The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring colored glue today! Because many of my children have not yet had the chance to explore glue, I basically just offered them index cards (thicker and will hold up to the massive amounts of glue the children want to use), colored glue and foam shapes and letters to stick on the glue.
I also provided old paintbrushes for the children to brush the paint on the index cards if they preferred. The small cups that were holding the foam shapes and letters suddenly were overturned by one little guy since he simply needed MORE space to make glue "puddles!"
And for some of the kids, the foam shapes were simply discarded on the table and never touched at all! The real excitement was over squeezing endless amounts of colored glue!
And at some point I realized that we had gone from making glue puddles in the cups to exploring color mixing in the cups!
One little guy took a few brief breaks from squeezing glue to shake and rub his arm and complain that it hurt!! You know you are squeezing a lot of glue when your arm hurts!
Of course, we had some who felt that covering every inch of the index cards with letters was the way to go. So, those discarded letters on the table were used up after all!
We actually pushed back our rest time by 15 minutes today because there was NO WAY I was going to stop the kids when they were so involved and focused on this activity!
Believe it or not, we do actually have colored glue left in the bottles! We also covered the glue puddles in the cups and are hoping they will still work tomorrow. So, I've promised that the colored glue will be out again tomorrow! After that, I'm pretty sure I will need to make some more! At the rate the kids are using the glue, we have about one more day left!
I am definitely adding this to my list of to dos! What a great way to explore the flow of glue.
ReplyDeleteNow THAT is definitely focusing on the process! I love the intense concentration and effort I can see in the photos. Another day or so, and they will have mastered squeezing glue! Thanks for sharing their explorations.
ReplyDelete@Deborah and Scott- We're still going strong several days later! I have one who is just about able to actually control how much he squeezes the glue bottle to now just have a rather LARGE dot of glue rather than a puddle...but I'm pretty sure he still prefers the puddle :)
ReplyDeleteHi! Thank you for joining in the Best of 2011 Blog Hop. I have a 5-yr old who adores glue too. Look forward to reading more in 2012 :)
ReplyDeleteI love how the children are just so focused on their exploring. I am going to be more brave with the messy activities this year. Happy New year!
ReplyDeleteGreat open ended art idea! I think using glue bottles as opposed to glue sticks is wonderful because it develops hand/arm muscles.
ReplyDeleteThank you for participating in the Best of 2011 Blog Hop. Happy New Year!
What a great way to do an art that is unique. I never tried using glue at my time for art purposes. I'm using a lot of glue dots products at the office and at home and if I would have a time, I would definitely do this.
ReplyDelete