The Out School is an attempt to explore a new design vocabulary for pre-primary schools. The aesthetics, spatial planning and the architectural detailing is a direct response to the constraints that revolved around this project.

Help your preschooler practice tracing line patterns with this beach line pattern tracing worksheet.

So here's my first attempt at some sort of craft. It seems a little random, but I'm part of a pre-school co-op and I was in charge ...

Free printable picture tracing worksheets for preschool! This set of tracing worksheets features a fun picture for students to trace and color in! These pre k tracing worksheets are just right for little ones to build important fine motor control skills. Each tracing worksheet features a seasonal scene for students to trace. These are great for building pre-handwriting skills needed for the kindergarten school year.

I finally got around to trying out the popular "Mondrian Animals" lesson. I originally saw it in "Arts & Activities" magazine by art teacher Berniece Patterson - find the lesson plan HERE. It's a great project for those on a budget because it uses very simple supplies: white paper, regular water-based markers and a ruler. I started off by showing kids a slideshow of Mondrian's famous squares and rectangles art. We talked about the colours used, why he might have limited his colour palette and if they thought his artwork would be easy to create or not (seeing as it's so simple.) His style of art is considered 'non-representational'. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) Composition C (no.III), with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 Kids started off by drawing a simplified outline of an animal of their choice. They were instructed not to include any details within the body other than a simple eye. The, using a ruler, they drew horizontal and vertical parallel lines within the animal body. Keeping the lines parallel proved to be quite a challenge for them!! I find that students rarely use rulers (for drawing straight lines at least) these days in class, and it shows during art class!! Once all the lines were drawn, students coloured in some of the shapes using Mondrian-esque colours of red, yellow and blue with touches of black. The last step was to use the ruler again to trace over all the lines with a thick black marker.

Amazing under the sea decorations. Perfect inspiration for your VBS, mermaid, or under the sea party. Make a coral reef, fish wall, seaweed. Entertain in style

I have a super talented Art teacher colleague at my school who teaches the youngest students: Kindergarten and Grade 1. She always has fabulous art projects and I wanted to share some of her Halloween

Residential schools were church-run schools where approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children were sent between the 1860s and the 1990s. The schools harmed Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forcing them to speak English or French instead of their ancestral languages, disconnecting them from their culture and traditions and forcing them to adopt Christianity in order to assimilate into Canadian society. Many of the children were abused. The government has since acknowledged that this approach was wrong, cruel and ineffective, and offered an official apology to the Indigenous people of Canada in 2008. Orange Shirt Day was started in 2013 by residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, who went to a residential school in Williams Lake, British Columbia. The day is named after an experience she had on her first day of school when she was just six years old. She arrived wearing a new orange shirt that her grandmother had bought her, but school staff stripped it from her. To Phyllis, the colour orange has always reminded her of her experiences at residential school and, as she has said, “how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.” The event takes place on Sept. 30 every year because it’s the day that many Indigenous children were forced to leave their homes. The message that Phyllis wants to pass along on Orange Shirt Day — and every day — is that every child matters. Orange Shirt Day was started by Phyllis to educate people about residential schools and fight racism and bullying. Many schools across Canada now recognize Orange Shirt Day. All students and staff wear an orange shirt. This year, every homeroom in our school received a large t-shirt cut out of orange poster board. My class (Grade 6) went with the idea of "Students at school should feel...." They brainstormed different words. I printed out a template of feather shapes. I used the template found HERE from the Wedding Chicks website. Then tinted them a natural colour using liquid watercolours. Students wrote their words on the feathers and cut them out. I then glued them all over the t-shirt. Please visit https://www.orangeshirtday.org/ for more ideas on how to get involved in this day.

