preschool art | Adventures of Four

Preschool Museum of Art

Cutie Pie’s preschool art and music program was this morning. In true creative style, the mom who usually plans the event outdid herself. It was truly a thing to behold. I have lots of pictures to share but they simply don’t do justice to how cool it was. I don’t know what could possibly be done to top it next year…

The show began at 11 AM in the church sanctuary where the children assembled to sing lots of fun springtime/Mother’s Day/Father’s Day songs.

The preciousness was almost too much to handle. *sigh*

After the music portion was complete we met up with Cutie Pie at his class table in the fellowship hall. There waiting for us were lots of fun Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts that Cutie Pie had made.

We made our way out into the hall to see Cutie Pie’s class art display in the art gallery. Each class had an 8′ table and an 8′ x 4′ board on which to display all of their artistic treasures. It was amazing to see what all of the children have made over the school year!

This year, the food was set up outside on the breezeway between the chapel and the church administration building. Each snack was staged to look like famous paintings. Ingenious, I say!

There was a photo op for the girls and a photo op for the boys set up on the lawn near the iced coffee and punch table.

One of the newest features of this year’s art show was the sculpture garden. I take credit for this idea and I also took a lot of crap from some very stressed out teachers who did not want to participate. In the end, everyone managed came up with a class sculpture for the garden. I was amazed by how lovely and different all the pieces turned out!!! For all of their complaining, the teachers ended up thinking the garden was a nice addition to the art show.

Cutie Pie’s class worked with a local artist (who happens to also be one of the student’s grandmother) to create Tilly the sea turtle. It took the class many work sessions over a couple of months to create the sculpture from paper mache and I think it turned out beautifully!!!

In the end, I managed to survive not one but two heartwarming/heart wrenching performances this week. My little boys are growing up in the blink of an eye. What can I do to slow this down? I simply don’t like this brutal march of time.

Spring Fling 2011

Cutie Pie’s preschool Spring Fling was on Friday. Another mom and I were in charge of planning this event this year which made the entire week leading up to it totally stressful for me. It was especially awful because I spent several days fielding personal phone calls about when each age group was scheduled to come out to enjoy the field day… The preschool director typically handles communication between the parent volunteers and the teachers. This year, however, the director failed to come to the two planning meetings I hosted and also failed to read my meeting minutes in which I detailed the timing for each age group. She never told the teachers the time line so I ended up having both parents and teachers calling my home to ask… For a person who hates talking on the phone it was a hell.

Enough of my complaining though! The Spring Fling came together beautifully despite all of my fears and worries. It always comes together with more help from eager volunteers than I could ever hope for. Have I mentioned that I love Cutie Pie’s preschool? The parents and teachers are wonderful!

This year we had six stations for the children to take turns exploring: bubbles, marble painting, spray art, an obstacle course, lemonade and cookie stand and face painting! The children came out by age group with the toddlers being first, then the threes and, finally, the fours. Each group had 45-minutes which ended up being plenty of time for them to relax and enjoy themselves.

What went down at the bubble station is probably pretty self-explanatory. We had several bubble machines going and lots of trays and cups of bubble solution. The children could choose from bubble wands of every size. This station was quite popular!

At the marble art station, the children got to choose the paint colors they wanted to squeeze onto the paper. The paper was set into a box top to keep the mess contained. Once the paint was squirted onto the paper the children were able to drop a few marbles or bouncy balls onto it. Tilting the box to roll the balls through the paint produced some wonderfully gorgeous art work!

An obstacle course ran down the center of the yard. The toddlers weren’t so much interested in the doing the activities in the sequence they were designed but that was ok. It was all about the exercise and fun. The older children waited in line and took turns. Everyone got a “superstar” gold medal at the end!

There was a snack station set up with lots of yummy sugar cookies and ice cold lemonade and water.

We filled up spray bottles with colored water and let the kids spray the colors onto a long paper sheet. We had to mix a bit of tempura paint into the water because food coloring did not make the water dark enough to show up on the brown paper we used as a canvas…

Of course, face painting is always a hit. One of the volunteer moms was fabulous at it! She created some beautiful lady bugs, Easter eggs and flowers. Some kids went back to have both cheeks and hands painted 🙂

It was a lovely yet stressful morning for me. I couldn’t have done it without all the wonderful volunteers who showed up. I’m working on a special thank you for them that I will share with you in a bit.

Today is the first day of Spring Break and it’s raining! Argh! What are we going to do?!