Toddler Art: Apples

For this week's Toddler Art, we continued with the October theme of apples and read one, short apple story and then completed two painting crafts.

We read One Red Apple, but Harriet Ziefert. This book has beautiful illustrations and is simple enough for toddlers.

Once we got done reading and talking a little bit about apples and their colors, we got to making our two crafts.

For our first craft, I put out shower loofahs, card stock, and die-cut tree trunks with their branches. The trunk was glued onto their card stock and then they used the loofah to dip it into green paint to make the leaves on their tree. After this, they used their finger tips to dip into red paint to make the apples on their tree. They got practice with gluing and painting, with the loofah being a fun element.

For our second craft, we made pumpkin prints using apples cut in half, orange paint and stamping them onto our paper. We used our finger tips for green pumpkin stems and for painting grass for our pumpkin patch scene.

Preschool Picasso: Apples

This was a great Preschool Picasso turnout with some new families to the group!

I gave everyone a brief introduction on Preschool Picasso and announced our apple theme. 

We read Apples for Little Fox by Ekaterina Trukhan. This is the cutest story about a fox who loves the library and enjoys reading detective books. He can't wait to solve a real life mystery, but can't seem to see one…until all the apples disappeared on his favorite apple tree. Of course this story has a sweet ending. The group really enjoyed this book and I would definitely use this one again for any apple-related program.

Once we talked a little bit more about the book, I explained our two crafts for the day. Our first craft is usually always our paint craft, so for this one we were going to be using real apples from the library's apple tree to stamp apple shapes onto our cardstock using red, yellow, and green paint. They added on an apple basket by cutting brown construction paper into strips while giving them some cutting practice.

The group's other craft was making a tie-dye apple. I put out red, yellow, and green washable markers on the tables for the kids to doodle on their apple-shaped coffee liner. Once finished, they were to use the spray bottles to spray their apple and make the tie-dye design. Once a little dry, they could glue it onto a construction paper red apple. The kids always enjoy using the water bottle sprays.

Fall is here!