Mother's Day Garden Pictures

These are what we made at preschool for Mother's Day.




I love them because they are beautiful, personalized, and hit a slew of developmental skills such as dictation (when you write down your child's words to show the connection of meaning and print while showcasing how important their words are), showing appreciation, fine motor (tracing, cutting, using a dropper, gluing), and vocabulary (object and color naming, parts of a flower).

The dictations were so sweet. Here are a few of my personal favorites:

* She gives me a kiss.
* She feeds me.
* My mom gives me Spongebob, and pizza, and cake, and board games, and soda, and bubbles! Yeah! Lots of stuff!
* My mom is going to take me to...{dramatic pause} the bouncy house!
* Builds me cookies.

The stem is made by tracing the child's hand and forearm.
The petals are made by folded up coffee filters which were painted with liquid watercolors with droppers.
The children can add details such as leaves and grass by tearing or cutting scraps of paper.
Die cuts of various garden bugs and flowers were available for added embellishments and as backgrounds for the dictations about what we love about our mothers.

Homemade Puffy Paint

We tried out homemade puffy paint. At home and at school.

It was a hit.



My children made pictures to give their great grandfather for his birthday.

The schoolers thought walking down to the microwave to cook their paintings was weird but great. They were thrilled to show off their creations.

The recipe:
as found on Sandy Toes and Popsicles

ingredients:

1 Tablespoon self-rising floor

1 Tablespoon salt

Food coloring

Enough water to make a paste

directions:

then you mix them all together and whala! you have your paint. use paint brushes or cotton swabs to paint on cardboard. it works best brush paint on thickly. when you are finished microwave your painting for 5-10 seconds, do not microwave for to long. (i may or may not have started a fire) and that's it. homemade puffy paint.

Some notes from our experiences:
* Ours tended to get a little crispy if we did the full 10 seconds. We averaged about 8. Less if the paint was applied thinner.
* Mixed a batch in a bowl and then spooned it into an ice cube tray and the children chose the colors to make. This worked well.
* A few brave souls requested to sample the paste. All agreed it was yucky.

Ice Cube Painting

{Liquid water colors frozen in an ice cube tray and tongs}

A fun melting activity to go along with this darling poem:

Pet Snowball

I made myself a snowball
as perfect as can be
I thought I'd keep it as a pet
And let it sleep with me

So I made him some pajamas
and a pillow for his head
Then last night he ran away--
But first he wet the bed!

-author unknown