These Girls are DARLING!

This was our last PreK Art Lunch class, and I have to say, these girls really are darling. I'm sure I've mentioned it to each of their mothers individually, but they were such a joy to meet with every week. All three of them were sweet and had such nice manners, it made our time together so nice.

I wasn't even planning on posting anything for our last class, but I just had to start taking pictures when Kaylee took out her drink, and it had a fancy little umbrella on the straw....because, for our last day, we read three "Fancy Nancy" books. The umbrella was definitely fancy. Then Madi took out her sandwiches, cut in petite, squares, which reminded me of a fancy tea party. I asked Beatrice what she wanted to show that was fancy, and she chose her fancy raincoat. 

All three girls were all familiar with Fancy Nancy, but I don't think any of them read all three that we covered. One thing I really like about Fancy Nancy (besides the adorable illustrations), is that this young girl is so different from the rest of her family (especially her "plain" mom). I can relate to this because sometimes I wonder, about my son and daughter, where did they getthat?

The books are cute and sweet and celebrate being fancy along with unconditional love and doing the right thing. The girls made some magnificent (that's a fancy word for great) fancy picture frames.....

Monet Monet

I was so disappointed that I forgot to bring my camera to Tuesday's Under the Influence Class. We learned about Monet, and I was so happy with the pictures the children created. I would have loved to post them here. 

After looking at Monet paintings, we talked about Impressionism and the effect of light on images. Because the paintings were mostly done with sponges, I knew many of them would be done quickly, so when they finished, students were free to work on a large group "mural" on giant role paper.

Since I did remember my camera for Thursday's class, those are the paintings posted here.

SPLAT!

I love Splat the Cat books, so we read three of them this week in PreK Art Lunch: the original, the Christmas book and the Valentine book. All of the stories are sweet, and the illustrations are fabulous.

After reading and talkin g, we made puppet cats out of paper lunch bags. The results—adorable!

Comic Inspiration

This week in Under the Influence, we were inspired by Roy Lichtenstein. The students had two projects to chose from—one based on a starburst and one based on some of his "comic strip" people.

I was excited for this class because I've never taught Lichtenstein before, and I knew there were many options for the kids to take it in their own direction.

They did not disappoint.

Fun with Folding

I came up with the origami idea for PreK Art Lunch last week, when we made our crocodiles. The croc bodies were folded accordion-style, and I mentioned to the girls that that's how you would make a fan. They seemed really interested in making fans, but by the time our scheduled project was done, we were out of time.

So this week, we read "Yoko's Paper Cranes" by Rosemary Wells (the creator of Max and Ruby). In it, Yoko learned how to make origami paper cranes from her grandfather in Japan. Wben Yoko moved to California with her parents, she made some cranes on her own and mailed them to her grandparents.

Cranes were a bit too complex for our class, so we made fans and hats instead.

Klee Class

In Under the Influence this week, we studied Paul Klee. I thought it was a good transition from Kandinsky last week, as some of their styles are similar, and we learned that they were colleagues and both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture.

I demonstrated a Paul Klee-inspired portrait, but opened the project up to include shapes, architecture, or really whatever they wanted. They were inspired by everything from hearts to buildings to lifesavers....