Art Class

I help in kindergarten art class on Wednesdays. They do some of the funnest crafts, if you want to call them crafts. They are more like art projects; that sounds a little more in-depth than the word craft. Anyways, today they made bracelets. They started with a white pipe cleaner and then put on beads of varying sizes, shapes and colors. Once they were finished we (the adults) twisted them together and wha-la! They had themselves their very own bracelet! How about that!

Then, they each received a manila piece of paper and wrote their name on it. One at a time, they came over to me and dipped their hand in their favorite color of paint (choices were: pink, purple, brown, yellow) and made a hand print on their piece of paper for a future art project.

After that, they had a coloring sheet that they colored and cut out if they had time. Let me tell you, the art teacher is very efficient. She can make those projects happen lickety-split!

I still do not know how we managed to get 19 kindergartners to do all of that in 25 minutes, with only 1 teacher and 2 helpers.

Things I learned today after hand-printing 19 children:

*Hands vary dramatically. Some are short and squaty, almost small as a toddler's hand, others have really long fingers, almost as long as mine.

*Fingers are not all in the typical length order: pinky shortest, ring finger and pointer almost the same, middle finger the longest. There were a few that their fingers were almost all the same length.

*Some boys will choose pink as their favorite color.

*The art teacher's favorite color is orange. And every child in that class knew this little piece of trivia.

*Not all girls will choose pink, but they will choose purple over brown or yellow.

*Every one of those kindergartners knew how to write their name. (most of them legibly)

*The kids know what to do when the teacher says, "POPSICLE!"

*Most of the kids know that in art class there are 2 boys and 2 girls at each table.

*Every child wants to be a helper! (This one I already knew, but it is fun to see the excitement when she asks who would like to pick up the trash or clean the tables. "ME! ME! ME!", they all scream!)