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.



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.


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.



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.







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









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