to try it. We painted stripes on the roofs of circus tents recently. Some of the kids really got into it and even tried patterning. Others need a little more work . . . I like how you extended this with cutting stripes as well.

andrea gardiner freeman said...

Love this.. simple, bold and exciting. You always have such engaging projects and it does not hurt that you have a gallery as a reference too ;o)!

Erin Laughpaintcreate said...

Kat, Thank you! I love the idea of circus tents! I was making a list in my head before class of things with stripes. That would have been a good one. Thanks for the comment!

Andrea, The gallery is a perk for sure! :)Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the feedback!

-Erin

Deborah said...

I love it!!

Philippa said...

love love love it! :)

Scott said...

What a fun idea! The end results were really cool, too.

Thanks for an idea that I have not seen. I'm thinking of several new possibilities.

Jamie Jo said...

Erin, thanks for the great Art ideas! I have you on my google reader!

I would have had more pictures, but my 6 year old didn't want to cut her masterpieces!!

Erin Laughpaintcreate said...

Deborah, Thanks for commenting!

Phillipa, Thank you, thank you, thank you! :) Appreciate the feedback!

Scott, Thanks so much!

Jamie Jo, I was a bit worried about that actually heading into the project! They turned out great on your part though and thanks again for the link back! :)

Melissa @ The Chocolate Muffin Tree said...

These are really Beautiful! I love this idea! Thanks for sharing!

Ruth Lee said...

Thank you for sharing! These are beautiful and remind me of birch trees. I'm definitely going to try it with my preschool students!