Handprint Apple Trees

We made handprint apple trees during our week of talking about food that comes from trees.  We had wondered if any of the littles would be really opposed to having their hands painted, but only one did not want to do this project. 

We painted their hands with green tempera paint and used 3-4 handprints for the "crown" of the tree.  Then we let them each paint a trunk with brown tempera paint.  After these dried overnight, we used corks and red tempera paint to add apples to the trees.  These turned out really cute!!  

More than just a box

So, I have to confess something:  I have a thing for cardboard boxes.  I have my youngest son to thank for this little affinity.   From a very young age, he has wanted to keep nearly every box that enters our home.  He always has great plans for the boxes and uses his imagination and creativity to make wonderful projects with them.  We have gone through many cardboard "treasures" over the years.  For more amazing cardboard inspiration, be sure to check out Caine's Arcade.  I discovered this over the summer and it is worth seeing.  Pretty amazing stuff.

Given this cardboard passion of mine, it should come as no surprise that I happily acquired a large cardboard box from our school custodian last week.  The conversation went something like this:

Ken:  (walking down the stairs as I was walking up)  Do you want this box?
Miss Moritz:  (hearing Ken) No.
Mrs. Lambert (that's me!):  YES!!!!!!  I totally want that box.  Give it to me right now.
Ken:  What are you going to do with it?
Me:  I don't know yet.  Something awesome.

Since we have been studying trees, I immediately decided that we needed to make a tree-house/tree fort with the box.  So, the next day I plopped that bad boy in the middle of our art table and let the littles go to town painting it with brown paint.  It was interesting how my morning and afternoon class approached this task quite differently.  My morning littles were excited about painting the box, but lost interest in it quickly.  My afternoon littles, on the other hand, were quite determined to cover the remaining "tan" areas of the box with the brown paint and worked the entire centers time on painting it.  I was happy to overhear one little say to another little, while painting, "We're having a great day, aren't we, Charlie?"  This innocent little comment reminded me of how much we all (bigs and littles alike) love to be swept up in a project.  It makes us feel important and vital.  It fuels our energy and our souls.

Miss Moritz (our resident artiste) generously decided to take the box home for the weekend after the littles painted the sides and top.  She put the finishing touches on the box and turned it into an amazing playspace that I'm sure the littles will enjoy very much over the next couple of weeks.

So, the next several photos illustrate the evolution of the box.  The littles had fun slapping brown paint all over it.  And the afternoon littles voted to determine what color the doors of the fort would be painted (purple!).  I used a box cutter to cut a little flap into the side where they can peek out.  This has upped the fun factor quite tremendously.  This little fort has been rocking from all the play action it has had!!

Apple Scented Playdough

I love to make homemade playdough for the littles and have my go-to recipe which is the cooked one with flour, salt, water, oil, and cream of tartar (plus add-ins like glitter, scents, food coloring).  I came across a "tweak" to this recipe on Pinterest that I knew would be perfect for us this week since we are learning about what kinds of food comes from trees.  The genius ingredient for making amazing apple-scented playdough is......... apple shampoo.  Who knew???  CLICK HERE for the recipe.  I was super happy with this playdough.  It is very, very soft and smells AH-Mazing.  The littles loved playing with it. 

We used our apple playdough on some apple tree playdough mats that I found HERE and printed and laminated.

Our Classroom Tree

We are still studying trees.  I challenged Mrs. DeNier and Miss Moritz to create a 3D tree on our classroom wall.  (Truth:  I wanted the tree but didn't want to do it myself.)  They did a FABULOUS job.   Luckily we have die-cut machines in our school (spoiled!!), so we punched out a bunch of shapes from various colors of construction paper.  Then, I put out plates with blobs of tempera paint in fall colors and let the littles go to town painting their fall leaves.  We use vinyl floor tiles to contain our painting and playdough projects.  This works really well!!

Here is what our tree looked like with one lonely little leaf on it. 

After adding our painted leaves, the littles made ladybugs (one of the stories in our curriculum is The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle) to live in our tree.  They turned out so cute.

Here is our tree with ladybugs and fall leaves.  We will make some more leaves to add as well as some other creatures to live in the tree.  We're thinking about leaving the tree up all year.  After the leaves "fall", we can add snow to the branches for winter and maybe make some cardinals and chickadees to live in it.  We'll see.  Oh, the possibilities!!

