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!

K Club-Music

Background
The idea for this program came out of a presentation by staff from the Kalamazoo Public Library at a conference last year.  They do a family story time with special guests.  I thought that this sounded like great fun (while I was mentally making a list of who could come to one at our library).  I had also had been looking for a way to add some sort of programming that is just for kindergartners.  We seem to do a lot of programs for young kids and for older kids, but sometimes we have to work harder to find ones for those middle kids.

What is K Club?
K Club is a Kindergarten story time (we include those going into or leaving Kindergarten).  It is a summer program since many of our Kindergartens are full-day programs.  Every program has a theme and some sort of special guest.  We read stories and do a craft, still working on our early literacy skills.

The Books
In today's program, we read 2 books:

• Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett
• I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello by Barbara Garriel (we also had the props that were in the 2009 Get Creative summer reading program manual)

The Special Guest
For our first special guest, I did luck out.  I convinced my brother, who is a local high school band teacher, that he really wanted to do this (or at least that I would owe him for his help).  He brought a trumpet, a trombone, and a tuba with him to demonstrate the different sounds and to play music on.  The trumpet was handed around the room so all of the kids could push the valves.  He was a big hit!

The Craft
Discount School Supply sold a great kit with all of the pieces included (it was definitely better than anything that I would have come up with using paper towel tubes and rice).  Other than setting out parts, there was nothing for me to prepare.

Afterthoughts
The music theme was great.  The kids almost had more fun with the special guest today than reading the books.  I had asked him to talk for 5 minutes or until the kids got squirrelly and he was still going at 15 minutes with the kids paying attention.  I did start to wonder what other music programs I could do with this age group as they really got into it.

Flannel Friday-Mouse Paint

Today I did a Kindergarten story time on art and was able to do Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh in flannelboard form.  It is one of my favorite classic stories as you can use the story for mice, colors, or art story times.

All of the pieces are created out of fun foam.  The pattern for all of the pieces is here.  This allowed me to add more detail with permanent markers.  The eyes are all googly eyes.  The paint jars and the painted mice are dipped in actual paint (nothing else made it look like real paint).

The story starts off with 3 white mice and 1 cat.

The 3 white mice dip themselves in paint-1 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue.

The colorful mice step in other blobs of paint to create new colors.  The red mouse steps in yellow to create orange.  The yellow mouse steps in blue to create green.  The blue mouse steps in red to create purple.

The 3 messy mice wash off in the cat's bowl before they paint with paintbrushes.



Retelling Mouse Paint on a flannelboard does require practice.  This is one of those stories where you won't want all of the pieces on at the same time or it will be distracting.  As you start each new part of the story (falling in the paint, mixing the paint, and washing the paint off), you will want to pull off the previous pieces.

This week's Flannel Friday is being hosted by Kay at Storytime ABC's.