Activities

Read Over in the Meadow by Olive Wadsworth. The children may ask questions like, “What do otters eat” or “Why do turtles dig?” Allow time between pages for the children to ask questions and discuss the different animals.

Solicit responses from the children about their knowledge of rainbows by generating a word splash around rainbows.

Play a song with a steady beat. Provide a dancing scarf and have the children pass the scarf around the circle to the tempo of the song. Use a bell to control the direction that the scarf will move. For example, play Hap Palmer's “Slow and Fast.

Choose a child to be the page turner during story time. As you read, encourage the child to turn the pages for you.

Add paper and paint to a zip-top bag and seal it. Let the infant look at it, touch it and crumble it. Talk about how it feels, such as smooth, squishy or cold. Talk about the colors and what the paint looks like (red, blue, purple, shiny, thick).

Encourage the children to paint using some unique "brushes" such as toothbrushes, the bottom of a soda bottle, a dish brush and bubble wrap clipped with a clothespin.

Cover the table with butcher paper. Provide the children with tempera paint in a tray and several sizes and types of paint rollers. The rollers are examples of a wheel and axle, a simple machine.

In preparation, cover brightly colored copy paper – neon colors work best – with black tempera paint in the art center. Give the children coffee stirrers or cotton swabs with one end removed to write and draw.

Choose eight to 10 stickers with the same picture, such as smiley faces. Have the children place the stickers, spaced evenly, on a wooden paint stick. Secure the stickers with clear packing tape to make a non-standard sticker ruler.

Provide outdoor easels and paint (blue/white/ gray) and encourage the children to paint the sky and share what they see, during outdoor time.

Set up easels, paint and brushes in the art center. Model various ways to move the brush across the paper and use movement and dance terms to describe your motions, such as “glide,” “sway,” “press,” “dab” and “flick.

With the assistant teacher, model how to create a painting with a friend at the easel with paint and brushes in the art center. Show them how to take turns with their strokes and colors, and talk about what they are doing.

Provide brushes, dish sponges, bath poufs or feather dusters, along with buckets of water. Take the items outside and encourage the children to “paint” a wall, sidewalk or tricycle trail.

Add building-shaped sponges to the easel in the art center. The children can use the sponges to paint a picture representing their home, center or school or other buildings in the community.

Tape a large sheet of freezer paper to the table, shiny side up. Provide fingerpaint. Encourage the children to make a group mural.

Provide white paint and two primary colors such as red and yellow in the art center. Mark off a grid of 11/2–2" squares with masking tape on white poster board.

Provide paper plates, butcher paper and paint in the art center. Red, yellow and blue are great alone but when you mix them with a friend, you can do so much more. Place butcher paper on a table for the friendship mural.

Set up a “painting class” table in the art center. After you have looked at various paintings by artists, place a vase of flowers in the middle of a table, with paper and paint the same colors as the flowers.

Set up a “painting class” table in the art center. After you have looked at various paintings by artists, place a vase of flowers in the middle of a table with paper and paint the same colors as the flowers.

Set up easels, paint and brushes in the art center. Model various ways to move the brush across the paper and use movement and dance terms to describe your motions, such as “glide,” “sway,” “press,” “dab” and “flick.