One thing that I love about the “project table” in the corner of the living room is the ability it gives me to present art or craft projects and then see how the children interact with them!
I’m trying to do one a week or so- partly because we need some variety to help keep things going at this time of year and partly because I have accumulated so many art supplies over the years that I feel like we should use them!
This week I thought we should acknowledge the recent weather with a chalk “rubbing ” style snowflake piece.
Preparation:
I keep craft sticks around so I split a couple of wide ones into small sticks with a razor blade. These went into the loose parts tray along with a selection of small pieces of white chalk.
I then made a sample of a snowflake while the little boys watched and hung it on the board for them.
In order to make snowflakes we put one stick at a time under the paper and rubbed the chalk across the resulting bump. Then chose a different length stick or turned the original stick at an angle to the first stick to create the desired effect.
The idea of drawing with chalk on paper was fascinating and the little boys and Mouse spent quite a bit of time with this project.
There was a good bit of discussion on the differences between snowflakes and I think the children plan to try to catch some individual flakes next time it snows so they can look at them more closely.