This week we introduced Printmaking. To make prints we used bubble wrap, toilet paper rolls, corks, duplo legos, potatoes, a potato masher, and more.
The younger children loved the feeling of the paint on the bubble wrap. We focused on allowing more mess this week since mess = fun and fun = learning.
Several students got creative and decided to roll paint right on to their paper to create colored backgrounds while others just simply wanted to experiment with the roller on different surfaces. Like wheels on cars, rollers offer a whole new level of moving parts.
Thursday’s afternoon class turned into a very successful mixed age group with an age range from 3.5-9 years. The students new each other well and worked harmoniously in the studio together. I challenged my oldest student with carving a potato print. She started by practicing on paper, made a stencil, traced her shape on the potato and then with a little assistance and coaching carved her shapes.
One of my students got very into the stamping technique and loaded a tinker toy connector up with glitter to create a glitter stamp. I thought this was marvelous!
The wall and easel continue to provide opportunities for painting and printmaking. The toddlers really enjoy standing and doing art on a vertical surface.
Here are some example prints I made in collaboration with my students.
The Contact Paper Collage was a total success. I first had it taped to the french doors so you could see light through the window behind the contact paper (sorry no photo of this) but the children kept getting distracted with going outside so I moved it to a table for the remainder of the week.
We used some foam shape stickers from the dollar store as well as tissue paper pieces and scraps from paintings that have accumulated from easel sessions. This is a great sensory project for little ones.
As the space filled up they enjoyed trying to pull off shapes as much as stick them on. At the end of the last class for the week I covered up the collage with another piece of contact paper and began cutting it up into smaller sections so everyone could take home a piece of the collaboration.
