Tall Tales- Cave Baby

Today's book was Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson and all of our projects centered around cave art.

For our younger children, we did ink blot painting. I had liquid watercolors, eyedroppers and straws. I had the parents help the children drip the paint onto the paper and then the children used the straw to blow the paint around the page.

This was probably my favorite project today. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have taken a few of the paintings home to frame! I absolutely love the vibrant colors of the liquid watercolors! The children loved it, too, because many of them had never used this medium before.

The next age group did stencil paintings. They cut out shapes from manila paper. Some cut out their hand print (since we had been talking about cave paintings). Others got creative and cut out the letters for their names. They placed their stencils onto their papers and were then given paper plates with neon tempera on them. They used toothbrushes that I had bought at Dollar Tree (5 pack for $1) and splattered their papers with the neon colors.  When they had finished spattering their papers, they pulled off their stencils and they were left with the outline of their images.

The got creative about how they were getting the paint onto their paper.








This little girl decided that her hands were a work of art by themselves!







And our last activity of the day was creating cave paint with dirt. Cave Paint
I brought in potting soil and vegetable shortening. I gave the children a cup and a spoon. They added dirt and vegetable shortening to their cup and mixed it together. Once they had the consistency they liked, I added a little bit of paint (giving them a little variety in their color). I gave them a choice between black, white and brown. They mixed that up and then used paint brushes, spoons and some even used their fingers to paint their cave paintings onto their paper.

This was a hit!!!! Even the parents liked this one. None of the children had done an activity like this before, so they were fascinated by creating their paint out of dirt.

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Tall Tales and Art- Leaf Man

Today's book was Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.While reading the book, the children talked about the different shapes that the artist had made using leaves and other natural elements. I had been talking to the parents during the previous sessions, warning them that we were going to be needing a collection of natural elements for today's projects (leaves, flowers, grass, twigs, acorns, etc.). They brought these in to create a nice, large variety of materials for the students to use in all three projects.

Our youngest group then worked on leaf rubbings. I had the leaf pattern rubbing plates that I had bought from Sax (order number 076928). The children did a various rubbings on manila paper and then cut them out. They glued these onto another piece of paper, building animals, people, faces, etc.

The next group used their collected materials to build their own Leaf Man... or butterfly, or flower, or... anything they could imagine. They glued the piece onto paper and added a other scrap materials that we had left over from previous classes.

**Note- Elmers is NOT strong enough for this. Craft glue would have worked much better.







The last group built a leaf man face out of air dry clay. I had them place the clay onto a piece of wax paper. They rolled the clay out and built the face first. They used pieces of clay to create their own leaves, berries, grass, etc. Those that had brought their own natural elements used these to add fun details to their faces.

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Tall Tales and Art- Alphabet City

Today, I actually used 2 books with the students. I started out by showing them the wordless picture book Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson.We went through the book and talked about the different letters and where they were found in the city. The smallest children got excited when we got to their initial ("T... That's my letter!).

Then I read them the old classic, Dr. Seuss's ABC.They loved the silly rhymes and had fun yelling out words that started with each letter of the alphabet.

The 3-5 year olds created blinged out letters. I had large letters on hand that the students traced onto a piece of paper. Then we gave them: markers, crayons, foam shapes, colored pasta (food coloring and rubbing alcohol), GLITTER, scissors, glue, tissue paper, etc. This was very open-ended and many of them enjoyed it so much that they created 3 or 4 letters each.

The 6-8 year olds used die cut letters (I found mine at Dollar Tree in their teacher section) to trace onto a piece of paper. They overlapped their letters and then used markers, crayons, glitter, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, etc to decorate them. This was quite time consuming, and it was so quiet when I walked into the room where they were working. They were all so focused on coloring in their letters!

The oldest group of students created a 3D letter (3D Letters). We started out by tracing a letter onto a piece of posterboard 2 times. They cut the letters out and then glued 10 dixie cups (the little ones that you buy for your bathroom) onto on of the letters. After applying glue to the tops of the dixie cups, they placed the second letter on top.

From there, I had a variety of materials on hand for them to decorate their letters: wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, sequins, beads, glitter, markers, crayons. They got quite creative! This was quite time consuming and many ended up having to take them home to finish them.

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