Here is one of my favourite lessons: Cave Art. These were created by 6th grade students. We looked at the famous Caves of Lascaux, in France and watched a Youtube video about them. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. They consist mostly of primitive images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. The images include bison, bulls, horses, mammoths, etc. The caves were discovered by chance in 1941 by French teenager Marcel Ravidat, and his three friends. They found a hole in the ground while exploring a forest and Marcel climbed down into it- this tunnel led to the caves. The boys initially kept the caves a secret, but soon told their teacher about it, as they knew him to be interested in archaeology and prehistoric art. From then on, the caves became famous around the world. The original caves are now closed to the public (due to deterioration of the paintings cause by too many visitors), but the French authorities have recreated the caves nearby which are supposedly very realistic. You can visit an excellent online version here: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/?lng=en#/fr/00.xml (You get to take a virtual tour through the caves and listen to soothing music too! lol) I hung up large cave art posters for the kids to refer to. They are called "Lascaux Cave Art Prints" which were ordered from the company Crystal Productions. It also comes with a DVD. What I find so fascinating about these caves is that you can see extinct animals such as the mammoth and animals not typical for the area today (hyenas, lions, panthers, woolly rhinoceroses, in France!) Lascaux may be one of the more famous sites for cave art in the world, but of course, there are many others including the '"Cave of Swimmers" in the Sahara Desert and the Chauvet Cave in southern France. A documentary called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams", by Werner Herzog, was recently made about these caves. There's also the Cave of Altamira in Spain. Here's an interesting video of the rock art found in the 'Cave of Swimmers' (made famous in the movie "The English Patient".) These painted caves in Egypt were 'discovered' (the local Bedouins already knew about them) by the Hungarian explorer László Almásy in October 1933. They are unusual in that they depict many human figures swimming, which shows that the Sahara Desert once had lakes and water. To recreate cave walls, we used brown butcher paper and scrunched it up a bunch of times to make it nice and textural. We also added transparent washes of brown-ish tempera paint to give it even more depth. Then, using chalk pastels, we added more texture lines (cracks, irregularities on the cave walls) using dark brown and black chalk. Blend, blend, blend. Then students made a stylized stencil of an animal(s) out of cardstock. They freehand drew these and looked at the posters for inspiration. Then stencil (use a pouncing up-and-down motion with a round brush) these onto the background paper using natural colored tempera paint. Paleolithic artists have five main colors at their disposal: yellow, red, brown, black and white. White is more rare, but it is seen at Lascaux cave. The colours used were produced from ochre (reds and yellows), manganese dioxide (violet and black) and charcoal (black). These minerals were pulverized on stone palettes and mixed with animal fat to moisten them before they were applied with the fingers, bone spatulae or brushes. (source) Here's an example of an animal stencil- just use scrap card or old file folders. (My kids use paper palettes as they don't require cleaning afterwards!) Nice variety of colours and use of overlapping.... Great sense of motion in this one!

This was a collaborative project I did with one of the Science teachers at my school. He was teaching his kids about food chains and wa...

This was a fun and creative lesson the very popular gym teacher at my school did with the kids during the last week of classes before the holidays. He laid in the center of the gym lots of different equipment. Students were put into groups of about 4 and had to go up one at a time and take one object and then work as a group to make a holiday composition. The were allowed a certain number of items in total; if they wanted something different they had to go back and exchange one of their pieces :) It was really sweet watching the kids work together to make their compositions. This is a sled with the presents in the bag :) all the gym equipment A snowman Christmas tree Another snowman This is a landscape: we have the sky at the top, a chimney on the left with Santa coming down with all his presents :)

Tracing Shapes! Students will have so much fun practicing tracing skills with these tracing shapes FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES. These super-simple fine motor activities require almost no prep and are sure to keep your fine motor center FUN and ENGAGING any time of year! Simply print, laminate and provide your students with dry erase markers to keep those little hands, busy tracing and drawing. Students will trace each shape. There are two sets included: one with large simple shapes, and one with smaller shapes for multiple attempts at each shape. (See photos for details.) This download includes 34 different pages of tracing shapes fun! These activities work well in centers, morning tubs, independent work stations, task boxes and more! For more hands-on fine motor or shapes activities, please see the link below: More Fun Fine Motor Activities More Hands-On Shapes Activities

According to research pre-writing skills or writing readiness activities are an essential foundation for learning to write successfully. Here's why and how!

