Painted Leaves-- First Grade

 

 These lovely fall leaves were painted with watercolor by the 1st graders!

 

Leaves!-- Kindergarten

Always a popular fall activity, we made leaf rubbings last week.

Then, using our new Gelli Plates, we pulled prints of the leaves.  

To do this, we rolled acrylic paint on the plate.  The kids then rolled textures in the paint using texture rollers.  Leaves were placed on top.  Then, white paper was placed on top of the plate.  We rubbed the back of the paper with our fingers and then pulled the paper off to reveal these leaf prints.                                                                        

To keep the activity organized, I had the kids at their tables doing the crayon rubbings.  Then, I called the kids up three at a time, so I could monitor the printing.  The kids had so much fun using the texture rollers, that sometimes they would roll and roll and roll until the textures were just kind of lumpy.  oh well!  I think we will have to break out the texture rollers again and just play with them on paper.  I precut all of the construction paper squares in various shades of orange, red and yellow.  The next period, the kids gathered their leaf rubbing, leaf print and chose one colored square.  They glued them all together and then could add marker on the frame if they wanted. 

Clay Camp for Kids- Week One

This summer I have also been teaching a clay class for kids through the DeForest parks and recreation dept. It is only 6 sessions, one hour each session. I have 2 groups of kids: K-3, then 4-7 (roughly, there are some overlaps). Some of the weeks I am teaching the same projects and other weeks we are doing different projects. The first week we made leaf dishes. They are very simple and a good way to teach about rolling slabs. First, you roll out a slab of clay, then place a leaf onto the clay. Roll over it with a rolling pin to make an impression. Then trace around it with a knife and cut out the clay leaf. Peel the leaf off and you can use a toothpick to make deeper indentations. You can leave it how it is and poke a hole in it for an ornament, or layer more leaves to make a clay leaf collage. What we did is gently placed them into a paper bowl to make a rounded shape for a dish.









Final step is to paint them!