The story: Rainbow Fish is different and the other fish aren't very nice until they get to know him in all his glittery glory. Did you know he wrote a second story, 'Rainbow Fish to the Rescue'? We have some fun, preschool companion book activities for both here. Rainbow Fish is the perfect theme for preschool curriculum.
Marcus Fister's Rainbow Fish. Fun theme for preschool.
Scrap Paper Rainbow Fish Craft for preschool.
We made this fish from our scrap paper box. You can photocopy a picture of Rainbow Fish to use as a pattern. Tip: Use Wrapping Paper scraps to make a sparkly Rainbow Fish Craft. Recommended Reading: Aquarium Craft Activities Fishing Activity
Have you ever tried it with a room full of little people under the age of two? What a fun experience, it takes a roomful of parents to keep everyone on target. And, a room full of early elementary age children isn't much easier, if you're lucky they might stay on their squares, but keeping everyone silent at the same time is nearly a feat of wizardry.
Paper Birthday Party Hat Ideas for School Hat Day: Caps for Sale
Make your own fun caps for your elementary school hat day, a birthday party activity, or to celebrate with a Saint Patrick's Day Parade. You could even use them as a companion project for the book Caps for Sale. Enjoy!
Make a silly hat for a birthday party or
a leprechaun wig for a parade from construction paper.
Make a construction paper hat base by following the Daisy Head Mayzie Hat instructions. Then, cut strips of paper, curl the ends around a pencil, and glue or tape to cover the paper hat band with silly hair. Ta da! Now, you've got a fun hat for a parade or school hat day.
Caps for Sale book.
We adapted this book for a mini-drama camp and had so much fun pretending to be sneaky monkeys! Companion printables for Caps for Sale:
ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)
Preschool art activities don't have to be all finger painting and paper plate crafts. We've collected some art activities for preschoolers that include sensory fun. Read on for easy preschool art activities that are destined to become mini masterpieces.
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Art activities for preschoolers.
Bubble Painting is a fun, sensory way to introduce your preschooler to art. They can experiment with color mixing, layering, and layout. Scoot on over to Kelly Noel's Living the Dream blog for more details.
Bubble Painting Preschool Art Activity from Living the Dream.
Another fun way for preschoolers to experience sensory art activities is to let them play with food coloring and shaving cream. Skip over to our post on how to paint with shaving cream.
Coffee Filter Mobiles. All preschool teachers adore coffee filter crafts. Remember the days of the milk carton crafts? Wonder what we'll all switch to when coffee filters become a thing of the past? These coffee filter and cardboard paper towel tube painted mobiles are self-explanatory. We found them posted here but are sure they originated somewhere else. Please leave a comment if you know the original source.
Coffee Filter Mobile Preschool Art Activity.
Art, like sensory play, develops critical thinking skills and hand eye coordination. Click here to learn about how art can aid in brain development.
Handprint and footprint art is a staple in the world of preschool. Introduce your preschoolers to Pointillism with these beautiful fall handprint trees from Arty Crafty Kids.
Handprint Tree Preschool Activity from Arty Crafty Kids.
The Jammy Jigsaw offers up an art activity for preschoolers that serves double duty as a science project. This salt dough bone necklace is the perfect companion art project for a lesson on dinosaurs.
Salt Dough Bone Necklace Art Activity for Preschoolers from The Jammy Jigsaw.
Have a Spooky Sleepover: Pajama Reading Party with Candy Corn S'mores Recipe
It's easy to plan a spooky sleepover with a Scholastics story and EVEREADY® Gold batteries in your flashlights! We decided to plan our spooky pajama party around fun Halloween books for kids! "We picked some fun spooky books and decided on a Candy Corn S'more Recipe as the perfect companion snack! There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat" by Jared Lee, "Splat the Cat" by Rob Scotton, and "Ten Timid Ghosts" by Jennifer O'Connell. Read on to learn more about the best sleepover ever! *This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of EVEREADY®. The opinions and text are all mine. It contains affiliate links.
Have a pajama sleepover with spooky Scholastic Books and EVEREADY® Gold.
Spooky Book for early readers, Scholastics, Ten Timid Ghosts.
Before the party, we gathered supplies for our craft, snack, and pajama party tent. The kitchen nook worked best, because it has room for a large, family-size tent. We used the walls and bench to construct a tent from one of our favorite blankets. Mommy filled a basket with books, juice packs, popcorn, and flashlights. Then, we created some, super cute edible crafts- with a ghost theme of course. Candy Corn S'mores!
Candy Corn Smores Recipe: Make S'mores with candy corn and candy corn marshmallows.
