Leaves!

I love Leaves!  I don't like raking them but I sure do love gathering them up and using them for our school art projects!  This year I was a little worried because the leaves here in Central Alabama had not started to fall as much as in years past.  No worry, my neighbors were more then happy for me to run around the neighborhood and gather up their leaves.

I'm not a teacher that likes to do the same art project year after year.  I guess I get bored it.  Either I change it or just do something different all together.  These next two art projects are the exceptions to the rule!  First, let me show you "Leaf Man and Leaf Lady 2010"!

Look closely!  "She is kicking!"

"He is running!"

"He has funny legs!"

I'm not sure if the children like this because it is a fun project OR because I tell them they can use A LOT of glue!  Either way, it is fun and always a big hit at our "End of the Year Art Show".

Here is the other art project that I love doing.  I never get tired of this one!  We call it "Squishy Leaf".  SUPER EASY, SUPER MESSY, SUPER FUN!  First get a really large leaf pattern.  I like to give choice.  I have three different leaves that I cut out from poster board.  Everyone gets to pick three colors and either a shimmery bronze or gold.

Cover with plastic wrap (some people use wax paper, but I like the plastic wrap because we can see the paint better), and mash!

Here is the final product!  Aren't they wonderful?!?!?

I don't like worksheets or art work that has been copied  and all you do is color/paint.  BUT (why is there always a but?)  I found a beautiful tree and had it enlarged onto heavy cardstock paper.  We made our own watercolor paint by mixing our regular brown paint with lots of water and we went to work.  I let them use cotton swabs instead of paint brushes.  I wanted to see what would happen if I gave my students NO DIRECTIONS.

After the trees dried we added fingerprint leaves.

Look at a few of the final results!  WOW!

I love this one because "the leaves were falling to the ground".

The parents I'm sure were laughing at me when these went home.  I was grabbing the children's folders and pulling out these pictures.  I tried to explain to the parents how amazing the art work was.  OH MY!  These children were showing some mind blowing fine motor skills.  Remember, we are ONLY 3 and 4 years old!

At the beginning of the school year, wwaaayyyy back in August, we arrived at school to find out that our Director and Assistant Director had done a little house cleaning.  There were boxes and boxes of "treasures" that either our school was getting rid of OR the church.  Either way, I made out like a bandit!  One of the "treasures" was several bags of this - 

OH MY!  We cut some old paper towel tubes and glued on our leaves.

WOW!  Instant centerpiece for Mom's table!

On Friday, everyone was to bring in a leaf (OR as many as you wanted to bring in).  Oh the fun!  We made a giant "L" and everyone glued on their leaves.

 WOW!  That a big "L"!

My sweet husband found me some big bunches of leaves in our yard.  Bless his heart, he knows there are some things that are better than flowers - leaves during "L" week!  I took them to school   

 and we made our scientific observations as to what will happen to them.

Hopefully, they will still be hanging up on Monday so we find out!

Thanks to my sweet friend (and fellow teacher), Mrs. Felicia, we were able to find a wonderful leave shaped cookie cutter.  We made Leaf Toast with cinnamon butter for snack.  What a YUMMY way to end our week!

Fall Fun!

Our "F" week and "Fall" activities fell all during the same week.  This made everything extra Fun!  No fall activities would be complete without an adorable scarecrow and ours was the cutest ever!

Some old lunch sacks and left over scrapbook paper made for a very fun fall art project.

Of course, we had to make a pumpkin!  We did ours a little different this year.  We painted it with condensed milk and food coloring.

WOW!  The texture was amazing!  We added a couple of hand print leaves and a palm print stem and the results were fantastic!

One little word of caution - this takes forever to dry!  We let ours dry for 4 days and they were still sticky.  

While we were making our pumpkins one of the boys said he wished he had a blue pumpkin, because blue was his favorite color.  Hmmm . . . . change of lesson plan!  The next day we made our very own "Personalized Pumpkins"!  Some were fat and pink

Some were tall and pink 

Some were all about our favorite football teams -

The Florida 'Gators!

War Eagle for Auburn University

Others were a combination of things we liked -

All in all we decided our pumpkins were perfect!

I found this little poem about a squirrel and really like it.

  

We just needed the "perfect" little squirrel to go with it.  AHHHHH! . . . found it!  First we added cotton balls to his tail.  Next, the fun part!  We used old squirt bottles to turn him gray!

I knew those old bottles would come in handy!  After we sprayed him we wiped his body with a paper towel.  What a wonderful piece of fall art!

FALL and "E" Week!

Our school is located in central Alabama so that means we don't get to see much ice and snow in the winter. But autumn more than makes up for it. We have studied autumn for two weeks now and I personally think we could have continued our discussions for at least another week. The children have really enjoyed looking at the leaves and seeing all the different colors. We actually found a PINK leaf! You should have seen the faces of the girls! WOW! Now of course the boys are on a hunt for the blue leaf!

While my husband and I were working last weekend at the lake I came across some amazing items that I bagged up and brought to school. I think they made the interesting leaf people. I don't really think there is much to say about this art work except meet the 2010 leaf people . . . .

Don't you just love her hair bow????
The boys of course added buttons!

If you closely you will see the faces were made from tree bark! Oh, a very special thank you to my partner in crime, Mrs. Christi! She found the amazing arms for us. They are actually the dried out stems of her day lilies! LOOK, they look exactly like hands!

We also have a class pet! He is a caterpillar that we have named "Creek". (A little background on the name. I decided that since caterpillar begin with the letter "C", his/her name should start with "C" too. After several minutes of listening the to the "C" sound the children started coming up with names. Soon "Creek" popped out of Isaiah! That was it, everyone loved it!)

We put fresh leaves in his little house each day and we are patiently (?) waiting for him to start spinning his cocoon.

This week we also did a pretty amazing "E" experiment. I call it "Can we get an egg into a bottle?" Really good instructions are found here - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/sucking-an-egg-into-a-bottle/

Yep, that's me! Lighting a small strip of paper towel for the experiment!



The children, and a few teachers, really loved it. It is very simple and FUN!
Next week is all about Community Helpers and the letter "F"!!!!

"D" Week and Fall Theme

Been way to busy lately so this post is once again late, sorry. This week ended up being too short. Fun but way too short. We are our of school on friday for what the public school were calling "Fall Break". WHATEVER! I headed to the lake for a little R&R with hubby.

For our "Fall" activity this week I copied a wonderful idea from
http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2010/09/something-special-fall-tree-craft.html I altered it a little. Here is our take on it.

Start with a paper towel tube. I cut the bottom and stapled it to a piece of cardboard (okay, it was really the back of a cereal box). Paint it brown. Let it dry. Split the top and fan it out.
Add leaves! On her site Carisa made this with her own children and used fake leaves she bought at the store. Well, since I have an entire class I decided to use real leaves. Hope you like this!Since we were out of school on friday we didn't have a cooking session :(
Next week though, next week!

Fall Leaf Man

I just had to go ahead and post what I think is the cheapest and cutest fall project. Here he is (or in some cases "she"). I call him "Leaf Man".
I will confess that it takes a lot of glue but he is well worth it. He is made from leaves and sticks from my backyard. Everyone gets to pick out their own leaves, acorns and sticks. I even have pine straw for his hair.

Another great project is our squishy leaves. Everyone gets to pick out several different colors of paint and blop them on the cut out leaf. (I find that using poster board is best.) Then we cover the leaf with clear plastic wrap and squish it! I love the look on their faces when they see their leaf once the plastic wrap is removed. It is truly a work of art. Here are a couple from last year.
Here are the leaves displayed on the wall.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will try one or both of these great projects!