Our sea - painting!

Theme: Our big sea

Children age: 3-4 years

Objectives: The child knows that the sea is a big and wide water body. The child knows that the sea can be calm, with little waves and stormy. The child knows that the sea is salty and not good for drinking. The child can listen and recognizes the sound of sea. The child paints the sea using different techniques and tools. The child knows that you can find sea shells from the bottom of the sea.

Tools: opportunity to watch videos and pictures (computer, sea pictures on the wall, books, magazines). On table see through bowls (2 bowls for each child and spoon), little spoons, sea salt with big and small crystals, tab water. White paper, different shades colors blue, green and white gouache ready on the palette, spatulas, rulers, paint rollers, wide brushes and aprons. Different sea shells to watch, explore and touch.

Preparations: Teacher and teacher help puts pictures and videos ready. Chairs to sit and watch videos. Puts experiment materials ready on table. Puts painting materials ready on tables. Puts sea shells ready.

Activity: The children look different videos and pictures of sea, sea waves, world seas. They see that the sea is powerful, big and wide. They see that the sea can be calm, smooth, with little waves or dark and big waves. They learn that the sea can be different colors. The teacher tells that the sea color depends on different things: hoe deep it is, what grows on the bottom, what plants, animals and fishes live there and also from the color of the sky. The children listen different sounds of the sea (silent and loud) depending of the weather. The children ask questions and try to answer them.

The children sit behind the tables and the teacher introduces them sea salt - with big salt crystals and fine salt powder. The children can look, touch and taste the salt. Then they make experiments. Experiment 1. The children put in one bowl sea salt with big salt crystals and in the other fine salt powder. The children observe how it goes on the bottom of the bowl. They shake it with spoons. They see that salt goes on bottom but does not melt away, that it takes time. They see that big crystal salt grains are like crystals that are in mothers jewelry. They see and taste the water in bowls and know that is it like sea water. They know that they can't drink it. The children put the bowls on the windowsill, so they could observe them through the day salt melting.

Then the children put on their aprons for art. They sit behind the tables. The teacher introduces different tools to use in art: spatulas, ruler, paint roller, wide brush and shows that how it can be used. The children use all the tools through out the activity to express their creativity. All the seas come out different.

After the art activity children can explore sea shells - big, small, different shapes, smooth, rough.