The next photo shows our class owl, Hooty, hanging out in the tree.  I bought him at the Target Dollar Spot.  We LOVE him so much.  He is way cute, and really fun for the littles to push around in the shopping cart, 'cuz his legs stick out way long.  :-)

Can you spot Hooty in the tree?

Drawing Leaves on the Tree

To reinforce our learning about the parts of a tree (roots, trunk, crown), I drew a tree on our dry-erase board as the children watched.  I talked out loud as I drew and mentioned that they could draw a tree themselves at the art tables during centers time.  I started by drawing the "ground" line, then added the roots below.  Then the trunk and then the branches.  I allowed each child to come up one at a time and add leaves to the "crown" of the tree.  Not only did this make the lesson more interactive, it gave them some important fine motor practice.  For some of the littles, simply removing the lid of the dry erase marker and putting it back on when finished is a challenge.  Finding a branch and drawing a leaf on it requires not only fine motor coordination, but also visual-motor processing.  It was interesting to see how each child approached this task.  Below you can see a photo of the tree after all the littles drew leaves on it.

Painting with trees!!

One of the suggested projects in the Creative Curriculum Trees unit is using tree parts as painting props.  I found some sprigs of evergreen on a tree near our school and broke them off.  To make them easier to manipulate for painting, I attached clothespins to the end of them for the children to hold onto.  I also provided each child a paper plate with white tempera paint.  They then used the evergreen sprigs as brushes to paint on colored construction paper.  The end result was really pretty, and different for every child.  As you can see in the photos below, we use vinyl floor tiles under our art projects.  This serves to not only keep our tables clean, but also defines the "work space" for each child.  I got my tiles by putting a request on Facebook for free tiles.  This is a great way to get the things you need for your classroom.  Social media has its benefits.

In hindsight, the only thing I would do differently with this activity is tape the papers down on the tiles OR use smaller sprigs of evergreen.  The huge sprigs I found were so big they kind of made the paper slide around when the kids tried to paint.  It still worked okay, but would have been even better if the paper were stabilized.

Tree Sculptures

As part of our study of Trees with our Creative Curriculum, we made tree sculptures.  This is a really simple art project.  I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere, probably Pinterest, but I don't have a link for you.  And I did not take photos of the materials or how we structured this activity.  Basically, you need toilet paper rolls for the trunks.  You can have your students paint the trunks, but we chose to have them color with brown markers instead.  We provided pre-cut "crowns" made out of white cardstock.  They used dot markers to add "leaves" to the crowns.  By cutting two adjacent slits in the top of the toilet paper roll, we were able to slide the "crowns" into the trunks and have an upright tree when finished.  These turned out really cute.  I clustered them on top of our sand table to take the photo below.  We then used the photo as a backdrop for Speedy Jones Turbo (and friends).  Currently, our little trees are on display in the hallway outside our classroom, right above our coathooks.

Parts of a Tree Collage

Our school district uses the Creative Curriculum for all our preschool classrooms.  This is a new curriculum for me.  I am finding that I like it, but it will probably take me all of this year to fully utilize all the resources and to get a handle on how to best implement it with my littles.  One thing I do really like is that there are unit studies which span approximately six weeks.  This allows you to really immerse in a topic and to explore many different aspects of the topic in depth.  We are currently about two weeks into our study of trees. 

During one of the "Investigations" of our unit, we introduce the children to the three main parts of a tree:  roots, trunk and crown (which includes the branches, twigs and leaves).  There are several projects suggested in the curriculum itself, but I came up with my own collage project to reinforce the concept of the parts of a tree.   Using yarn for roots, real twigs for trunks, and crumpled tissue paper for the crown, my students made their own three-dimensional "trees".  This project was a good way for me to assess their understanding of the vocabulary of this unit as I was able to point to the parts of their collage and ask them to name each part.

While the academic skills of naming the parts of a tree was a major focus of this art project, many other skills were practiced during this activity.  For example, for the littles with fine motor issues, the process of squeezing glue to put onto the paper is a hand and finger-strengthening exercise.  Additionally, carefully placing small pieces of yarn for the roots works on pincer grasp and using the finger muscles.  Crumpling squares of tissue paper into balls also works on those skills.  When you stop and think about it, it's kind of amazing all the various learning that takes place within a simple art project.  

Please enjoy the photo gallery below.  It is so fun and interesting to see the different variations of this project.  I just love littles art projects!!  SO MUCH!!!