Needless to say, working with this age group is a lot of fun. I am a huge believer in process over product and with children this young, there is a lot of exploration of whatever medium I put out.
I decided to start this month's class with clay.
Because who doesn't like clay?
I started by asking them to tell me about their favorite animals. Once they had thrown out a bunch of ideas and settled on something they wanted to create, I gave each child a large piece of aluminum foil to create the shape of their animal.
I like starting with a foil armature for a couple of reasons. It helps the clay dry quicker and also it allows the kids to make a larger sculpture that otherwise would be cost prohibitive.
The girls loved squishing together the foil, which of course, is the biggest plus.
I first asked them to just cover the foil completely with clay so that it became our "secret". They loved having a secret in their artwork.
From there I just gave them time to explore the clay and build however they saw fit to create their creatures.
rainbow bunny
Once they started completing their builds, I put out some toothpicks, popsicle sticks, and a few other "tools" for them to explore adding textures and details.
I asked some leading questions to each of them, such as, how does your animal hear?
How does it breath?
Where would you put the eyes?
Does it have a tail?
And the children then took another look at their clay and made decisions on if they wanted to add anything else.
Princess with the long blonde hair.
(yes, I realize it is not an animal, but who can resist creating a princess?!)
I was so impressed with their final works. I had to keep reminding myself they were in preschool!!!
They too were very excited and it was difficult to leave their creations in the studio to dry for the week when class was over.
The following week they painted their clay.
I really wanted to girls to explore color mixing and so I spoke to them quickly about how color can be used by artist to convey emotion or temperature.
I asked them what color was happy and sad.
Angry and calm.
Hot and cold.
They caught on to this very quickly and began to throw out a variety of colors. I told them about an art movement called Fauvism, where all the artist used wild beast colors to help tell their stories and then asked them to think about the personality of their animals and use "crazy" colors to help the viewers also see the personality of their animals.
Although this sounds like a pretty complicated concept for preschoolers, they had no trouble and were off to the races quicker than I could say, "start painting".
As they mixed their primary colors together, they excitedly shared with each other what new colors they created.
pink cat
how great are the purple paws she added?
I deliberately gave them very small brushes so they would not glob on the paint. This made a huge difference to their ability to control adding the color to their works of art and slowing them down to really think about the details when painting.
And what amazing works of art they all created!
Once dry I added a layer of high gloss varnish to protect all their hard work and this Monday, their creations headed home with very happy and proud little artist.
No doubt they will be very cherished pieces.
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