After being cut out, the children worked to assemble the collage, laying out each petal and pasting the pieces onto the canvas as if they were completing a puzzle.
After preparing the paper using Eric Carle's painting techniques and with the design templates completed for our flower, bee, and butterfly, we were ready to begin the process of transferring these drawings to our painted paper, and then onto the canvas. The PK drawings were copied onto a transparency to be used with an overhead projector. Through this process the images were enlarged and projected onto a large piece of tracing paper. The children worked to trace these images. Natural problem solving occurred as they quickly moved and adjusted their bodies to adjust for the shadow. This process provided both fine and gross motor challenges as students worked to combine whole arm movements with controlled fine motor tracing. During a group discussion, the children agreed that the canvas should be painted blue, as to represent the sky. Students mixed and blended various shades of blue acrylic paint and coated the canvas with large brush strokes. A few mixed in swirls of white and also used the opposite end of the paint brush to make swirls and scratches in the sky. With teacher support, the large traced flower and insects were traced onto the painted sheets of paper. After being cut out, the children worked to assemble the collage, laying out each petal and pasting the pieces onto the canvas as if they were completing a puzzle. This project took over three weeks from beginning to end. As it evolved, and the impact of each step became clearer to the children, their excitement and pride in their work increased. To imagine a flower was not only a journey of collaboration but also an exercise in creating a communal piece of art that required planning, revising, consulting, and cooperating.
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We have fallen in love with Eric Carle and his wonderful stories! Can you blame us? The beautiful illustrations and endearing animal characters make storytime magical. Following our herb and vegetable planting experiences described in our last post, we were eager to try our “green thumbs” at planting seeds. We planted wheat berry seeds in recycled pop bottles to create a vertical hanging garden. Take a peek at how quickly wheatgrass sprouted! We’re busy trimming and measuring the grass. We then asked the children what they noticed about Eric Carle’s illustrations. Some of the comments included: “He mixes his colors up," "He makes scratches in the pictures," and “The sunshines have a face.” We decided to explore the author and illustrator’s process for making pictures in order to create our own Eric Carle inspired spring canvas of a sunflower. This would be a multi-step process. The first step was to learn how to make the paper that the flower would be made of. During Morning Meeting we watched a video on how to make painted colored paper, like Eric Carle, which included mixing bright colors and adding those unique “scratches.” You can watch the how to video here. We read the beloved Eric Carle story, The Tiny Seed, to explore the life cycle of a seed. The children observed similarities in the illustrations to those of other Eric Carle stories we had read, such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and A House for Hermit Crab. We gave each child an Eric Carle book and asked them to explore the illustrations and share what they noticed about them. You can see the energy and excitement in the video below. While Eric Carle uses tissue paper, our motor skills are more adept at working with a thicker style of paper, so we chose to paint on white drawing paper. The children observed illustrations of the sunflower from The Tiny Seed, and stated the many colors that they thought made up each part. For example, they noticed the red petals were made using red, yellow, and orange paint. The children next selected these colors from oil pastel paints, a new medium for us. Using a palette, the children worked to make the desired colors. Before the paint had dried, they quickly used a fork, craft stick, or other end of the paint brush to make the “scratches” and mixed lines that Eric Carle so regularly does. We soon had a large stack of colorfully blended paper. Our next step was to draw the sunflower and some insects to serve as the template for our painted paper. Our classroom is full of budding illustrators and we asked a few students who often spend Indoor Exploration time creating art, to draft a sunflower, butterfly, and bee. Each of these three children worked diligently to create their image. To encourage the drafting and revision process, we asked these children if there were aspects of their drawing they thought were the best and aspects that they’d like to improve upon. Using Eric Carle’s illustrations as references, the students remarked on areas they could improve, such as making a wing pointier, or the petals wider. The artists created multiple drafts until they were satisfied with their very best work. Even at a very young age, it is important to emphasize the drafting and revision process as this builds focus, planning, and intentionality. To see more of what this powerful feedback and revision process can look like with young children, view the famous educational clip, Austin’s Butterfly. Next up: the final drafts are ready to be enlarged and transferred to the painted Eric Carle inspired paper. We can’t wait to see the finished product...stay tuned!
As we eased back into school, we were inspired to do some collaborative, cold weather art. We presented a large blank canvas to the children and provoked them to make a “wintery painting” with colors purple, dark blue, white, and light blue. In pairs of two, each child was encouraged to use the paints to cover the canvas. As the children painted, they spoke of the colors they used and how these colors influenced what they painted. As a new group of children came to the table to paint, we explained the narratives their peers before them had shared as they painted. In time, a winter narrative began to evolve. Not too surprisingly, one of our preschoolers’ favorite winter narrative, Frozen, became an underlying theme of the painting. The following day during Morning Meeting, we read the children their dictation from the prior day’s painting, while showing them the canvas. They commented on the colors that were made with the purples, blues and whites mixed together. We encouraged them to make shapes, lines, or patterns for this phase, demonstrating how to use the side of the brush with control. On this day, children were given white and light blue paint for the second layer. On the final day, we decided to add some texture to our painting. Children used liquid water colors and shiny stones to transform a glue mixture into a layer that brought new depth to the painting. Each day as the children worked, they were curious about which parts their peers had painted. They also asked each other questions as they painted, and also commented on what they thought their partner’s painting reminded them of. The intent of this project was to provide a shared experience, as we reunited together after two weeks apart. As we look at the final product, we see a piece of art that is unique to this classroom and to the ten pairs of hands that created it. While some children preferred to work longer on the painting than others, the final product was made with input from each child in the classroom. This has been, and continues to be, the goal of our PK year; to foster a collaborative community in which each individual brings a unique and essential perspective to who we are as a class. See the evolution of this collaborative painting in the time-lapse video below. |
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June 2015
AuthorsMeg Fitzgerald is the lead teacher and Madeline Wadington is the Apprentice teacher in the PK classroom at Bennett Day School in Chicago, IL. Categories
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