How to set up a fun invitation to create with hearts!
Of all the painting experiences I share with my students, the one they most enjoy is anything that has to do with painting at the easel. Â If I change the easel up in any small way, almost every student will stop by and want to give the easel painting a try. Â As you may have noticed by my most recent posts, we have been exploring hearts so I decided to invite the children to easel paint with hearts at the easel…
There is nothing all that unique about putting shapes on the easel but for whatever reason, my students were super intrigued by the idea of painting inside or around the heart shape….
Preparing the Easel
To set up the hearts at the easel, I simply cut large heart shapes out of the center of construction paper and taped the heart shaped frame to easel paper using a strip of clear tape at the top and bottom of the frame.. In advance, I had prepared enough heart shaped frames for each child to have one of their own if they wanted to heart paint. I saved the hearts that were cut out for a musical heart game….
Exploring Colors
I also mixed up “Valentine” colors for the children to paint with including purple, red, light blue, and pink…
Enjoying the Process
I didn’t give any instructions to this process. I just set things up and left it as an open center for the children to explore (much like we always approach most of our daily easel painting experiences)…
Most of the children painted inside the heart frame. Some of the children painted all the way around and on the edges of the frame. And others painted faces or just mixed colors in the center of the heart…
Every Creation is Unique
Every painting was simply beautiful. The children took their time to use all the colors. Some blended and swirled while others painted long strokes around the edges of the heart…
We set each of our completed paintings out to dry with the frame still on the painting. Â We will give the choice the children as to whether they want the frame removed or left on their easel paper…
A super fun process for our class and perhaps we will introduce the process again using other shapes, but I think this was particularly interesting because we had not tried any shapes before on the easel and the paint colors were new as well…
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