For our Candy Corn S'mores recipe, we used graham crackers, candy corn marshmallows, candy corn, and chocolate chips to make our S'mores. They were the best S'mores we ever had! Messy, but delicious. While our sleepover snacks were baking in the toaster oven, we started the spooky ghost craft. We used cheesecloth, Styrofoam cups, and buttons to make a Halloween Ghost craft.
Spooky ghosts from Styrofoam cups.
After reading the story, Mayhem wanted to make a bat too. So, we cut out a pattern that looks like the bat on the cover of the book. To make our bat you only need scissors, construction paper, and glue. If you want to make an outdoor Halloween decoration, before cutting, cover your paper with Duct Tape in coordinating colors. The duct tape will make a durable Halloween decoration for your door. While we enjoyed reading stories to each other and making shadow puppets on the walls, we had some surprise guests! They wanted to hear about Splat the Cat, and they wanted to chase the lights from our EVEREADY® Flashlights!
Curious cats crash our pajama party!
Educational Element for Homeschooling We wanted to count this experience as school, so we found a free printable story starter and Lesson Plans for, There Was an Old Lady, on Scholastic's website. From the list of lesson plans, we also chose to try the edible estimations. This is a fun math lesson for kids where you compare the things the old lady ate with similar weighing objects around the house or classroom and then calculate the grand total of everything she ate. The EVEREADY® website has free printables to help plan for a disaster.
Grab your favorite Scholastic books, and EVEREADY® flashlights and get reading! When you purchase 2 special marked packs of EVEREADY® Gold Batteries or EVEREADY® flashlights, you can redeem them for a free book. How fun is that? It must be time to go to sleep, our guests are yawning!
Hey lady, don't shine that light in my eyes!
Where are my pajamas? Those stories made me sleepy!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of EVEREADY®. The opinions and text are all mine. Recommended Reading:
Henri Matisse was best known as an abstract artist. He aligned himself with a small group of artists known as Fauvists or Wild Beasts. Unlike other painters during this era, he painted with bold colors and took risks with his art. Matisse called his cut paper art posters, painting and drawing with scissors So, how do you paint like Henri Matisse? With paper cut-outs, of course.
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The Cut Outs or Painting with Paper are part of the Matisse Jazz Series. Matisse created a few artists’ books, many were made in 1941 after he suffered with intestinal cancer. With this technique, he was able to stay in bed and still create art.
Henri Matisse Paper Cut Outs Video for Students.
The painting of the figure with stars around it is one of the most well-known in his Jazz series. The book is made up of circus and theater theme posters made with cut and pasted brightly colored papers that are printed using a stencil technique known as pochoir. Most of the images in the Jazz series are done in primary colors.
You may have seen a similar cut paper technique in a series of children's books painted and illustrated by Eric Carle. Carle was influenced by the works of Matisse and other abstract artists. Here's an art lesson on Eric Carle. You can also experiment with Eric Carle's technique of wet paper illustration with this lesson, how to paint like Eric Carle.
With his cut paper art, Matisse invented a new form of art, the cut-out. He called this new art form drawing with scissors. He cut out various geometric and organic shapes and arranged them on his gouache painted canvas to illustrate his books. He also hand wrote about each image in cursive rather than using a type setting. This style is similar to today's scrap booking. You can create your own book that has meaning to your life with this simple, inspired by Matisse, technique.
Paint Like Matisse
Supplies Needed:
Mixed Media Paper,18 x 24"
Tempera or Acrylic Paint in primary colors
Wide Paint Brush
Brightly Colored Copy Paper
Glue Stick
Subject Matter that is Meaningful
We decided to take inspiration from the Jazz poster's cover painting. Using the same primary color scheme, we added secondary colors in orange and violet. There are not lines or any drawing on the art work; everything is done in paper cut outs. Remember, it is abstract art! Use shapes and meaningful colors to represent your subject matter. Our paper painting represents a family pet. Our Cockatiel, Nebu, died at the age of twenty-three. Squinting your eyes while looking at a cockatiel will allow you to see his basic features, yellow spiked crest and orange cheek. The heart represents how close he was to our hearts, and the violet squiggles represent his wings in motion. They can also represent a flutter or the beating of his heart.
While you're planning your design think about the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design. How many can you use? Ours has color, line, shape, space, balance, movement, contrast, emphasis, and harmony. Do you see more? In the comments below, tell us what you see.
MATISSE ABSTRACT ART LESSON PLAN
Painting with Scissors and Paper Cut Outs: How to Paint Like Henri Matisse
Step one: Come up with a subject matter that means something to you.
Step two: Sketch it out in your sketch book.
