A house for hermit crab... Kinder crafts

Since I'm the designated artsy parent in mimi's kindergarten class, when the all school Festival of Arts was fast approaching and the class needed to do a 3D illustration of this Eric Carle book (A House For Hermit Crab)... I was called. I've spent the last two mornings in kindergarten, making tons of art projects. And today our masterpiece is finished! Tonight's show may offer us chances for better pics, but here are some to share for now.
What fun we all had... and if you know the book (which IS adorable) you'd immediately recognize that we have the whole underwater world of this hermit crab represented. ALL made by kindergarteners. The only thing I did on my own was to wind the pipe cleaners to make the little red hermit crab himself. They did ALL of the rest. I'm so proud of them!

More time as art teacher...

I love being the art teacher for Mimi's class! The kids either call me " Mimi's mom" or "art teacher" (both of which I love!) the teacher asked if this week I would do something about apple trees or farms, so I (of course) "googled" that and found the cutest craft - which I modified, of course. The kids traced their hands with crayon, painted that in with brown paint to serve as the trunk and branches of the trees. Then we tore little pieces of paper to make leaves (note: tearing was a little hard for some of these kindergarteners), glued them onto the trees and then polkadotted some apples onto the trees for a final touch. I love how they came out! My favorite part was sewig the different artistic styles come out... Abstract vs. Literal... Minimalist vs. Extravagent...

Leaf rubbing garland

I was inspired again by Dollarstorecrafts.com to make these great garlands with The Design Director's kindergarten class (see the post here). We tried the newspaper, but the kids had a hard time not tearing it up... And we ended up using white paper. Some of the kids really took to this and the teacher told me she had a real "aha" moment when one of the more rambunctious kids in the class really connected with this
craft... She'd not seem him sit still in the first 3 weeks of kindergarten, and suddenly he spent an hour making leaf rubbings, cutting them out and running them over to me. (I found that SO
exciting!). I've committed to come to class bi-weekly (maybe even weekly) to do art with the kids. Visiting for Mimi's birthday, I was told again and again how much they'd loved the craft and having the garland up in the room.