Friday, September 28, 2012

Invitation to play: Icecream stick, water colors, buttons

I found this treasure of a library book yesterday at the library. Mary Ann Kohl is a well known name in the preschool art scenery. I sort of stumbles upon her early in my parenting career, just after Sophia was born when i picked up her book on art adventures with toddlers and Twos.

But this book "Art with Anything"  takes art a step further because it is divided into 52 sections, organized by 52 easily found primary materials, with five crafts for each material. Facilitators can choose one of these materials and explore different ways of creating with them for a week.

Here is a page on Button sticks: I randomly picked buttons.

Button sticks: set out buttons, paint, glue, icecream sticks and get the children to glue buttons on icecream sticks. Mary Ann Kohl also gives suggestions for displaying the art.
I decided to make it into an invitation to play
When the girls woke up, there was very little time before leaving for school. As I didnt want to rush them through the process, we spent some time talking about it. I usually leave some of these open ended explorations for when the girls return from school, or set them up in the mornings and play with them in the evenings when i return.

Here is what the girls said

Anjali: We can like them up, draw a house, take it apart and make puzzles
Sophia: We can draw eyes nose and mouth and make icecream stick dolls.
Me: You girls have better ideas than me. Here is what i thought we could do
I outlines the idea from the book.
We left it at that for the girls to explore after school.

 But before I left for work, I added some tape for the puzzles and some scraps of fabric for doll dresses.

Here are the Rainsticks from yesterday, the girls had finished them after school before naptime.

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