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.