K Club-Art

Today was my second K Club program and we chose art as our theme. If you would like to know more about K Club, check out my first post.

The Books
As a group we read 2 stories:

• The Art Teacher from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler
• Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh with a flannelboard

We also did a prop story of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Paint Brush.  The prop story set up our craft of a collage.

The Special Guest
I was fortunate in that one of our staff members is in her last semester of an art major at a local university.  Miss Brenna brought a number of her paintings, including 1 made by blowing paint through a straw, 1 made by drawing in juice, a charcoal drawing of blocks, and 1 with different textures that the kids could touch.

The Craft
We made our own insect collages.  Lakeshore Learning sells cardboard shapes that make a sturdy background for holding collage materials.  (I will admit that I did have to run out yesterday afternoon to buy these because I couldn't find our original peel-and-stick collage boards that I had ordered).  As for materials, you can use anything-scraps, stickers, feathers, sequins, tissue paper, foam shapes, etc.  Many years ago, we bought a collage kit to supplement our supplies.  I pulled our crinkle paper, feathers, sequins, and foam shapes out of there.  I grabbed our leftover stickers from previous crafts this summer.  I also found many bottles of half-empty glitter glue.  It does help if you pass out paper plates for the kids to carry their creations home on.  Many are wet and the plates give the kids a place to hold.

Afterthoughts
The program ended up being about 45 minutes.  Both the collage and the special guest were a big hit.  Many of the parents had their phone cameras out taking pictures of the program.  Unfortunately, this was our last K Club for the summer as this was our trial period.  It will definitely be back next summer and I have our community relations specialist already looking for more community members who can be special guests!