Artsy Pumpkins

There have been some very crafty kids in our school! Pumpkins, pumpkins are everywhere! I thought I would share some of my favorite pumpkin crafts that are the current decor in our classrooms.

Craft bucket clean-out Pumpkins
  The inspiration for these cute jack-o-lanterns was actually the need to clean out their craft bucket and use up some of the leftover materials from other projects. These are the school-aged jack-o-lanterns.

  Our pre-k class was inspired and wanted to try it, too!

Painting Mini Pumpkins
We recently visited the pumpkin patch and brought back mini-pumpkins to decorate.We have been painting and adorning them with glitter in our art center every day.

Easel Painting Still Life
This was a still life pumpkin painting done by a preschool student.

Knuckle Pumpkin Patch
These have been around for years, but I still love them! The teacher painted the child's knuckles to help them make a pumpkin patch.

Paper Plate Pumpkins
Paper accents added to an orange painted paper plate make adorable little pumpkins!

Free-hand circles and tissue decoration
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this fine motor activity!!!! The 3's class drew circles with markers, then filled in the pumpkins with craft tissue!!!

Pick-a-part Magazine Face Jack-o-Lanterns
We've made some cute jack-o-lanterns by cutting facial features out of magazines and gluing them on the pumpkin shape. Somehow I managed to have this activity going for a couple of days, but didn't get any photos of the finished products. I'll try to add some here later.

Paper Bag Pumpkins
We've also made lots and lots of paper bag pumpkins. Here's a pic of them added to our pumpkin patch from a couple of years ago, as well as a few of this year's crop.

In all honesty, Halloween is my least favorite time of year, but seeing all these pumpkins adorning our school classrooms have really brightened my season!

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Make Your Own Gel Paints!

I'm back!!!! I've been a little absent lately--my computer completely died right at the end of the school year. I finally got a new one, but it has taken a while to get familiar with the new operating system. By that time, school was starting again, and all the craziness that goes with a new school year has kept me very busy! I'm glad to be "back in the saddle" again!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that is often the case in pre-k! We haven't had much luck with purchasing fingerpaint lately. One batch was much too runny, one really smelled (and the children didn't want to use it) and the last batch came in fairly small tubes, so after just a few kids had a turn the paint was gone! Frustrated, I went to my cabinet to see what I could come up with to improvise some fingerpaint. 

I pulled out some hair gel that I keep on hand for sensory bottles and added a little food coloring. This made fantastic paint that can be used for fingerpaints, brush paints or even as watercolors that are easy for the kids to manage! 

While I did make these for the purposes of fingerpaints, the children love them so much that they ask to use them with brushes, too.

One of my little friends was very much involved in the process of loading the brush, painting a dab or two and rinsing the brush in the water, over and over again. Even with all the water, the paints dried vibrantly!

I think next I'll let the kids experiment by mixing some colors to make their own custom colors. They enjoy these paints so much that it can't hurt to have plenty on hand!


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Green Pepper Print Shamrocks

We've been making shamrock prints with green peppers and green paint in our art center this week. The one year old class used these peppers one day, and brought them down to us when they'd finished. There was plenty of printing life left in them, so we put them in our art center. It's been a lot of fun, as well as a great sensory activity!

                                 

                               

Some of the kids explored with the paint and used the pepper like brush, painting the entire paper, making lines and swirls in their paint designs. Anything goes~ explore and have fun!

                                 

I left the green peppers for the after-school class to explore with later that afternoon. This was one of the pretty designs I found drying on the counter the next day! 

Pepper shamrock printing has made the rounds at our school, and has been a BIG hit with every age group that has tried it! 

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