Marshmallow Eiffel Towers

Yesterday the class went to France! We talked about the Eiffel Tower and then the kids went to the art table to construct their own towers.

With toothpicks and mini marshmallows (we used fruity ones!) they could create any type of structure. It didn't have to look like the Eiffel Tower, obviously. As much as I hate to use styrofoam (that's all our center uses), it helped to have it as a base because you could stick the toothpicks in to support the tower.

There were some pretty creative structures!

And today I used those marshmallows as prizes when we had a quiz about all the places we visited in Europe this week. (Today we went to Spain, but our art project was just paper airplanes -- they colored the paper, I folded them into airplanes and then we flew them across the room -- so I didn't think it was blog worthy.)



Mona Lisa Paintings

Continuing with our trip to Europe, today the Pre-K class went to Italy! I talked a little bit about the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci and his Mona Lisa. I found a coloring sheet of the Mona Lisa at Enchanted Learning.

The kids painted it with watercolors. When they were dry I framed them with construction paper. It was a little hard to do because once the paper was painted, it wasn't flat anymore. If I was patient, I would have flattened them overnight, but I was eager to put these on display. Before hanging them, however, I asked each child why Mona Lisa is smiling! I wrote down their responses and attached them to the frames.

I displayed them in the hall right outside our room.

It looks great and the parents loved the responses! And the kids got another stamp in their passports, of course!

Passports

To go with our Europe theme this week, we made passports!

The cover was some clip-art from a greeting card program I own, and I added our center's name and Pre-K to the bottom. I made the little books by folding a piece of red paper in half then adding white paper to the inside and stapling it. Before I did that, though, I printed the passport information on the red paper. It has their name, date of birth, and the date issued. Then I made a space for them to "sign" their name and added a small picture to the corner.

I also printed out a bunch of travel and landmark clip-art and cut them up.

I printed them on label paper so they would be stickers. I didn't want the kids to use glue sticks because I thought the pages might stick together. They picked out a few stickers to place in their passport.

And then I stamped it and wrote what country they visited. Today it was Germany.

Tomorrow it will be Italy!

Dramatic Play Airplane

So this week, the Pre-K class is going to Europe. In our imaginations, anyway. Several years ago I made an "airplane" out of a box. It's really just the sides of one, but it works just fine. I dug it out of storage and it's a little bent up, but it still serves it's purpose.

So it's made out of a normal cardboard box, but then I covered it in gray paper and used black construction paper for the nose and windows. I made a slit for the wing to go into, but it still needed a little tape to stay up. And I also printed out "Pre-K Airlines" on gray paper and glued it to the plane.

I made 2 of these and put 4 chairs in between them to make the seats on the plane. The sides of the plane are just leaning against the chairs. It's that simple! Then I made a pilot hat out of a McDonald's hat that we already have, put in a suitcase, and put a beach ball globe nearby. The kids can look at the globe to find out where they want to go and fly away...

(The kids were in their swimsuits because we were going out into the sprinkler later, so that's why it looks like they hardly have any clothes on!)