Sunday, November 8, 2015

It's Looking Like Fall!

After spending last weekend in Indiana with all the beautiful autumn hues on the leaves and the cool crisp air, it felt kind of strange teaching the Kindergartners about the fall season. We did a fall vs. summer sort that was kind of humorous for these California kids. We wrote about what happens in the fall and also what doesn't happen... That was challenging to come up with ideas. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful place with nice warm weather that feels like summer year round! I was so happy to finally break out a sweater this week! 

I did share a couple of my pictures from my trip to help the kids get a glimpse of what fall looked like in Indiana. 
This is the park my friend got married at in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
On Halloween, we went to a small pumpkin patch across from a farm. When you combine piles of leaves and two California girls you get silly leaf throwing :)
Beautiful fall colors.


On Thursday, two of our art helpers came to help assist me as we did one of our first "Directed Draws" of scarecrows. I love how each child's scarecrow is uniquely there's down to the shapes, sizes, colors and descriptions they chose. 
This week, we will pattern color corn to add to the corn stalks.
Waylon's scarecrow is a pirate!
Kate's scarecrow is happy.
Maryland scarecrow is nice.
Dylan's scarecrow is scary.
Don't forget to bring in your finished turkey feather to add to our turkey! This is going to look beautiful once they all come in!
This was my first time doing this leaf project. At first, when the kids were drawing the leaves I was a bit nervous of how they would turn out but they are GORGEOUS! This was a 5 step art project! First the kids drew the leaf with a pencil. Then they used tempura paint in a glue bottle to outline the pencil lines. While waiting for it to dry, the kids chose their own pattern for the border. Once the pain dried, they water colored their leaves using fall colors. Finally, the kids cut carefully next to the black paint lines and glues the leaves onto their backgrounds. They came out just beautiful!
As you can tell, every week our centers reflect a theme --- as you can tell, this week was all about fall. The kids used their fine motor skills to careful rip paper to make the tree branches, trunk and green grass. They finished the project by adding up to 20 fall "leaves" of each color using tempura paint with a q-tip. This is a great fine motor skill and math activity as well as a beautiful project to do during our thematic unit. 

No comments:

Post a Comment