Around the World in 30 minutes !

Today’s Multicultural Day was a HUGE hit! Not only did we have a very good parent turnout for the monthly center meeting/Multicultural Festival, but the kids loved it!

As I said in my recent post, my classroom has been studying Italy. Each classroom in the center (a total of four) was assigned a different country and have been studying the historical facts, art, music and culture of the country.

After the parent meeting that was held by the administration, parents came to the classrooms and we all went on a “tour” to visit each classroom and view the work that all the munchkins have done and sample a food from the classroom’s country.

Mosaic Art:

  In studying the culture of Italy, we looked at some of the popular art in Italy and I decided to have my munchkins make a mosaic. Because of time constraints (thanks to the last minute meeting I had to attend on Tuesday), we didn’t have time for anything elaborate, so I found some clear plastic plates and dug some magazines and sales paper from my recycle bin for a quick and cute paper mosaic art activity for the munchkins to do. 

They came out beautiful!

Learning about Famous Italian Artists:

 We also took a closer look at the art in Italy and learned about Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. I showed the munchkins pictures of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo and told them about how he painted it while lying on his back. And to give them the experience of how it feels to “paint” while lying on their back, I taped some bulletin board paper underneath the art table with some colored pencils and crayons (cuz paint would have been a disaster!) and let them go at it! At first they were very awkward as they tried to figure out how to actually draw “upside down” (as they called it), but once they got the hang of it, I had to drag them out from under the table to give the other munchkins a turn! 

As you can see- they LOVED it! 

Here is their masterpiece that we exhibited in the hallway today for our Multicultural Festival:

We also learned about Leonardo Da Vinci, whose Mona Lisa painting I have in the Art Center. They seemed very interested in learning more about the person who painted that portrait. As I read the book on Da Vinci and came to the information about the Mona Lisa painting, a few of them immediately referred back to the picture painting in our Art Center! Wow, guess they really do pay attention to what I put on the walls. Now I am happy to say that they now know the name of the artist and the painting!

We learned about the art of painting people, I modeled how to refer back to the subject (their friend) to paint their portrait as precise as possible, and each munchkin partnered up with a friend and painted their portrait!

I got a kick out of watching them paint each other and the looks on some of the munchkins’ faces as their friends painted them were priceless!


Ahhhh... blooming artists in the making, don’t you think?

Overall, it was an awesome day and a 

very fun week!