Painted Papers for a Kindergarten Garden

I have long admired the website, Painted Paper, and promised myself that one of these days we, too,  would spend a whole day just painting papers to be shared and used for a future project. Well, today was the day!!

Kindergarteners started out looking at a photo of Eric Carle and some pictures of some of his "painted paper" book characters for them to identify. Then we watched a short slide show from his website showing how he paints his paper (HERE).

Next, it was time to splash into the painting our papers for next week's collage patterned after Lois Ehlert's, Planting a Rainbow.

Each of 6 tables had a different color paper to start with (the 6 colors of the color wheel, which happen to match our table names). I was focusing on how to hold the brush and make broad, sweeping right to left (and left to right) strokes across the paper and filling the paper with paint. When they finished this background layer, we learned how to clean "Mr. Brush" and test that the brush was clean by "painting" our hand (hopefully with clean water!!).

Then, each table had a different method to use to add their 2nd color for a pattern or design. One table had brayers, one used 1 finger dipped in paint to make fingerpaint road, one table had sponge prints, one had sponge brushes, one had lids to make prints and one used brushes. This way, all the painted papers had a different look to them.

This was the first time these kindergarteners had visited the art room, so there was a lot to learn about routines, too. One of those was we carry our art with 2 hands and another was how we place 4 pieces of art on our drying racks and then put up another rack for the next group coming with paintings to place.

Everyone did a GREAT job and we will have lots of painted papers for next week when I will share the results!!

These are a few that were dry so I could start cutting them into small, manageable pieces that kids will use for their cutting next week. I am sorting them by colors.