My favorite days at school are when I get to teach the 3 and 4 year olds. They are always filled with so much joy + enthusiasm toward art. My focus on these young students is to design lessons that help them to gain experience and skills in art. Cutting, tearing, gluing. On top, underneath, next to. Simplicity is key for the little ones. They learn so much as the year goes on.
For this project, I had my four preK classes create two murals for the winter school concert. Each mural is about 3×5 feet. The first day, we read Snow by Cinthia Rylant. 3 year olds helped me rip white paper and glue it to the mural. 4 year olds practiced their cutting skills on white paper strips. The second class, 3 year olds studied beautiful images of real snowflake crystals and read The Snow Tree by Caroline Repchuk, a gorgeous book with embossed illustrations of a winter forest and the animals that live there. Then they stamped snowflakes onto the sky of the mural using tints of blue. 4 year olds read Little Tree by e.e. cummings, noticing how the tree in the story was a triangle shape. Each student then had a chance to create their own triangle trees for our mural. I love how much character each tree has–especially the topsy turvy ones!
the colors of my day 