Monet's Water Lilies

This week we are studying famous artists. Yesterday we talked about Claude Monet. I showed the kids several of his lily pond paintings and then we recreated one of his paintings with the bridge.

I was just planning on having the kids paint the bridge along with everything else, but then as I was searching for other ideas, I saw how they used tape for the bridge at The Crafty Classroom. Genius! So first I made bridges on the paper using masking tape. (I also cut mine in half so it would be thinner.)

Then I set out the paint. We had two shades of green, two shades of blue, and white and pink.

The kids used a dabbing technique to paint their pictures.

First they covered their entire paper with greens and blues.

Then they dabbed on some white,

and some pink.

Unfortunately the pink dried very dark. I did go over it with a second coat, but it didn't make a difference. After they were completely dry (the next day) I very carefully took off the tape. We used construction paper and the tape kind of took a small layer off, so it was a little "fuzzy." And it looked so white! So I let the kids color their bridges with crayons. That covered up the fuzziness a bit.

I signed the paintings with the child's first name and then used Monet as their last name. I love how they turned out!

 

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Water Lilies

We started our pond unit yesterday. We made beautiful water lilies. So beautiful, in fact, that I'm going to make you wait till the end of the post to see them. Ha! I got this idea from Creativity Takes Flight. The kids started by painting a small paper plate green. I put out 3 different shades of green.

Then they used dot markers to decorate a small coffee filter.

I sprayed them with water and let them dry. Then I folded them in half 3 or 4 times and the kids dipped the ends into paint.

This is a wonderful trick one of my co-workers told me about. It just gives the flower a little extra somethin'.

When the paint was dry, I crumpled up the coffee filter carefully by gathering the middle and putting a piece of tape around it.

Then I added a bunch of glue to the paper plate, which now looks like a lily pad because I cut out a piece.

And finally I added the flower.

Beautiful, right? I hung them on my door and they are so bright and cheery! I love looking at them. I think it would be fun to float these in a kiddie pool, but they probably wouldn't last long :0)