ON-GOING
EASEL ART PROJECT OPTIONS:
Texture
Painting: Brown Bag Leaf Shapes/Square Stencils
Creative Abstract Paintings
Paint Colors: Red
+ Yellow To Get Orange Black
From Stormie:
Painting on Brown Paper Bag Leaf Shapes:
To make your easel projects
interesting and inviting this month, and keeping within the "Fall" theme, cut
a variety of large leaf shapes from brown grocery bags. Provide both red
and yellow paints. The problem with easel painting sometimes is that only
the first few children get to use the colors before they get muddied and mixed.
By the time the 15th child comes to the easel, s/he paints with an orange shade
of paint whether they want to or not. One thing that can be done -- especially
if you have an assistant, is for one of you to oversee the easel area and give
each child their own small amount of red and yellow paints as they come to take
their turn.
Texture Painting: When one of
your themes for the month is "sense of touch," it's kinda' neat to follow
through with that at the easel as well. There are many things you can add
to paint to give it texture (sawdust, cornmeal, dry coffee grounds, sand, even
fine wood chips, to name a few). When paintings are dry, they have a texture
to them that the children can "touch and feel." Texture paintings can
be appreciated on any plain piece of paper, or you might use it in conjunction
with a theme. For example, cornmeal added to orange paint will give a neat
real-life texture to an orange (fruit) shape painting.
Reminder:
Always keep in mind that the texture you add to paint might also change the color
of the paint, so be careful about what you add to which color. I always
like to add just a little bit of the texture to just a tiny sample of paint first.
Black Paintings Using Square Stencils:
Cut out thin cardboard
square-shaped stencils (making them look like picture frames). Using a combination
of Ticky-Tack and clothespins, anchor the stencils to the child's paper on the
easel. They can be anchored from the top and/or sides of the easel.
The black paint should be thick so it won't drip, but the real purpose here is
for children to paint the shape of a square with their brush.
Note:
I have done this at the easel when it worked perfectly, but there have been other
times when either the paint was too thin or the stencils too thick or maybe I
was just having a bad day. If you encounter such problems, do as I did and
simply make it a table-top activity.
Extension: After the paintings
have dried (perhaps the next day), give children the option of taking their "black
squares" to the Art Center for creating whatever they wish.
From
Michelle Nicol in Butler, Pennsylvania: 