First Printmaking Experience

Beware. I am singing in this video. And the "song" might get stuck in your head. I make up songs for my preschoolers that help them remember small concepts.



Note, the first person singing the tune in the video isn't me. I'm just joining in.

My preschoolers are doing their second printing lesson with me and I am trying to get them to remember that a print is a copy.

To do this lesson you need this:

and this:



I got the idea from The Crafty Crow blog who got it from the Daisy Yellow blog. The kids loved it and left the room singing.

preschool art

Drug Out by Dragons

Looking at my photo disk, I am surprised to see so many dragon photos. There are more dragon lessons that I did not even photograph. Chinese New Year coincided with the third grade study of China this year so there were lots of opportunities for the dragon as subject matter.

Preschoolers made Chinese dragon masks, which all together looked like one big dragon costume.

Third graders made Chinese brush paintings of dragons and foil repousse dragons, for which I have no photos. Ugh.

This dragon puppet was a "door knob lesson." (That means you think of the lesson as you are shutting the door after they arrive.) I had a lesson prepared other than this, but when 3/4 of the class was missing because of testing, I had to think of something fast. This was it.


Art Club kids made clay animals and many chose dragons.



Kindergarten dragons. (Those red tree-like things are firecrackers.)






A third grade teacher asked me to help her think of something she could hang in the hall outside of her classroom. Since they were studying Ancient China, I had her kids work in groups to create dragon murals. These are 5' - 6' long. I suggested that she cut these off of the background and mount them on another paper, or paint the background.






I think I am "dragoned" out now.

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.

First Exploration with Block Tempera

I love preschool lessons.   Here they explored markmaking with block tempera for the first time.

Paintbrush Song

A preschool teacher just appeared at my door asking if I minded her teaching the kids my "Happy Paintbrush" song.  I forgot I even made up that song.  I need to collect these things!

If you're teaching preschool or even kindergarten, you might sing this ditty to keep those brushes from the dreaded "pencil hold."

Sing to the tune of London Bridges…and demo the position a "happy paintbrush" would take...

Happy paint brush stands straight up

Stands straight up

Stands straight up

Happy paint brush stands straight up.

All day long.  

This song will make you nuts….haunt you in your dreams….but the kids love it.

The Skeleton Dance

If there is time left over at the end of class, I play short videos. This is one I played around Halloween. They LOVED this one.

Following the Leader - Peter Pan (1953)

Following the Leader - Peter Pan (1953)

I sing the chorus of this song as the children enter the art room. They follow behind me in line, doing whatever I do, as I lead them to the place I want them to sit.