Yarn and Beads...Who Doesn't Love Those?

Hello, Blog!  Long time no post.  I actually start teaching my preschool art classes tomorrow.  They come a little later in the school year than the big kids.  I'm at home looking around on the web for some new inspiration and some ideas to bookmark for later lessons.

This is from the blog:  "cows go moo and ducks go quack".  I like her first image here and will be interested to see what else I find.
Googling "preschool art blog", I came across this first: 

Preschool Weaving

Since all of my students in kindergarten through fifth grade are working on fiber arts right now, I wanted to think of a way my preschoolers could work in fiber as well.  Last year I gave the wee ones burlap, needle and thread.  Those mostly turned into balled up sculptures.  As much as I tried celebrating their sculptural forms, I don't think they bought into it.

It occurred to me that rug canvas might be a good a good medium.   It is stiff and the holes are nice and big.  So I brought out pipe cleaners and plastic coated wire and let the kids experiment with weaving in and out of the holes.

Some of the pieces were more "sculptural" than others but they didn't get to the level of being balled up like the burlap ones.

Weaving on a Large Loom

I first saw this on The Crafty Crow.  Here is the original post on the blog: MyMommyMakesIt.  I am anxious to give this a try!

Tiny Sculptors and Weavers

Though my school system provides wonderful lesson plans for grades K - 12, we have none for preschool. Our preschools are federally funded programs that happen to be in our buildings. The extras that those programs get, such as music, art and p.e., are at the discretion of the school principals. So I teach whatever I think is appropriate for our tiniest students. The freedom to try my own ideas is appealing. Sometimes I feel as though I am just flying by the seat of my pants though.

I love doing sculpture with them. Kids, in general, don't get a lot of opportunity to use their hands and build in any way, so they really focus in when they get to work three dimensionally. I find that same thing in all grades. Sculpture, clay, and fiber lessons are big hits with the kids.


In this lesson, the kiddies were making sculptures with egg crates, cardboard tubes, and boxes. This group is very young, and as far as I could tell, the sculptures were all non-objective. They seemed to enjoy putting the objects together in any way that pleased them.

Sometimes, when trying to brainstorm what media to present to preschool, I use the ideas that the "big kids" are working on. The uppergrades are doing fiber arts right now. Fifth graders are weaving.


So I made tiny looms for the preschoolers and let them experiment with them.


I didn't give a lot of direction, rather, I let them try things on their own.


This wasn't the greatest lesson, but the kids were engaged. I'll have to figure out a way to build upon that next week.