During the month of October we covered
the letter "O" in our preschool curriculum, so our theme
for that week was "Owls." This was a fun theme in general,
but it was also perfect for the week before Halloween, as owls are
enchanting and they play well in spookier themes.
Any time we have such a specific theme,
though, Art becomes a little more challenging because I have to
generate a lot of variety around one animal. The upside, however, is
that we get to go more in-depth with each project and explore Owls in
more detail! Here are the projects we did:
Our first project was "'O' is for
Owl." We started by tracing and cutting a large white letter O
and then we used dot-markers to cover the O in polka dots (sort of a
play on a Spotted Owl.) Then the kids glued the forehead feathers,
the yellow eyes, and the feet onto their O. Last, they used the
markers to put the pupils into the large eyes.
Our next project was a "Texture
Owl," and obviously the point of this project was to explore
texture. While feathers are an obvious choice for any type of bird,
torn up scraps of paper allowed the kids to have some fine-motor
practice tearing, and they were just a nice change-up to the project.
I cut out all the body background pieces from black paper, and the
kids ripped up and glued scraps of brown craft paper to the
background to cover it. They glued the eyes, the beak, the feet, and
then they glued the entire owl onto a small crooked paper tree
branch. Again, we used dot-markers for the pupils.
Our last project was easel painting! We
painted a large owl, but with a twist: "Hands Owl-Over."
That's right, we used our hands to create a feathery texture on the
owl after we painted. First, I helped each child paint the outline of
the body and wings, then they filled in the body with brown paint.
Next, I went around and painted their hands brown, and they used
their hands to press and stamp their owl's body and create texture in
the paint that looked like feathers. Last, they painted the eyes, the
beak, and the feet on their owls. As you can see, some of the kids
kept their hands entirely inside the outline, and some touched around
the edges to make their owls look "fluffy."
Each week we do a cooking project
centered on our theme. This week's snack was "Owl Snack."
We spread marshmallow fluff over a whole graham cracker (to be the
head). Then they took two banana slices and placed those on the fluff
as the eyes, they placed raisins over the bananas as the pupils, and
they placed one last raisin at the bottom of the cracker to be the
beak. I always make a snack along with them to show them how to make
it, and to model trying new foods-- this snack was pretty good!
For our afternoon language lessons, we
focused on what owls eat, where they live, and we also learned that
owls are nocturnal. The kids were excited to know that owls sleep
while we're at school, and they wake up and fly around at night. The
best part, as a teacher, was having the kids run up to me later in
the week during recess and remind me that "right now the owls
are sleeping because it's daytime!" Lesson to self: never assume
kids are too young to understand! Seeing them wrap their brains
around the concept of nocturnal animals was awesome, and we had fun
making a list of all the other nocturnal animals we could think of!
These projects made for a perfect "Owls" week, but you can, of course, fit any of them into your "Forest animals" or "Birds" units. Happy teaching!
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