This is a lovely leaf printing lesson that has been floating around the art blogs for some time. I orginally saw the project here, at the Cedar Creek Elementary Artsonia site. The Art teacher, Linda Welling, does so many fantastic projects with her students! I absolutely love the look of leaf prints- so delicate and natural. You can see my other leaf printing project here. This is how we made ours: Start off by asking the students to gather a variety of leaves before class. They can do this at lunch, whenever. I also collect interesting looking leaves on my walks and store them in a zip-lock bag with a damp paper towel to keep them fresh. You need to look for leaves that have strong veins on the backside; not all leaves do. Flip the leaf over onto some scrap paper. Paint the back with a thin, even layer of white tempera paint. Then lay it carefully onto a black sheet of paper and place another piece of scrap paper on top (to prevent smudging). Rub all over the leaf with the side of your hand. Peel off the leaf and you should have a nice leaf print. I have students practice in their sketchbooks first, in order to get the hang of it. You don't want too much paint on the leaf, nor too little. So repeat the process until you have your paper filled. Once dry, choose a variety of colored pencils and colour in the black parts on the leaf print. For the background, choose one or two colours of paint and carefully sponge all around the leaves leaving a bit of the black paper around each leaf for contrast. Here are some Grade 8 results: Ta da!

This is a wonderfully magic winter lesson I found on the Painted Paper website. She gives all the steps and lots of great visuals to help s...

Here is another project utilizing bubble printing. See my original post here I was inspired by the children's nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep". It is an English nursery rhyme from the 18th century. I start off by reading this rhyme to my class. For the art project, start off by adding a squirt black tempera paint to watery dish soap for the black sheep's 'wool'. I mix up a big batch and then distribute it out to individual small cups- one per student. This is a very messy project- make sure the kids (and yourself) are wearing paint shirts!! Using a straw (I cut them in half to be economical), students blow until the bubbles rise above the cup. Then immediately place your sheet of paper on top and lightly press it down. Here's the first print. Continue doing this until most of the paper is covered. It looks really cool and textural. Let dry (it doesn't take long). Once dry, demonstrate to the class how to draw a fluffy cloud-like shape on the back of the bubble paper. Cut out. This is the sheep's wool. On any scrap black paper, students draw a simple round head with ears and two rectangles for legs. Cut out. For the background, you could use blue paper and have the kids draw and colour on a green hill. Or, let them loose with the watercolours or tempera paint, and paint a simple hill and blue sky as seen below. Glue on the body, then the legs, then the head. Make sure to glue them high enough to leave room for the poem at the bottom of the hill. Now you can use googly eyes if you have them, or have the kids cut out their own circles for eyes. I always demonstrate how to fold a small scrap piece of paper in half, draw a circle, cut out and then you have two of the same. Easy! Hand cut eyes look way more cute and wonky compared to googly eyes, though I do love googly eyes as well. It can be a pain, though, having to help 25 kids peel off the stickers on the backs of googly eyes. Kids can also decorate their sheep faces however they want. I typed and copied the nursery rhyme and then this is cut out with decorative scissors. Students then glued it to the bottom of the page.

This pre-writing activity is perfect to get students excited about persuasive writing. Grab these instructions and task cards to use with your students.

Use these free printable number tracing worksheets from 1-20 for number writing practice for preschoolers and kindergartners.

