St John's Preschool

Exploring Collage

 Eric Carle is a prime example of an artist who has used collage in his picture books; he was also inspired by nature. One of our artistic activities this month will be centered around the collage.

Here are the materials we will use for this project in the Art Studio at St John’s:

• Construction paper, assorted colors

• Scissors

• Glue sticks

• Rubbing plates or textured surfaces for rubbings

• Crayons for rubbings

• Shape stencils

Explore:

VISUAL TEXTURE is a texture you can see rather than feel. Eric Carle uses VISUAL TEXTURE in his artwork. We will use rubbing plates to experiment with different textures on construction paper.

ORGANIC shapes are freeform, irregular, or asymmetrical. An oak leaf is an example of an ORGANIC shape. We will embrace Carle’s tribute to nature and create ORGANIC shapes from a piece of construction paper.

GEOMETRIC shapes are made up of a set of mathematical points. We will explore the geometric shapes like: Squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles during this activity.

We will use the ORGANIC and GEOMETRIC shapes we cut out to create textured visual art like those seen in Eric Carle’s illustrations.

The children will  describe the colors, shapes and visuals they see as they use hand and eye coordination to create their very own Eric Carle inspired masterpiece!

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Tissue Paper Apples

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Materials:

• red and green construction paper

• scissors/glue

• red and green tissue paper cut into 1 inch squares

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Using construction paper, we will cut out the shape of an apple, leaves and stem. Then our students crinkle tissue paper to glue on the apple filling in the texture to make the art project 3-D.

Monarch Butterflies

This September, the students will be raising Monarch Butterflies and examining their life cycle. 

Monarch butterflies are the most beautiful of all butterflies, some say, and are considered the “king” of the butterflies, hence the name “monarch”. There are lots of very interesting things to learn about the monarch butterfly and preschoolers find them fascinating.

In our hands-on science lab, we will watch Monarch caterpillars become a chrysalis and emerge as transformed butterflies!

Check out some fast facts from Nat Geo kids to stay up to speed on what your little entomologist is learning.

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Facts about Monarch Butterflies:

• Monarchs are large, beautifully colored butterflies that are easy to recognize by their striking orange, black, and white markings. They live in North, Central, and South America as well as Australia, some Pacific Islands, India, and Western Europe.

• The wingspan of a full-grown monarch can reach nearly five inches (13 centimeters), although the average is closer to four inches (10 centimeters). Their markings include bright orange wings covered with black veins and rimmed with a black border and white dots. Females have thicker veins in their wings.

• A monarch’s brilliant coloring tells predators: “Don’t eat me. I’m poisonous.” The butterflies get their toxins from a plant called milkweed, which is their only food source in the caterpillar stage. An animal that eats a monarch butterfly usually doesn’t die, but it feels sick enough to avoid monarchs in the future.

• The most amazing thing about monarch butterflies is the enormous migration that North American monarchs undertake each year. Every fall, as cold weather approaches, millions of these delicate insects leave their home range in Canada and the United States and begin flying south.

• They continue until they reach Southern California or central Mexico, more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away! These international travelers return to the same forests each year, and some even find the same tree that their ancestors landed on.