Preschool Picasso: Curious George

I had an extra big group for Preschool Picasso: Curious George since we had a mom's group attend, as well as my regulars. It was so nice to see everybody and they got to see me as "The Man in the Yellow Hat."

We started off with the story, Curious George: Librarian for a Day by Julie Tibbott. This was a shorter Curious George story to read that was just the right length, was about the library, and taught about how we arrange the books in the library.

After talking a little bit about the book and how we put books back in the library, it was time to introduce our Curious George crafts.

Our first craft was a painting craft using their handprints to make Curious George's body, green paint for the vines he was hanging off of, and to glue on Curious George's face to their handprint. They used brown and green paint, watercolor paint brushes for their leaves and vines, and had practice gluing.

Our next craft was to make a Man in the Yellow Hat tie. They had a fun time using stickers and markers to decorate their tie and wear it around the library.

The kids really do love Curious George!

Preschool Picasso: Andy Warhol

This was a great Preschool Picasso turnout for the unique theme of Andy Warhol. I'm finding that the parents are excited for the specific artist themes I've been incorporating into this program. As long as I can find age-appropriate crafts and books for both preschoolers and toddlers, the artist-related theme is something I would like to stick to in the future.

We started off Preschool Picasso with our story, Uncle Andy's Cats by James Warhola that explained a little bit about Andy Warhol's life and included a fun story on his cats that inspired his artwork.

Once we finished our story, I explained the two crafts we would have for the day. Our first craft involved paint and green bell peppers. A unique artist requires a unique craft. The kids used cut green pepper and black paint to stamp on a flower-like outline that was inspired by Warhol's flower artwork. Once the outlines were stamped on their colorful neon card stock, they could paint inside with different color paint.

Their next craft was making a Warhol inspired block pop art using different colorful squares and colorful cat die-cuts, inspired by the story. The kids glued on their squares to their paper and added their cats on top to give it that pop art look.

Other Books:

ABC Pop! Rachel Isadora

Uncle Andy's James Warhola

Toddler Art: Numbers

This month's Toddler Art theme was numbers. We read Race CarCount by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and then we did some painting and gluing.

For our first craft, we did some number dot painting with caterpillars and snowmen using black and green paint. The parents helped their child count while they were having fun with paint and using their fine motor skills.

Our second craft was counting cars to go along with our book. Each child had to glue on a different color car to the big number five on their paper. The kids really enjoyed this craft and I found out they are a big fan of cars, inspiring a possible car program for the future.

At the end of craft time, we had a little playtime.

Other Book:

Pop-Up Peekaboo! Numbers