KB: Art Exploration!

Art Exploration

Painting, gluing, coloring, and cutting—Kitah Bet children eagerly take these supplies out of the art center.  “Let’s cut!” one child says to another as she gathers the basket of scissors and a stack of papers.  “I want to color!” says another child, pointing at the markers.  “Where’s the poster?” another inquires.  

At the beginning of the year, we offered art activities with a single medium, paint and brushes for example, so the children could learn the fine motor skills of holding art tools and using them constructively.  

Because we noticed that the children persisted at the art center, we began offering additional materials, such as scissors and cutting paper.  Dot stampers came out too and children smiled and pointed as they noticed how the dot painters splattered on their papers.

Now the art center is available throughout the day.  Children frequent it individually or even in pairs.  The pictures displayed here are the ongoing product of their art exploration.

Open-ended Art and Reflection Exploration

What happens when we combine reflective paper, buttons, contact paper (repurposed from our light and color exploration), glue, gemstones, and an open invitation to create? Sparkly, colorful, expressive, child-led creations worth showing off to visitors as they enter our building. Kitah Gimmel pounces at the opportunity to cut, past, mix, and blend various types of materials and mediums. We develop and strengthen our self-expression, fine motor skills, and writing skills through squeezing glue, cutting with scissors, sorting beads and buttons and simply creating using 100 languages or more.

 

Art with Oil in Kitah Gimmel

The miracle of oil allows us to shine our candles bright throughout the days of Chanukah. The students at IJP were so lucky to dive deeper into the properties of oil by experiencing an Olive Oil Factory.

So captivated by the expert!

We can fry dough in oil to make doughnuts!

We love science! It allows us to explore, ask questions, learn cause and effect, and try some new things out. We also explored the properties of oil by mixing it with food coloring and water. But, did the oil actually mix with the water? What about the colors, do they mix up too? 

The oil floated to the top!

"So many colors!" - Elliot

"Oil will start a fire. It looks like a jelly fish!" -Parker
"It's turning into fire!" -Leora

"Yellow and blue make green, I love green!" - Asher

"I can squeeze just a little drop!" -Erez

"Will it stay in the oil?" - Orli

Total focus.

"It looks like a falling bush, beautiful" -Mason

"I like all the colors!" -Yonah

Now it's time for some science plus art!  Using a the simple components: a pan, cardstock paper, oil, and food coloring, we made colorful oil prints. First we added drops of color to oil using pipettes

The End Result: Colorful and beautiful