Love all year 'round

I know, Valentines is over. Boo. I had this class for children ages 3-5 planned long before Valentines Day but it was cancelled due to snow and ice. We made it up today and had so much fun. We used a variety of techniques to create this fun and personal Valentine.

We talked about a few things while in the gallery. We read a book and looked at a painting by Grace Hartigan. If you look real close, there are even a few hearts! Perfect! We wandered through the geometrics and found more Valentine colors and shapes. We talked about the colors red and pink and how you create pink by mixing red and white. We talked about stripes and became stripes by laying on the floor.

Looking around in the galleries is fun but we were ready to create!

First we traced our arm and hand (from elbow up) on paper and cut it out. We set it aside. Then we glued our red piece on top of the blue piece of paper.



I passed out paints with several tools: a fork, q-tip and heart sponge.

First we used the fork to stamp around the blue part of the paper.



Then we cut two hearts from cardstock. One bigger and one a bit smaller. We used the q-tip to make dots around the edge of the bigger heart.





Now we glue our hand and hearts using a glue stick to our red paper. We use our heart sponges to add hearts if we wish. Finally we and add details with chalk pastels.





You will need:
-cardstock in a variety of colors
-glue stick
-pencil
-scissors
-tempera paints (we used white, light pink and hot pink)
-fork, q-tip and cut sponges (optional)

Toddlers Paint Valentines

Happy Valentines Day!

I hope you all are enjoying this day as much as I am. Yesterday was a busy day at the OKCMOA. I started my morning with a great group of eager toddlers. We painted with "found objects."

When coming up with project ideas for my classes we are encouraged to focus on relating our project ideas to something from the permanent collection or our visiting exhibit. I have mentioned that Jason Peters is our awesome exhibit right now. I have had so much fun leading the kids through this and the parents love it too. It's fresh, exciting and I love to watch the faces of our visitors. They enter and mouths drop! Peters uses found objects for his sculptures. For this class we used found objects to paint with.

Sometimes we listen to music. I have a kid playlist that gets us moving, we start with The Imagination Movers, Paint the Day Away. I find all my music on iTunes. We also groove to The Laurie Berkner Band, The Wiggles, Raffi and more.



First my toddlers used a brayer to roll on pink paint. Most of the kids have never used a brayer. They loved to roll paint! We let this first step dry and visited the exhibit. When we returned to the classroom we used a heart sponge to stamp red hearts. (I cut heart shapes from kitchen sponges.) I have learned that sometimes it is easiest to give the kids one color at a time and with my small classes this works great.

Finally we used forks. I tell them this is to stamp, not to eat, and I go around to each child and dip the fork and show them we "stamp, stamp, stamp." They love repetition and making a word connection with motion. (like brush, brush, brush...dot, dot, dot, you get the idea) We used aqua paint for that and the fork creates neat little lines. We had so much fun!

You will need:
-drawing paper
-brayer
-3 paint colors
-sponge cut to shape
-fork

Here are some of our works!

Valentine Window Art

A beautiful fun project with toddlers this morning at the OKCMOA. First we gathered for circle time and read, What is Valentines Day? It is a short little lift the flap book that the children really enjoyed.
Then I spoke to the children about light. We visited the Jason Peters Exhibit and looked at how he uses light.





In the classroom I had contact paper taped to the table ready for the kids to apply cut tissue paper, printed cellophane and Valentine glitter. We finished by adding another piece of contact paper on top of that and glued a red construction paper frame to the top. To this we added peel and stick foam hearts. These will look beautiful in any window!

You will need
-contact paper
-construction paper for frame
-tape to keep contact paper flat
-scissors
-glue for frame
-cut tissue paper
-sequins and stickers

I found printed cellophane treat bags and cut those up too!

Stuck on You

It is one of my favorite times of the year. I love Valentines Day. I love all holidays really. It's especially fun with my boys. My Mom always made Holidays extra special and I try to do the same. Over the past few days we worked on making Valentines for the boys classes. I love working with felt-it's so easy not having to finish any raw edges. Although I'm not big on sewing, I guess it's in my blood. I know however that if my Mom made these she would blanket stitch around all the edges-which would beautiful if I didn't make 38 of them. :)



These are sweet and easy. We made little heart felt pins and that cards say, "stuck on you". For the girls pins we cut pink, red, purple and white felt. Then we added a two-tone leaf. For the boys we used Navy, light blue and red felt. We used a fabric glue to piece them together and hot glue to attach the 1.5 inch bar pin to the back. After they dried I pinned them to cardstock. They are ready to be handed out! Enjoy!