Sunday, May 16, 2010

trying to hold their interest for a few more days . . .





Trying to find things to hold the littles interest with only a few weeks left in our school year. Not always an easy task but last week I did manage to come up with a couple of new things that seemed to do the trick. The first was a giant cardboard cut-out of a person. Sort of a gigantic paper doll. They are decorating our cardboard friend with markers and paint and whatever else they can find on the art shelves. (I'll try to remember to snap a photo this week.) A group of girls in the room thought this was the coolest thing ever. And I liked that it was large enough so they could cooperate and collaborate, exchanging ideas and compliments. (I found the cardboard cut-out at my local teacher store. It was about $4.)

I also threw some of these rubber band paint brushes on the art table with plates of paint and some large sheets of paper. I made the brushes with rubber bands in various sizes and wooden craft sticks. In the past I've used tree twigs as the brush handle but these seemed to work well. A few of the littles thought this was a very cool way to paint. One little boy who never pays much attention to the art table stayed there all morning.

4 comments:

Deborah Stewart said...

Cute idea:) You got my attention!!

Unknown said...

Cool! I am writing lesson plans and will put this in them. I am going to think of other things I can attach to the ends to make crazy textured paintbrushes. hmmmm. . . . twine. . . twigs. . . grass. . .

Scott said...

What a fun idea! I'm always looking for new ways to paint. This is great.

Teacher Tom said...

Perfect! I'm in the same boat, Kat, looking for ideas to finish the year strong!