Step three: Think about it in an abstract way.
Step four: Do a thumbnail sketch changing your drawing into basic shapes.
Step five: Paint your paper background in a primary color or black.
Step six: Cut out your shapes.
Step seven: Arrange your shapes on the paper. Think about the Principles of Design, especially balance and unity. Shapes should be abstract, and it shouldn't be immediately obvious what the picture represents (not realistic.) See our student examples below. No drawing! Remember, you are painting with paper.
Step eight: Paste them into position. Tip: Do not use school glue, it bubbles up. Glue sticks work best.
Step nine: That's it! It's that simple to paint like Henri Matisse!
These are student examples from the NCHS Intro to 2D Art class. You may not use these images or reproduce them anywhere else. They are for educational purposes only.
If you want to try this project with preschoolers or elementary students, you may also like to add some books to your Matisse art lesson plans. The books below make excellent companion books for a lesson on Henri Matisse's painting with scissors abstract poster series. Don't forget to read your students some Eric Carle books and remind them that he was influenced by Matisse.
Saint Patrick Day Activities for Kids Boys will Love
The Leprechauns have a parade and an Irish Feast in this Saint Patrick's Day Leprechaun book for kids. "The St. Patrick's Day parade is off to a very fine start. The Leprechaun family is marching with lots of heart! Share in their dancing, share in their fun. You'll have the luck of the Irish when this day is done!" Read the companion book and then do fun St. Patrick's Day activities and crafts. Enjoy!
Share in the Leprechaun joy and make your own St. Patrick's Day Parade with our fun ideas. Here are five, fun and clever ideas that even the most un-crafty boys will love from fellow pinners on Pinterest.
ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)
Circle Games and Activities for Youth: Camp Songs and More
Camp Songs always bring back the best memories! Circle Time isn't just for preschoolers! Circle Activities and Games are fun for teens too. If you're planning activities for an after school program, summer camp, scouts, or youth group, these school-aged circle camp activities make nice icebreakers. We've used these group circle games and songs to welcome kids to camp, introduce each other, and as a way to make attendance and head counts fun.
This holiday homeschool math lesson for first grade, is a fun learning game for tangrams. What's in Santa's hat? Tangrams! And, yes... I realize tangram is misspelled on some of the images and printables. Who knew? Everyone here says, "TanAgrams". So, if you do too, now you know the correct spelling is T-A-N-G-R-A-M. Enjoy!
What's in Santa's Hat? Tangram game for elementary!
Shh, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. In March, Santa is a leprechaun. That's right, he just changes his clothes to green and dyes his hair and beard red.You can do it too!
It makes the perfect classroom activity for sitting quietly at your desk, or use it at the dinner table to keep the kids busy while you finish preparing dinner.
Click on the images below for printable templates or right click and save to computer to print. The latter way might not come out the right size- it is best to click to our MediaFire storage. Then, trace and cut out all shapes. When sewing or gluing, leave the top of the hat band open to insert the hat/napkin. I also used the face (just glued the sides) to make the storage space larger.
Santa printable traceable pattern .
Click the image for Santa Template to download.
So, oops I misspelled tangram on my printables. Don't make the same mistake!
Tangram Pattern, that's right tangram. Watch your spelling.
ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)
Fun Things to do With Chicken Nuggets: Make a Pasta Skeleton
What fun things do you do with chicken nuggets for Halloween? The kids love pasta and chicken nuggets, so we decided to combine the two into a pasta skeleton with a chicken nugget skull. Enjoy!
We played around with food to decide what food would make the best face and still taste good with the chicken nuggets. We settled on pickle faces. Nothing goes better with nuggets than ketchup and pickles- at least that's what the kids say.
Things to do with Chicken Nuggets. Make some fun pickle faces.
How to Make Pasta Skeletons with Chicken Nuggets
Fun Things to do With Chicken Nuggets: Make a Pasta Skeleton.
Bake the nuggets in the oven according to package directions.
Boil 1 C. Penne and 1/2 C. Rotini according to package directions. Add your favorite Pasta sauce. Serve with chicken nuggets with pickle smiles.
Create pasta skeletons or other fun creatures. Playing with food makes it more fun to eat!
Chicken Nuggets Pasta Skeleton Recipe.
*This is NOT a sponsored post.
Recommended: Skeleton Companion Book* Mini Chicken Sandwiches Holiday Receipes and Activities* from Kids Creative Chaos Cooks ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Chitika, Google Adsense, and Social Spark ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)
Cardboard Toilet Tubes turned Holiday Hats How many rolls of toilet paper do you go though each month? We've got to recycle that ca...
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