July 2023: On Display at the Livermore Civic Library

On Display now at the Livermore Civic Library July 1-31, 2023. See library hours for details here. Don’t forget to sign-up for the all ages reading program

About this work: The work that you see here was created by preschool children ages 3 to 5 years old at Room to Grow Preschool. This work was entirely created by them without specific instruction, just exploration of materials to what is known as process art. In the 2022/23 school year children collaborated on 3 art pieces throughout the year over the course of several weeks. These collaborations are highlighted numerically and explore glue and paint as a process art making medium. The collaborations are juxtaposed with individual work that led to the collaborations.

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1 | Serendipitous Slime: Our school year starts with sensory invitations both inside and outside of the classroom. Children are exploring cornstarch and water, also known as oobleck in the outdoor classroom. Sand and natural materials are occupying the light table inside the classroom and in the studio we are color mixing with finger paint on plexiglass. It is during this process that a child takes a brush from the nearby easels. The brush had been sitting in a container of clear glue for collaging, unknowingly she begins to use it in the fingerpaint. As she uses the brush in the paint, the paint becomes even more sticky and gelatinous to the point that the child is able to manipulate the material with her fingers. As she becomes engrossed by the material she has created, it dawns on me that she has serendipitously made slime!

This of course sets off excitement and questions about this new substance. “What is it? Where did it come from? How can I have some?”

We test the theory of adding clear glue to finger paint and we make more slime. Another child chooses to paint with his slime at the easels.

And so… it begins, for the first half of the school year we explore slime. We make lots of slime, we play with the slime, we measure it, we mold it, we flatten it, we dry it, we collage with it and we paint with it.

“Slime is sticky, cold. It’s enormous super sticky.”

-Brayden

We paint with it from the ceiling no less! Using a funnel + pendulum hung from the ceiling, children make one gigantic painting over time. They take turns pushing, pulling, spinning and squeezing slime from the pendulum. They make lakes and snakes with the slime. They squeeze dots and notice air bubbles and how the colors change. Then one child decides to add paper dots that we have been using in our collages. Another child decides to cover all the dots up with slime. We work on our enormous slime painting until winter break.

“Mixing yellow with dark green makes light green”

-Cooper

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2 | A world of glue: When we come back from winter break the slime also takes a break, but not the glue. As we begin to explore watercolors… and add salt to the watercolor and then clear glue. We eventually add white paint to the glue and shaving cream. We play with white puffy paint, clear glue and salt. And the children begin to tell stories while they create. They make roads and rivers, snow and icicles on small blue canvases.

“There are so many icicles. The river is goingthrough the town.
I am trying to cover it (glue) with snow (salt) to make ice.
I am having a snow storm.”

-Bennett

Then the canvas gets a little bigger and then it gets EVEN bigger! The children start by painting it one color, they choose blue. Once the entire canvas is blue, they ask for some puffy paint and sprinkles (salt). They use the puffy paint and glue on the canvas with salts. Over the next few weeks children layer glue and salt on the large canvas. While most children add others remove, peeling off layers of glue, salt and paint to make “slime” then they reattach the layers with more glue.

“We pulled the picture apart and now we made another picture.”

-Liam

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3 | More glue and lots of paper: In the background of the studio, when children were not creating with slime or telling stories with glue and salt, they were painting with brushes and paint rollers and collaging with strips of paper. I thought this might be a good time to introduce them to paper mâché, (that is a deconstructed version of it). Providing them with watered down glue, paint rollers and strips of paper on poster board. Children quickly began rolling on glue. But they still weren’t done with squeezing out puffy paint and adding salt. So we continued with our glue and puffy paint but instead of salt I offered them shredded paper. Once the poster board could no longer hold the weight of the materials we switched to a large canvas.

“I need some color because a black and white picture is not very fun to see...

The black strip is an island, 2 white strips are another islands, the yellow is a beach and the greyline
is snow and the black line is a road. This is the world (center)”

- Grace (talking about her picture, left.)

As they began adding materials to the canvas, children often pretended to make food products like cakes and pizzas, adding sauce (paint) and cheese (shredded paper). They made rain with the glue and snow with the paper. As they added paper we found other things to add too, like paper doilies and coffee filters from earlier explorations. Some children felt the canvas needed some color. So we added watercolors and pastel and white washes. One child even added dry tempera paint flakes from the paint easels. String and fabric tulle were added as well.

Livermore Library Art Show

On display till June 30, 2022 in the Community Art Gallery at the Livermore Civic Center Library behind The Daily Grind Cafe. This show has been extended till July 2022.

