Toddler Art: Monet

This was a smaller group for Toddler Art, but with new faces to the library. We read our short board book story, A Picnic with Monet by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober, that had pictures of Monet's artwork along with a sweet rhyme throughout.

Our first craft of the day was to make Monet's water lilies painting using a paper plate, blue paint, and pink and green cupcake liners. The toddlers spread and tapped their paint onto the plate by using a sponge and glued on their cupcake lily pad flowers.

The second craft for the program was making Monet's peonies painting. The group was given blue construction paper, green crayons, and red paint. They drew lines down their paper to make the flower stems and then used pom poms attached to clothespins dipped in red paint to make the flowers.

This was good practice socializing, listening, and using their fine motor skills with painting.

Afterwards, we had a little playtime with toys and music.

Preschool Picasso: Monet

This was the first program in Youth for the Fall 2019 newsletter without any registration and it went well. I pretty much had around the same numbers as before, but I did see three new families. I didn't need to use tickets and I made extra crafts just in case.

I read the group Philippe in Monet's Garden by Lisa Jobe Carmack. This was a cute, rhyming story about a frog named Philippe and how he came to be in Monet's garden in France where he was painted instead of eaten as French cuisine. The group seemed to have enjoyed the book and were engaged throughout.

For our first craft, we made an inspired Monet craft using paint, construction paper, and coffee liners. The kids used blue paint to paint the background for the pond, added their pre-cut lily pads, and bunched up their coffee filters to make the lily pad flowers. Pink paint was added to their coffee filters to make their flowers more colorful like Monet's.

For our second craft, we made another lily craft using construction paper and coffee filters. We used a different technique of ripping paper to make the impressionist look Monet has in his works. The kids ripped their light blue and dark blue paper in strips and glued them onto card stock to make their pond. They ripped green construction paper to make their lily pads and added the coffee filter and pink circle dot to make their flowers.

The kids liked using paint and being able to rip paper.