Activity Plan 4-5: Decorating Our House

Children will "dress up" their learning as they work together to enhance the dramatic-play area.

• PRINT
• EMAIL

Ready-To-Use Teaching Idea: Art

Materials:

• fabric markers
• fabric or solid colored sheet
• cardboard magazine holders
• drawing paper
• art materials including markers, crayons, tempera paint, glue sticks, collage materials, and child safety scissors
• old magazines for cutting

Objective: Children will develop aesthetic awareness and creative-thinking, fine-motor, and social skills as they work together to create decorative objects and art for their dramatic-play area.

ACTIVITY

1 Invite children to join you in the dramatic-play area and ask them to help decorate this area to make it look more like a home. Ask them to share their ideas, which you can incorporate into the suggested activities.

2 First, invite a small group to work together to make a tablecloth. Help them measure and cut the fabric to fit the table. Tape the fabric to the floor or table to make it taut and secure. Provide fabric markers so children can decorate the tablecloth. If there is enough material left over, other children can make a second tablecloth.

3 Ask teams of two children to decorate magazine and book 40 holders. Provide them with two or three cardboard magazine holders and a variety of art materials. Encourage them to work together to explore the materials. Collect magazines, catalogs, and circulars that reflect their communities and homes to place into the holders.

4 Engage children in a discussion on the types of things people hang on their walls to decorate their homes. Set up the art area with a variety of paper and art materials and invite everyone to make something to hang. Include magazines that reflect children's home cultures. Children can make collages, drawings, or paintings. Help them mount their finished pictures onto larger paper to create frames for their work.

5 Ask children to think of other items that they can make to decorate their house. