This month in the infant room, we have been building on the children's interest in flowers! We have explored flowers through sensory bins, a flower garden painting activity, and by painting large cardboard flowers and paper plate flowers. In the infant room, we love getting messy with paint, so the educators created two activities that combined the children's love of painting with our new interest in flowers. Educator Kayla prepared large cardboard flower cutouts for our first painting activity, while educator Michelle transformed paper plates into flowers for our second painting activity.
Kayla set up her painting experience in the infant room by placing brown butcher paper on the floor and taping the cardboard flowers down so the infants could explore art from a different perspective. The infants were quite excited to begin painting. They gasped and ran over to explore the flowers with their hands and feet, walking all over the large cardboard flowers while waiting for the paint cups. As the infants explored the cardboard flowers, the educators asked what they saw, and they excitedly shouted, “Flower!” The educators replied, “Yes, it is a flower,” while some of the children signed "flower," which we had previously learned the sign for flower from our sign language book! To do the sign for flower, you hold your fingers and thumb together and moving your pinched fingers from one side of your nostril to the other.
Once everything was ready, the educators placed cups of paint around the cardboard flowers for the infants to begin getting messy with. Sophie and Luca were the first two children interested in the paint, eagerly dumping the cups all over the painting surface. This intrigued the rest of their friends, who quickly joined in the fun.
For Michelle’s flower painting experience, she thought it would be a great idea to bring the painting experience outside in the playground! She used the fence to zip tie the paper plates and used muffin tins to add a variety of different coloured paint into them and had lots of paint brushes for everyone. Just like Kayla’s painting activity, the infants were filled with excitement as they waited for Michelle to set it all up.
During the activities, the infants were challenged to work on their balance to bend down to dip their brushes in the paint and then stand back up to reach the flower. We had so much fun and loved painting outside for a change! All the flowers turned out so colourful and beautiful, and we can't wait to display them in the classroom!
