Taking old standards and finding ways to make them fresh and new is something I have always relied on in classrooms and at home with my son. This activity was a big hit, simple and allowed him to make whatever he wanted. I kid you not when he started painting he said ” It’s just abstract.”  I have been lounging  in bed with my art books a lot and someone likes to cuddle and look at the pictures with me , glad to know he’s listening.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some paints, a dish, paper and an exfoliating glove or mitt.
2. Put the paint on the dish.
3. Get your glove on , this took some time but try not to offer help unless they ask.  I step in too early and need to work on that or my son will be 12 and I will still be putting his shoes on.
4. Dip into the paint.
5. Go for it.  My son decided that smacking the paper hard was his technique , there is no wrong way. The glove did get stuck to the paper a few times but no biggie. Also the glove made really cool sounds when he scrapped it against the paper. I loved all the different senses that came into play during this activity.

Books About Colors

Hello, Red Fox by Eric Carle is a fun interactive book about colors and the color wheel. Kids will love the “trick” on each page. The trick being that if you stare at a color for long enough then stare at a blank page the complimentary color will appear! This book is great, but not for a group, a class will disintegrate into “Let me!!” and “My turn!” quickly so this is really is best read one on one!

Little Blue and Little Yellow is a profound book with underlying commentary about race relations while the surface story is about little blobs of color who when squished together turn into one green blob! You’ll be surprised by how easily your preschooler will pick up on the connection between the two. In my PreK class I had more than a few kids make the connection all on their own.

Lemons Are Not Red by Laura Vaccaro Seeger is a clever book each page offers a sneak peek at what it next, which my son thought was genius and I have to agree. Soon my son was making his own predictions about what object would be revealed when we turned the page. The book offered so many chances for me to step in and ask my son questions about what we were reading without stalling the momentum of the book.