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.
One of the best drop-in craft programs is centered around Halloween. There are so many good crafts to choose from, whether it be making ghosts, witches, Frankensteins, or jack-o-lanterns.
For this year's Drop-In and Get Crafty: Halloween, we made an assortment of masks. Everyone could choose from making a cat, pumpkin, Frankenstein, or Day of the Dead mask.
The masks were made using card stock and Popsicle sticks. I opted out of using elastic bands because I was trying to keep my cost low for a program that tends to have a larger turnout. We had a numerous amount of sticks so it was perfect. I used a hole puncher to make the eye cut-outs.
Markers, colored pencils, and of course crayons were put out to decorate masks. I also put out some sequins they could glue on to their masks.
I liked this craft idea because it gave attendees options to choose their mask and how to decorate it. I also needed a relatively easy prep craft and this was perfect. The craft also fits all ages because younger kids can decorate their masks simple and older kids can add as much detail as they want. I also liked how this craft can be their costume for Trick-or-Treating if they wanted it to be.
I had a great turn-out for this program and it was nice to see families crafting together.
Happy Halloween!
It was time for more pumpkin fun! Toddler Art was also all about pumpkins. I chose to stay away from pumpkin seeds and beans since this group is younger and the pumpkin play dough didn't stay put long enough for a sensory bin.
I read a short pumpkin rhyming story, Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin by Mary Serfozo before we got to our crafts.
For our first craft, I had the group make their own thumb print pumpkins. There were circles on the pumpkin that they had to press their painted thumbs against it to make their pumpkin orange. I also put out some green paint for the stem. My group loves paint so I opted out of using dot stickers.
Our last craft was making a cute pumpkin pie slice using tissue paper, construction paper, and paper plates.
The crafts went quicker than I expected, but they still got their sensory practice in with thumb printing and tissue paper placement.
Now for some real pumpkin pie.
It was time for October's Preschool Picasso! Instead of choosing a Halloween theme or a monster theme, I chose the more basic theme of pumpkins. It was easy to settle on this theme once I seen all the possible crafts I could present to the group on pumpkins.
For this one, I wanted some extra sensory ideas and for some more adventuresome crafts. Overall, it was a success and I would do these two crafts again, but would make sure I had more prep time for each craft.
I started off our pumpkin Preschool Picasso by reading Pumpkin Town! by Katie McKy. This is the one group I have who are old enough to handle a longer story. I think the group was very attentive due to the colorful and unique illustrations by Pablo Bernaconi. The silliness of an overload of pumpkins kept their attention throughout the whole book. I also liked how this book mentioned pumpkin seeds since we would be getting creative with them for our crafts.
After we found out what happened to the town who had an overabundance of pumpkins, we started our crafts.
Our first craft was a homemade play dough pumpkin. I explained to parents that the dough was edible in case one of the kids accidentally put some in their mouths and that the craft is more of an activity and that since it is made out of pumpkin puree, it won't last forever. It seemed like the parents appreciated a more unique craft and the kids had fun exploring the textures and scents of their art. Corn starch, canned pumpkin, and pumpkin spice was used to make the play dough. I did have to add some flour we had last minute because it wasn't dry enough. The group had sticks from branches outside, green pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and black beans to make their pumpkin faces.
I was able to keep my pumpkin for three days before I thought it best to throw it out.
For our last craft, we made a pumpkin seed craft. The day before, I dyed and dried our pumpkin seeds and printed out some pumpkin outlines on construction paper. I opted out of using paint since the seeds wouldn't have been dried in time to do some gluing.
The hardest part about the dough for the first craft was worrying that it wouldn't turn out just right since I made it the night before and that it might dry out or I would have to start over.
The hardest part about the pumpkin seeds craft was that it took the seeds extra long to dry and longer than anticipated to soak to get the color to be somewhat satisfying.
I think the group enjoyed their crafts and there was a lot of sensory learning with both of them, but I would say these two crafts have been the most hassle out of all the crafts I did for Preschool Picasso.
This was definitely a learning experience for both me and the kids.
