Friday, October 22, 2010

Mouse Paint (Book and Art Project)

Here's another great preschool color book and art project for you.  As we've been doing more painting projects, lately, I've realized that Little Brother and Sweet Pea excel at covering a surface with paint...but maybe not so much at coming up with a deliberate form to their art...so this project was perfect for them.

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh is a great book for preschoolers because it's so simple.  Little Brother thought it was hilarious that the mice climb into the paint, and Sweet Pea LOVED the cat...of course.  Basically the mice explore color through paints, but they have to leave some of the paper they live on white to hide from the cat.

For the art project, I had Little Brother draw pencil lines to divide is paper into different sections. 

Each time I gave him a new color, I had him choose which section he'd paint.  He stayed (mostly) inside the regions he'd painted, and we left one part white where the mice could hide.

For Sweet Pea, we mostly did the drop and smear technique, so her colors stayed (mostly) in each areas by where I dropped the paint for her. 

Then we let them dry for a day, and the next day we read the story again and glued a cat silloutte (recognize that one from Little Brother's shirt and the cats in the window?) and 3 cotton balls for mice.  Little Brother was able to remember the story well enough afterward to tell Daddy about the story and his painting when he got home...and Sweet Pea loves her painting because she made it and it has a cat on it.

I'm linking to:
abc button A Mommy Adventures

3 comments:

  1. Genius. I'll bet they'd love covering a paper with paint, which they (you?) could then cut into shapes like the cat.

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  2. This is really a wonderful art project! I haven't read the book, but it sounds fun. Love the "drop and smear technique" too ~ and how you tailored this to each child. Great job!

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