Let's Make a Castle- Decorating!

This past week, our main art focus has been on creating a castle. After the preschoolers had brainstormed some plans, we let the decorating commence! First, we needed to build our basic structure, which included taping together some boxes in a shape that the PSers outlined:

Then, we broke out the tempera paint. The PSers came up with some rules for painting. IR offered, "no painting on our bodies". As for mixing, EB came up with a plan for mixing paint on the castle so that all of our paint stayed vibrant in their containers. After we had set out a bin for rinsing brushes, Bee and I stood back and watched the children become very focused in their painting. Its application started slowly, with one color and smaller, focused brush strokes.

But soon, the kids began to mix colors, dragging green across the yellow, creating a marbled effect. This required some cooperation between the children. They navigated how to share space and how to help each other mix paint. SC mixed her green paint with MR's yellow. I noticed that most children were okay with sharing their space and paint. The agreement was that this was OUR castle and we were all working together, which seemed to set up an expectation for how we shared our space and materials. Also, it was exciting because everybody enthusiastically participated.

G was very attentive as he and SC mixed their paint together.

MR mixes yellow and green

On the other side of the castle, IO, J, and IR focused on mixing red, purple and orange paint. Of course, all of the PSers rotated sides and began to spread out.

I did notice two distinct color patterns on either side of the castle. As they covered the central areas, the PSers more liberally mixed the available colors.

K uses his hands to mix.

Eventually, the PSers were satisfied with their work. We almost completely covered the castle with a beautiful explosion of color!

The next step (after the paint had dried of course), was to decorate our castle with objects. IR, EB, TB, IO and SC were excited to glue pompoms onto the roof. We also set out feathers, paper collage pieces, pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks. Before the gluing began, we came up with some guidelines for the process. The PSers could choose to dip their objects in a small container of glue or have Bee apply some.

The PSers gather for a guidelines discussion.

Once we began, the PSers seemed very excited by their ability to stick objects to the castle. "It sticks!" exclaimed J after he pressed some colorful squares on the cardboard. We also discovered that some objects didn't stick so well. However, the PSers founds homes for some of the trickier objects, like feathers and pom poms on the roof of our castle, where they wouldn't slide off.

There was a high level of excitement and enthusiasm as we glued. However, it was all directed at the castle and the PSers remained incredibly focused. SC created spirals with her pipe cleaners. GS was also interested in pipe cleaners and attached many to the sides of the castles.

Here is our decorated castle! Now we only need to add the "living roof" and it will be ready for play.

Overall, this project has been very exciting. I think that this stems from PSers sense of ownership in the castle. It has been wholly conceived and designed by the children and to see it materialize, step by step, has been pretty magical. If you look at the pictures in this post, there is a high level of concentration in our castle creation activities. Moreover, the sense of community and bonding that occurred as we all worked together was amazing. I'm so glad to be involved in this project!