Singing and Dancing and Painting, Oh My!

This week in the Pirate Pete Preschool we learned all about different forms of art.  The preschoolers really enjoyed letting their creativity flow and their imaginations expand throughout this week with technology designs, plays, painting, drawing, sculpting and more!  

This technology app was a super fun way for the children to create their own beats and explore different musical patterns!  Just search "Kids Music Free" in the App Store to obtain this game.  

We also learned about acting and pretending to be different characters.  At first, everyone was a little apprehensive to act out the motions, but slowly we all became more comfortable and had fun acting silly and playing various characters!  

We worked on color identification and painting skills with this giant rainbow activity!  Teamwork was a very important part of this project!  

Getting a little messy this week, we fingerprinted with all of the colors of the rainbow leaving our traditional style of paiting with brushes was exciting and new. 

We practiced our preschool reading assignments by giving the children a list of colors written out in the color on the page; for example the word red was written in the color red which then the gave the children a clue to color a blob of red next to the word and connect the two things.

In the afternoon, we acted out the story of The Giving Tree.  Every preschooler had the opportunity to help tell the story by taking away the objects that were stuck to the tree!  

Afterward, we made our own trees by using Q-Tips and paint to create the leaves.  Using these tools as a way to paint allows the pincher grasp to be used which supports small motor development which then supports writing skills.  We will be using these things often and plan to continue in order to help the kids improve their fine motor control and writing skills.

On Wednesday this week, the morning children went on a very special field trip to visit Palatine High School's Orchestra!  We listened and danced to the Hokey Pokey, Old McDonald, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider.  

The the children got to walk around and play all of the instruments.  Feeling the vibrations of the Cellos and large Bass was one of the children's favorite parts!  

We learned how tape and paint can work together and apart all at once.  The children laid tape down with the help of their teachers and then used either their fingers or pain brushes to cover their entire paper in paint.  The teachers then pulled up the paint to show the area under the paint had remained white.

After we painted, we did a little pipe cleaner fine motor skill math as the children were given sheets of paper with numbers on them in various colors.  Each color matched a pipe cleaner that was cut in the length needed to create a numeral on the page.  They then twisted and turned the pipe cleaners (with help when needed) to create the numerals shown on the page.

Both the morning and afternoon children made their own instruments this week using two plastic spoons, a plastic egg and some beans and rice.  After placing beans and/or rice in the eggs, they closed them then held the egg with two spoons while their teachers taped the spoons together.  They had a great time playing at the circle all together too!

We learned about symmetry this week as well and created painting symmetry by putting dots of paint on 1/2 a paper then folded it to see the symmetry appear.  Some children made paintings on one side of the paper while others just experimented with colored piles of paint.

We discussed pointillism in the morning and then tried to recreate the famous work of art using Q-tips again as the tool of choice.  We also discussed Michelangelo's famous painting and how he completed it on his back then practiced drawing on our backs with paper taped to the underside of our tables.  (This was the highlight of the week!)

We drew to the beat of the music as we heard slow music, we made wavy lines and as the music beats changed, so did our hand movements with crayons at the tables.  Also at the tables we created foaming rainbows by taking water colored paint and mixing it with baking soda then adding vinegar to watch the reaction and mix colors all at the same time.

We read a book by Eric Carle about drawing a star then practiced drawing stars on the white board both according to the directions in the book as well as using our own methodology.

We talked about abstract art and made our own classroom masterpiece using splatter painting techniques which involved the children dunking objects in paint and then throwing them onto our butcher paper canvas on the floor.  What a messy good time we had and what a marvelous end result.  If you don't follow us on Instagram you might want to so you can see the end results of everyone's hard work!

The afternoon children mixed colors too; using the primary colors of yellow, red and blue to create green, purple and orange.

We created sticker art during math in the afternoon by making caterpillars out of small circular stickers based on numbers the children read.  If there was a number 5 next to the head of the caterpillar then the children placed 5 stickers behind the head, etc.

What's Coming Up?

This week will be looking forward to St. Patrick's Day and are going to work on making rainbows and searching for Leprechaun's and their posts of gold.  

Fall registration for 2016 went very smoothly and we actually have 3 more spots remaining due to so many of our preschoolers heading off to kindergarten next year.  So spread the word that we have a little more room!

Don't forget that Spring Break will be the week of March 20-the 28th so we will have three days of school this week and then won't see you again until March 30th.