Leaf Glitter

This was a fantastic project!  The kids and I went for several walks in the surrounding neighborhoods for a couple of weeks in the fantastic fall weather.  We gathered leaves of every size, shape, color that we could find and brought it back to our room.
We chose the biggest ones to glue on our paper, then the rest we crunched up and made Leaf Glitter!
The kids then made swirling lines with the glue (with help) around their big leaf and sprinkled on the leaf glitter.  They turned out wonderfully!

Fall Sensory Bin

The kids loved playing around the pumpkins so much in our last project that I made a sensory bin of fall leaves (fake, it was too wet outside for real ones), and pumpkins (gourds) I picked up in the produce section of our grochery store.  This lasted for 3 weeks and I just threw out a pumpkin or 2 a week as they started to go bad.  The kids loved it!  They were able to explore different shapes, weights, textures, all sorts of things.

Art for You Fundraising Project 2012

This is a fundraiser we do every fall.  Each class comes up with a project for their kids to do with certain restrictions (size, craft items allowed, etc), and has all their kids do one.  Then the parents get to order anything from T-shirts to coffee mugs, to tote bags, and so much more with this art image on it.  We send off the orders and a few weeks later (in plenty of time for Christmas gifts!), the items come back and get handed out.  This is what our class chose to do:

While you can't see their faces in the pictures (security reasons), what you are missing is priceless.  The expressions of wonder and ooooooooooo while I'm painting their feet were great!

They each chose the colors they wanted for their hand flowers.

Added names and dates for the finishing touch.  Wonderful project all around!

Mess-less Finger painting

It was 5 senses week at school.  Finger painting is such a great thing for using a lot of the 5 senses, but can get really messy, especially with my age group (toddlers).  So found this great idea instead.  Squirt 2 different color paints into a ziploc bag.  Flatten it and get out as much air as possible when sealing it closed.  Put a white piece of paper on the table, then lay the bag on top and tape to the table.

The kids get to experience the touch of squishy paint, see the mixing colors, and have a blast playing.  I had these ready before they arrived and it really helped in drop off.  Absolutely no tears or reluctant good byes on these days!  The kids played together on some of them too.  Plus, when we had to take them off of the table for lunch time, I just put them up on the wall and they were able to play with them there the rest of the day.