The first collaboration of the day was a colored glue collage. I made seven colors of glue by adding liquid water color to white glue. In last week’s mask making project we practiced glue control but this week I let the kids squeeze to their heart’s content. Puddles do take extra time to dry and can be tricky near the edge of the paper so we monitored excessive squeezing and encouraged drizzling along with contained puddles.
Some of the art we have done in our collaborations involved adding work on top of one another. This project focused on side-by-side creation on one large paper.
Here are a few photos of the glue when it dries. It’s wonderfully vivid.
I had a huge assortment of collage items for this project: magazine strips, fabric, ribbon, card stock shapes, paper confetti, dictionary pieces, mas pieces, recycled art, and tin foil triangles.
Ball painting is a captivating and kinesthetic process. It’s really fun to get more than one ball zooming back and forth in the box and see the trails and tracks that each ball creates.
I had all the children stand so they would have maximum control of their body no obstructions in the way of box. I worked individually with the youngest students helping them tilt their box up and down and back and forth until they could feel the mechanics of the ball rolling. This photo is of a mom closely with her son.
I love how open containers of paint inevitably leads to finger painting.
In honor of our collaboration theme we did some ball painting in groups and pairs. These two friends were having a blast.
How many two year old children does it take to make a ball painting? Or should I ask how many balls does it take?
This session I’ve witnessed some amazing, spontaneous teamwork and collaborations.
The photo below is of a scratch painting that two four year old boys worked on vigorously. After they worked the paint with their finger nails and q-tips we took a print for the keepsake book.
When I proposed ball painting and showed these students the large tub and paper they insisted on paintbrushes so I followed their lead. A beautiful and harmonious paint mixing session ensued.
This was just too cute, especially since they pursued clean-up during the middle of class on their own!