Robots Week really had me all fired up with inspiration. It was a fun week for my son and it was fun for me to prepare as well. Here is the last post on the topic... Robot Creation - Wrapping, Gluing and More What can you do with an upside down empty individual applesauce container and a small Del Monte pull-top vegetable can? This beautiful robot of course! You'll also need foil, pipe cleaners, goggly eyes, glue and gems of your choice for buttons. The best part of course is the wrapping. Foil is so easy to maneuver for small hands wanting to wrap. It was both easy and fun to do for Adrian. Circuit Board - A "3D dot-to-dot" with elastics and screws! I always try to come up with different ideas for Adrian's school so he won't get bored. I thought this would be perfect with the robot theme since robots have circuits. Of course, we're not gonna start welding this year so to make connections, we use elastics! :) I used a styrofoam piece, wrote down letters and numbers, inserted screws and told Adrian it was like dot to dot but with elastics! He LOVED it and did it several times in a row. Using elastics is also good for fine motor developement! Funneling robot parts -which funnel will let the robot parts through? Another big hit this week was this simple funneling activity. We used three different sizes of funnels (from the dollar store) and three different containers filled with "robot parts" (washers, nuts and plastic anchors). Adrian had to try and see which funnel went with which part. You see, prior to presenting this activity, I made sure the washers would go down only one funnel for example. He had to find out which. Then he was handed the nuts and had to see which funnel would fit them and so on. He did the work several times, enjoying seeing the items go down the tube. Name that Robot - Calling all Letters - A phonetic activity After Adrian mentioned the nuts & bolts looked like robots, I just had to do a follow up activity. :) I just thought we could name them! Using our Leapfrog magnetic letters, I called out phonetically the letters composing the name of each. I had told Adrian that each robot would have a three letter name and here they are are! Magnetic versus non-magnetic robot parts What better week than this week to break out a magnetism activity? It's always well loved. I put out a few items that could pertain to robots and Adrian tested them each with his wand separating the magnetic ones from the non-magnetic ones. He then proceeded to find more magnetic items throughout the house... Robot Oil - Filling a small container with an eyedropper Adrian still likes transfer activities but they are getting quite easy for him. I mean, he is 4.5 years old. So, I thought I'd put out this one with small contact lens cases and eyedroppers and their bottles. I introduced them as robot oil. I explained we had to find out which color the oil was by dropping a few droplets into each compartment so each robot could be given the right oil. He loved the idea. His execution was perfect. Preparing to rub the oil on the robots with a cotton pad - Fill & "empty" After finishing the filling, we transferred again using a syringe. This was tougher. The syringe had to be filled and then the "oil" had to be dropped on the pad that would be "rubbed on the robot parts needing care". Reading and Matching Shapes & Paperclipping activity Homeschool Creations's free package contains quite a few cute files. This was one of them. I cut the shape name cards and cut the robot cards as well and then came the work. First, Adrian had to "read" the shape cards. He can't quite read yet but by reading the first letter phonetically, he was able to read the shape name and thus match each shape card with the right robot. Then, he paperclipped them all. It was his first time paperclipping and I am not sure if it was because of the type of paperclips but it was difficult for him. I thought these oversized plastic ones would work great for a first time but maybe I was wrong. I might have to give a try to the good old metal ones! :) Today, I'm linking up to: and No Time for Flashcards

Artist and children's book illustrator Leo Lionni creates a simple yet memorable mouse character out of a few pieces of paper. This was the sample I made to show my former Grade 1 students how to make a super cute Frederik the mouse. I read them the book first- they love that he's a little artist like them! Ahead of time, I had painted a few shades of grey paint with a large paint brush onto scraps of cardstock. The kids used these to cut out some ovals for their stones. Then they tore brown paper into an oval shape for his body. Then cut out ears, an arm and a tail from grey construction paper. Cut out a paper poppy and glue it all together. Add some eyes, draw a mouth and nose and you're all done! There's also printable crafts at Leo Lionni's website: http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/lionni/activities.php and a super cute tutorial of Leo showing how he makes his famous paper mouse http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/lionni/ When I passed these back to the classroom teacher, she loved them and extended the lesson with the class and made this lovely display (excuse the flash...)

These charming 'portraits with shadows' were made by Gr.3 students. I found the idea at the elementary art blog: "An Art Room Filled with Fauves". The supplies you'll need are: white drawing paper strips (1-2") of colored paper black paper (for the shadow) colored paper (for the background) glue stick, scissors, pencils colored pencils or markers So start off with the kids drawing a full figure person- you could make it a self-portrait lesson, or kids might research a famous historical person (to link with Social Studies), whatever. I gave the kids free reign to choose whomever they liked. Draw this lightly in pencil, then colour with media of your choice; we used colored pencils. Carefully cut out the figure. Place upside-down onto black paper and slowly trace with a light colored pencil. This will be the shadow- cut out. Decide where is the best placement for the shadow- I found it works slightly above or below to either the left or the right hand side. For the border, I pre-cut a bunch of construction paper using a paper cutter- it went really fast. These were about 1 inch thick or so. Kids will cut these into squares and glue them around their background paper to create a simple border. Ta da!

