Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

This post is inspired by Everyartist Live!, a national, collaborative art event with the goal of engaging a million elementary school children on November 21, 2013 – the largest art event in history. Want to get involved? Join us in our efforts to show that #creativitymatters. Sign up at http://everyartist.me . Around here, we seriously LOVE paint. We go through gallons and gallons of it. Sometimes we buy it, and sometimes we make it. I know I have writte n a little about paint before , and I have a fabulous Pinterest Board . However, today I thought I would give you an AMAZING list of 101 Tools that you can use with paint so that painting never gets boring! Thank you to all of the wonderful bloggers in the Preschool Plus Blogger Network and the Kid's Blogger Network for their willingness to share and contribute to this round-up! Please note that all 101 ideas are linked to a blog post. Simply click on the item (even if there is not a photo featured) and you will be d...

Thank you for joining us for a brief photo walk down memory lane from the past week. 

If you have been following the blog for any period of time, you know that we like to give the children a wide range of process art experiences. We use a lot of different types of tools and give the children freedom to choose materials. This becomes a bit trickier when the children are younger. They are not always able to articulate exactly what they would like to use or what they need.  So, with infants and toddlers, I tend to offer a set of supplies for them to explore. The art station is always available to them to make other choices, but typically I have a few selections available to them on the table.  During this particular exploration- I gave them each a container of white tempera paint. (I always add a little bit of dish soap to my paint. I know it says that it is washable, but the soap helps it wash out even better!) The children are welcome to explore the materials in any matter they deem fit. I don't demonstrate, and I rarely create beside them...

Lately, there has been a lot of construction on our street.  It has provided for endless hours of entertainment and learning fun! We have been watching the trucks as they work, reading about them in books, and racing our toy trucks up and down ramps. We also decided it would be fun to run some of our cars and trucks though the paint and make tracks on paper! The children decided that they wanted to try green paint and yellow paper. So, I put out a large sheet of paper for each child and added some paint to a large plastic tote lid we had hanging around in the closet.  Driving the toy vehicles in the paint was nearly as much fun as it was to drive them on the paper!    The children were engaged in making prints with the vehicle tires for quite some time. Some of the children were so persistent, they even wore holes in the paper where they were driving back and forth! (Remember-when things like this happen- it is okay! Art with young children...

While I was going through old photos, I realized that there are oodles of activities that we have done that I thought I had blogged about and shared with you... that never made it past the photo shoot! There are literally not enough hours in a day! So, for those of you who have children enrolled- you'll realize that these photos are quite old - circa 2010. For those of you in cyberspace- I bet you would have never known if I didn't mention it! For those of you who follow the blog, you know that I am a huge fan of process based art. This activity is a little bit busy for indoor use- although the mess can easily be cleaned up if you are brave enough to try it. I gave the children a selection of paints. (The determined which colors). We used washable tempera paint this time with a little bit of dish soap added to ease in washing. The process is quite simple. 1: Dip the swatter in the paint, 2: Swat the paper 3: Repeat.  The children had the opportunity to u...

I have been having a wonderful time travelling and sharing with many of you our journey of change as we continue to develop our outdoor classroom.  As promised, I have uploaded the revised presentation as a pdf and it is available in the Training and Resources section of my training website.  Don't forget to check out all of the amazing websites I have included, in addition to the Outdoor Inspiration tab on this site.  Feel free to hop on over to my Pinterest Boards as well !!! You'll find oodles of boards with outdoor inspiration, outdoor classrooms, gardening, bird watching and so much more! I'd love to hear about the exciting things you are doing to change your outdoor space!  Pictures and links are welcome. You can send them to me via email or leave a comment below. Thanks again for continuing the energy, enthusiasm and encouraging more Outdoor Play!

Thank you for joining us for a brief photo walk down memory lane from the past week.