Kids love how magical it is to use watercolors over oil pastels or in our case, White Crayola Construction Paper Crayons. This class was full of eager 3 and 4 year olds ready to tackle this project. We try to relate our Museum classes to pieces from the collection or special exhibits. Relating snowflakes was difficult since there are no paintings of snowflakes. However, we broke the snowflakes into lines and that was easy. Lines are everywhere.
I brought the class into circle time around me to talk about lines. I put a big piece of butcher paper on the ground with crayons. I invited the kids to gather around and draw lines. I showed them some (straight, curved, wavy, dashed etc.) Then we practiced pressing our crayons hard to make a dark line. This is needed for our resists to work. We read a quick book, Millions of Snowflakes by Mary McKenna Siddals and lined up to discuss our Museum rules and visit the gallery.
On the 3rd floor we found lines everywhere. We discussed several paintings and then I had the child lead the parent for the final few paintings to tell them about the lines they saw. In the classroom we used our knowledge to cover our paper with snowflakes, lines and other snowy things. This is difficult for them to see using white crayon on white paper, but I assured them the magic would be next. We used our watercolors to cover our paper and our magic lines appeared! So much fun!
You will need:
-White crayon or oil pastels (press firmly!)
-50 lb watercolor paper
-watercolors
-brushes and water
Here are some other examples from my super creative 3 and 4 year olds!
