Circle Paintings

Anyone who knows our preschool knows that we are not the "stay inside the lines" kind of school.  We like children to explore outside the box.  This is especially true when it comes to creative expression like in art, dance, music, dramatic play, or storytelling.  Our kids have a really healthy sense of how to explore the infinite range of possibilities and ideas within a given parameter.  (For instance, dance all you want inside, but when it becomes a run-around-the-room-fest, we bring it back to what's appropriate to do indoors).

So on Friday during the painting activity when I handed out white pieces of paper with black circles drawn on them, I held no expectation that children would color within the circle, or make an intricate mandala, or draw a face, or anything like that.  It was simply to see where the children would take it.  (I fully expected at least one child to figure out that if you turn it over, you have a "clean" side, but no one did).  Other ways we have changed the dimensionality of a simple painting project is to cut the paper into a shape, or cut a shape out of the paper to create negative space.  (Maybe we'll do that with hearts on Valentine's Day!)

Here's what they did (these are posted in time sequence so you can sort of see how they evolved):

 *Stephanie*