Painting Like Georgia O'Keeffe

The children at O(5)'s Montessori School study a different artist each month, and at the end of the month I go in and do an art project with them based on that artist. The artist of the month for November was Georgia O'Keeffe. O's teacher read several books about Georgia O'Keeffe with the children, and theyworked with the Georgia O'Keeffe art cards from Montessori Print Shop.

On our art day, we taped watercolor paper to the table for each child and provided them with a live flower in a tiny vase (each child chose his or her flower), a set of watercolor paints, and a cup of water. The kids got right to work!



Before the children started painting, I told them to study their flowers. They looked at the centers of the flowers, studied the texure, noticed the colors, and noticed that the shapes of the petals repeated. I told them to paint the flower BIG and to try to make the petals reach the edge of their papers. 





Here is a link to the lesson plan that I followed.

Both of our girls LOVE painting with watercolors, and I'm so excited the new liquid watercolor set they received for Christmas.  We may be painting like Georgia O'Keeffe at home, too!

Color Sorting Bags

While cleaning out the chaos that is our activity drawers, I found these color bags that I made for O(5) many years ago. (see O's color hunt game here)  E(2) was THRILLED to see them!  She dumped all of the objects out and started sorting!


We haven't used these bags in more than 6 months (at least), and I'm feeling guilty that I haven't had them out for E (because she loved this activity).


I have a feeling that this is going to be one of E's favorite "works" for a while :)

"P" Week

E(2) had "P" week in October, and I wrote the post, but never put it up on the blog!

She made pumpkin pie with O and my mom.




We ate purple cabbage.




We carved a pumpkin.




We made pipe cleaner spiders.




We did lots of puzzles.








She pulled her puppy around the house.




She dressed up like a pink poodle.




And wore her hair in pigtails.




The girls loved their first experience with pop rocks! This was probably the highlight of our "P" weeks!




We went for a windy ride on the pontoon boat.




The girls painted wooden pocketbooks.








E matched pumpkin life cycle cards (from Montessori for Everyone).




She really enjoyed talking about the life cycle of the pumpkin.



We dressed like pirates.



She painted this tray and made prints of it. 


We had a picnic in the woods, rode the plasma car, and played the piano. Fun stuff!

Blue/Yellow Color Mixing Discovery Bottle

I was so excited to see this color mixing discovery bottle since color mixing is an activity that we spend a lot of time on.



To make this discovery bottle, I filled the bottom one third of the bottle with water colored with blue food coloring. Then I heated cooking oil and mixed in yellow powdered tempera paint. I stirred and stirred to try to get the paint to dissolve. It eventually dissolved enough, and I spooned it into the bottle. (I did this slowly because I was try to avoid putting any undissolved powder into the bottle). I'm not completely happy with the bottle because the yellow oil clings to the sides and makes the blue a little cloudy, but I've worked on it for several days, and I think this is as good as it's going to get.




The liquid turns a nice shade of green after shaking it vigorously. Then it immediately starts to separate into yellow and blue again.



I have to admit that I am much more impressed with this than the girls are, but they have had fun with it, too.  I'm looking forward to making more coloring mixing discovery bottles for E(2)'s science shelf!  (I'm hoping to find blue lamp oil because I think this would work much better with blue lamp oil and yellow water).

Loving the Lightbox!

The girls' grandaddy recently gave them a lightbox that he used to use for work, but no longer needs.  I was SO excited because I've been wanting to make a lightbox for almost a year.  The girls LOVE it, and we've all had lots of fun playing with it.  O(5) loves to make new creations each night while I'm cooking supper.

Here's a recent lightbox creation.




I love that there are so many different creative ways to use a lightbox, and I'm pretty sure that I'll be writing many more lightbox posts on this blog!