About Art Work: Art has always been a big part of Room to Grow Preschool, it is incorporated in many areas of the school. In the 2019/20 school year, Room to Grow added a dedicated art specialist and studio space to the program. Of course, COVID put the studio on hold for the 2020/21 school year and much of our program was limited and modified to be outdoors during that year. In the Fall of 2021, the studio space reopened as a “painting room” inspired by Arno Stern “Closlieu,” with the thought that children could paint freely, build positive autonomy and community through the use of a single palette. As children learn to paint side by side and experience making their own choices they begin to ask questions and explore ideas, tools, materials, techniques and they communicate with each other and teachers in the classroom. They begin to collaborate, develop friendships and grow into a caring, compassionate community that is Room to Grow and they share that growth with the community of Livermore.

The Flower Series: After winter break, the outdoor easel was moved to the garden area of Room to Grow. Almost instantly children began to paint flowers and garden scenes. Many of the work displayed is just one of several variations of flowers each child painted

Texture Study: Throughout the year children explored making different types of paint by mixing tempura or watercolor with another material such as cornstarch, salt, glue, mud, paper, shaving cream, flour and baking soda. They made chalk paint, mud paint, puffy paint and even spackle. By making different types of paint children had the opportunity to explore different textures and reactions between different materials. This canvas was worked on by many children at Room to Grow over the course of a few weeks. It started with “secret paint” which consist of paint, glue, shaving cream and shredded paper. Then children created their own spackle by adding flour, salt, paint, glue and shredded paper. Children used texture brushes and tools to apply the spackle to the canvas. Then they added small, white loose items such as fabric scraps, yarn, beads, shells, plastic bits and shredded paper.

Color Study: Some children like to make their own types of paint, other like to mix their own colors and then paint with them. Using bleeding art tissue paper, children applied tissue paper rounds to the canvas with water. Once the water dries the tissue paper falls off leaving behind a mark of color. Over the course of a month children saturated the canvas with water and tissue paper. Watercolor was added to the spray bottles and children immediately noticed how some colors would change. As the layers of color build the water was put away and other materials were brought out like larger tissue paper rounds, mylar pieces and glue.

A Child’s Narrative: When children are given a place to create they do. Children at Room to Grow spend a lot of time playing and exploring the inside and outside classrooms. Painting is accessible to children both inside and outside. Children often take time from their play and extend it at the easels or in the studio. They will paint a story or draft a plan. Although painting seems like a solo activity, it is actually quite social. Children will often paint together as a form of play and storytelling. These are some examples of their stories and their play.

A Quilt Of Us: This year, we have set up a dedicated sewing nook in the classroom where children can experiment with sewing tools and materials to create projects including sewing buttons, embroidery, and other types of fabric crafts. Their projects started out simple and became more complex as the months passed and their sewing experience grew. Throughout the school year, the children had shown an interest in creating self-portraits, and we tried to provide multiple opportunities and mediums for them to represent themselves throughout the classroom. This project started with embellishing large people shaped cut outs, and moved on to creating clothes and facial features using paper collage techniques on paper people cutouts. It then progressed to the sewing area where we put out the felt people shapes and provided the children with a variety of fabrics and textiles and materials to choose from. The children could choose their materials and cut out the shapes needed to make their clothes, faces, and hair. The children used needle and thread to sew their pieces and materials onto the felt cutouts. Using their sewing skills, they created representations of themselves, their friends, family, and imaginary characters. The people that the children sewed were compiled into a quilted wall hanging designed and created by two classroom parents who donated their time and talents towards this final project.

Exploring ways and types of painting: Throughout the year children have an opportunity to work with different types of paint, techniques and tools. Here we see examples of mixing paint with baking soda and adding drops of vinegar to the paint. Children sift dirt to add to paint, making mud paint. They explore using different tools to apply paint, like scrub brushes, plungers, tires and even a tricycle. This year the children came up with an idea to make a “bike design”. Using tricycles and scooters children painted on a large 9ft by 12ft paper drop cloth, “Bike Design I and II” is a small section from that experience.

It’s A Bug Show

Bugs! Was an explored topic amongst Room to Grow students this year. Children hunted for bugs in the yard and at Sycamore Grove, built a worm box, looked at bugs up close with a microscope and sketched bugs on the new deck. 

In the studio, students had been exploring painting on plexi-glass and making prints. Children explored different tools and techniques for making prints. They experimented with filling in the bugs with dots of paint, lines of paint, outlining and then filling in, negative space, different brushes, textures, using a roller vs patting the paper to lift the print. They also explored first, second and third prints. When we left school in the spring due to COVID-19 children had just started painting the bugs and using the pictures as reference. We also just began to explore bugs sculpturally with loose parts in the studio. You can see the collection of art they made above.