Caps for Sale

Tonight Rebecca requested Caps for Sale for her bedtime story and I realized it would be a perfect story for Toddler Time at the Library! I can be the peddlar and when I fall asleep under the tree, the children can all be the monkey and can put silk scarves on their heads. Then we can act out them imitating me and, finally, throwing all their silks down for me to collect!

Now that I'm thinking 2-3 year olds, I'm finding ideas everywhere: The Breathing Circle by Nell Smyth, Suzanne Down's newsletters, even Living Crafts magazine has a good toddler story (the one Suzanne Down contributed with the little felted fish and the large shell). This week we are doing G and the 3 B with texture explorations and I am also beginning my watercolor painting class on Sat. I am supplying the Stockmar paints (the six colors from Nova Natural), painting jars, the 1/2 inch brushes, the sponges, and the bin for soaking the paper. I purchased (spent $72) five tablets of watercolor paper, two big and three small, three different types of sea sponges for texture work, and five tubes of paint. At Nicole's conference I was talking to a woman who said that she gave her students red, yellow, blue, and one other tube of color each session and they had to mix the entire rainbow of colors before they began to paint. The example she gave was burnt sienna. I thought that sounded like fun so we might try that on the second class. We are doing 3 two hour sessions. I am thinking basically to do how to properly care for your materials, soaking paper, color stories, painting the rainbow and color mixing. Then to go outside and paint something from nature. The second class to work more on color mixing and form, adding texture with sponges and watercolor pencils. The third class to add in watercolor resists with beeswax crayons and to do something with salt. I have How to Do Wet on Wet Watercolor Painting (Rauld Russell's book), Painting in Waldorf Education (which gives lots of good exercises) and Watercolor Pencil Magic by Cathy Johnson, so I will begin to work on reading those and get more of a plan formulated. I don't know yet how many students I will have.

Anyway, these are the five colors I picked (Grumbacher)

Burnt Sienna

Chromium Oxide Green

Thio Violet

Cadmium Orange

Charcoal Gray