This was a super fun project my Grades 4- 6 mixed elective class did at the end of this school year. They LOVED this project- some even made 2 or 3. I pretty much followed the excellent instructions posted HERE on the "We Heart Art" blog. She found the idea on the Fine Lines blog. I was worried we would have to use that chunky yarn (of which I had none) but regular yarn worked well. I collect empty cereal boxes from my students all year long and stockpile them for projects such as these. Students drew some type of abstract pattern on the card. I encouraged them to use shapes as opposed to open lines as we would be colouring these in. Of course some did non-abstract images and some used some open lines and they all worked out regardless :) Once the lines were drawn, students passed over the lines using regular white glue. Then they put pieces of yarn on top. We let these dry overnight. It's important to use heavy duty aluminium foil for this next step. It's just sturdier and thicker. Students cut a piece off the roll that was about an inch larger than their cardboard. Then they covered the back of the tin foil liberally with a glue stick. They need to use ALOT and do it carefully in one direction so the foil doesn't bunch up and rip. Other blogs used spray glue for this step but I didn't have any- the glue stick worked pretty well. Then put the foil over-top and, starting from the center, gently rub over the design using a small square of felt. It really works for buffing the foil over the yarn. Take your time with this step- the more you carefully rub around the yarn, the better the final artwork will work. Some students tended to rush this step. Once it's all glued down, I show students how to neatly wrap the foil onto the back- a technique I used during my book-making phase ;) Then the fun part: colouring the whole image with coloured Sharpies! Don't colour the raised yarn part. Here are Grades 4 - 6 results: This students did 2: one using cool colours and one using warm colours

WOW! Is all I can say. Thank you to everyone who has viewed and liked this post. It is by far my MOST POPULAR post ever. I have had quite a few questions about my end of the year gifts and h…

This week our “Healthy Habits” theme was a perfect follow up to our “My Body” theme. Last week we learned all about the different systems and parts that make up our body. So this week we learned about how to keep our bodies healthy. I’m hoping this theme will help discourage toddler nose picking and […]

Here's some of my fleet I have my first "official" visit to the classroom to J's preschool tomorrow, sponsored by Pepsi Refresh. We're...

This is a great lesson if you're studying the art of India or architecture. My goal with this project was to teach students how to make...

Kindergarten and preschool fine motor tubs. Access 8 quick implemented fine motor tubs for kindergarten and preschool students.

Fun filled Centers and Worksheets for your Preschool 2D Shapes Unit. Kids will love these hands-on learning games and activities that work on 2D Shape formation, Shape Tracing, Shape recognition, and 2D Shapes in Real Life. 77 Pages in this Set!! This Gingerbread Man Printables set also includes 15 no-prep worksheets that reinforce shape tracing, shape […]

Art is a great way for kids to communicate, explore the world, and build a better understanding of their own creativity. These 25 Picasso for kids and worksheets are a great way for you to

These free printable clip cards are great for helping kids see shapes in everyday objects!

This is the third of a series of three blog posts, looking at the main principles of the most well known child-led educational philosophies today. You can read the post on Montessori here, and on Steiner/Waldorf here. Today, the Reggio Emilia approach... In my opinion, I have saved the best for last, as this is the philosophy that resonates most closely with our family values, although there are aspects of Montessori and Steiner/Waldorf that I love and respect very much too. There are, in fact

This was a collaborative project I did with one of the Science teachers at my school. He was teaching his kids about food chains and wa...

This was the second project I did with my Grade 7's during our "Art of Japan" unit. They designed their own kimono using a version of a bookmark template found here on the Crayola website. Kimonos are the beautiful traditional floor length robes worn mostly by Japanese women on special occasions. They are very expensive (often exceeding $10,000!) and beautifully patterned. I showed students examples of kimonos and then had them sketch ideas for a pattern in their sketchbooks. Image Source Image Source Each student got a blank template (which I modified from the one on the Crayoyla site) showing a very basic kimono with the robe, body and Obi (the sash). There were lots of Obi-Wan Kenobi jokes during this demo...lol I drew my own simple template and then photocopied it onto regular paper. When I do this project again, I would copy it onto cardstock, as the regular paper was too thin, really. I mean, it worked, but cardstock would be better (more sturdy). Draw your design/pattern in pencil then colour in with colored pencils or markers or watercolours. Students could do any type of pattern they wanted- not only traditional. Here's a camouflage pattern below, for example. Draw a little face. Colouring with markers..... Then cut all the pieces out... The Crayola sheet shows how to fold it all together- I also walked around and helped the kids individually fold it. It's quite simple. Here they are lined up and chilling out against the whiteboard. If you have a laminator, I would laminate them to make perfect bookmarks (and to make them sturdier). Ta da! On display with their 'Cherry Blossom' paintings.

Handy letter tracing worksheets for preschoolers and kindergarten! These free printable preschool worksheets work on letters A to Z.

Practice handwriting skills while learning the shape of the letter -B- with this alphabet pre-writing worksheet.