Mixing Paste for Collage, Painting with Cars and Balls

We began this week by mixing our own colored paste of flour, water, tempera, and sand. The flour, water, and sand mixture creates a thick bonding paste that can be used as a base for a collage (and the tempera adds color for fun!).

After mixing their paste, I offered the children scraping tools to move the paste around their tagboard. They used small rakes, plastic putty knives, scrub brushes, combs, and plastic notched scrapers for tiling. This is a great introduction to making mosaics! The kids learn how to spread out the adhesive, and lay down materials into a design. After they master this technique, we can try grouting!

After plenty of spreading and scraping, the children added collage materials to their paste.

The oldest class did this project last session, so I took it to the next level and offered them cardboard frames (that I cut out of a large box) as a base for their collage.

Although I explained that the paste would work as glue, some kids weren't convinced and used white glue to make sure their items would stay put.

Towards the end of class I rolled out a large paper onto the floor and showed the kids how to have "zooming car races." Two of the cars are the kind that wind up and drive by themselves. They dipped the wheels in paint, and raced them down the paper to see which cars went the fastest and how far the tracks would go.

The weather has been gorgeous lately, so we spent some fun, creative time outside as well.

After getting this large box with my new outdoor table, I decided to use it for ball painting!

Window painting!

For her grandma's birthday, Karuna wanted to give her the frame she made so I taped a photo of her behind the opening. Adorable!

Gluing for Collage and Construction

This week we focused on gluing. We started off using colored glue on wax paper and adding collage materials to the glue. The kids were encouraged to squeeze out as much glue as possible! Once dry, the design can be peeled off the wax paper and hung in the window (but that requires lots of glue). If there's not enough glue, or the glue is scattered, the whole thing can be hung in a window- The glue and wax paper are transparent, so the light shines through the glue and creates silhouettes of the collage pieces.

For the 1s group, I added more paint to the glue so that it was easier to squeeze.

While some children were busy working at the table, others were learning how to operate a glue gun! (This was just for the 3 and the 4 year olds) I set out a large cardboard box and lots of found materials to glue to the box. Glue guns are such interesting tools because the glue dries instantly. They allow you to build in a way that wouldn't be possible to do with regular glue.

I first used low temperature glue guns, but they were still a little hot, so I switched to "cold shot" glue guns that are perfect for little ones.

An instant sculpture to take home!

The 1s and 2s classes were given regular glue and paint to use on the collaborative sculpture.

Some of the children worked on painting projects when they were finished gluing. I'm loving our new roll of white paper for painting on the floor!

It was a rainy week, but the sun peeked out occasionally and we managed to get some creative time outside!

Different Types of Collage and Action Painting

For the second week of the session, I decided to try a new form of collage with the 2, 3s, and 4s... hammer collage! First, I needed to find hammers that were small enough for toddlers, but still strong enough to drive a nail into foam. I searched three hardware stores and was unsuccessful. As I was leaving the third store, I began to eye the PVC pipe section, wondering if there was any way to use a plastic pipe as a hammer. The owner of the store, who was helping me in my search, saw my curious look and said, "How about this?!" He took a small PVC pipe, another one in the shape of a T, some rubber plugs and an end cap and began to assemble the perfect toddler hammer!
For the base of the collage, I glued together a few foam pieces to make it thick enough for the nail. We began by practicing our hammering skills with golf tees, to make sure everyone could safely drive a nail.

Once I was confident in the children's hammering skills, I offered them a small cup of nails (with large heads and fairly blunt ends) and an assortment of collage materials. They put the items onto the foam and created a design by hammering them in place.



It was great to see kids helping each other when they had a hard time holding the nail in place.
With a new found love of scissors, many kids decided to cut their own materials for the collage. Then, when one child realized that she couldn't nail a tube-shaped cardboard to her foam, she asked for tape. This lead the other kids to create tape collages with colored masking tape.

As the children began to finish their collages, I offered them paper and markers for "challenge" drawings, like the ones we painted last week. Just as I had predicted, the markers worked better than the paint to prompt circle drawings.



In the 1s class we worked on collages, but instead of using hammers we used clear contact paper. The children chose their collage items and placed them onto the sticky side of the contact paper.
We had some older siblings join us who were very helpful!

After working on sticky collages, I offered the children large finger paint paper, a plate of paint, rollers and a variety of tools from the shelf.

With most of the 1s class absent last week, I decided to bring back the watery squeeze paints. This time, I put a long absorbent paper on the ground and demonstrated "action painting," which is what Jackson Pollock was known for. The paint was flying all over, mostly landing on the paper, but also making some pretty puddles on the floor!

When the paint was all squeezed out, the kids found some brushes on the shelf and used them to move the paint around the paper.
The bucket of soapy water offered a fun, easy clean-up!
Our collaborative action painting:
Contact paper collage, hung in the window: