Week 3, Pre-K students at Fishtown Recreation Center learned about texture and created a garden collage.
One student asked, “Is that Keith Haring on your shirt?” Why yes, yes it is! “Because I learned about him from my preschool teacher, he’s a really famous artist.”
First I asked the group a simple questions, “What is texture?” No one knew. So I started asking, “What does the table feel like?” I got answers like, “Hard!” “Smooth!” “Bumpy!” Then I asked about the chair they’re sitting in, “Hard!” “Metal!” “Cold!” And then asked how they knew these answers– because it’s the way it FEELS with your fingers! We talked a little more about different textures, like the texture of a puppy (fluffy, soft) or the gluestick (sticky, smooth).
Everyone had a green paper in front of them and there were small containers of paint which contained blue and yellow. I asked if anyone knew what color we might get if the blue and yellow mixed. Nearly all the students guessed green! I explained that we would be painting the texture of grass today using plastic forks!
After they painted their grass with green paint and forks, they had a variety of construction paper in different petal shapes and colors. I explained that the grass we just created would be our garden and now we needed to plant our flowers. I showed them how to glue on the back of the petals first (since their papers were still wet), then to stick the petals close together in a small circle to create a flower. They created all sorts of flowers, telling one another what each one was (tulips, roses, sunflowers, etc). Everyone was so proud of their work and everything they created.
This lesson is also similar to Andy Warhol’s lithograph print, “Flowers.”
