Drizzling glue is almost intoxicating for young children. Perhaps its utilizing all those hand and arm muscles that feels so good. Perhaps it’s the viscous nature of glue and the way it moves, or maybe the silky then sticky quality is what entertains the senses and peeks curiosity and interest. All I know is that kids love glue, especially when it’s six different colors!
Even the youngest children given a few minutes and a little modeling figure out how to handle squeezing the glue out. I set the table with trays (this is key because some kids just keep squeezing and you need a place to catch all the glue that comes off the paper) glue and paper ephemera. I color my glue with liquid watercolor from Discount School Supplies. They have tons of colors. I chose a palette of six colors: magenta, red, yellow, lime or green, turquoise, and violet.
When ready students start placing cut down paper pieces to their glue.
For this project we used a mix of recycled art (literally leftover unclaimed paintings from the students in the studio), tissue paper, card stock shapes, magazine and dictionary pages, gems, feathers, and glitter.
I encourage students to play with colors, try dots and drizzle. I praise their color testing and mixing and I don’t make a big deal about sticking on pieces of paper until they are ready. In fact some kids just want to play with the glue and that is fine!
I also ask the parents to hold back from saying “that’s enough” and request that they allow their child to keep on squeezing even if they make a huge puddle of glue on their paper. I transfer wet pieces to newsprint and let everything dry flat.
I discussed with this student that he finished piece would change through the drying process and to prepare for the final piece looking much different. Here is the piece en route to drying.
The finished collages all came out amazingly different and unique. Here are just a few. On Sunday, April 22, 2012 I brought my new baby girls home. From left to you right you have the family favorite, Coco (Aracuana), Lucy Blue (Blue Andalusian), Chochi (Buff Cochin), and Shadow (Cuckoo Marans). They were born on April 18 and were only four days old.
Thank you Love Apple Farms for such a wonderful workshop and my beautiful baby chicks.
After getting the main box set up with brooder light, shavings, water and food I devised a way for the kids to see the chickens closely and safely. Because the box is tall I didn’t want kids leaning against the box in order to see in, nor have to stand on the table or couch to look over the top. A plexiglass window was the perfect solution.
The chicks are getting a lot of handling but don’t seem to mind it.
After a few weeks of on and off rain we have finally had a beautiful spring week! We have celebrating by planting starts in the newly finished veggie beds and planting seeds in recycled six packs.
I decided to try the square foot gardening method in my 4×4 ft beds. I like the idea of maximizing plants in a small tidy space and not having to reach that far to plant, tend or harvest. It was fun to plan 16 onions in one square foot!
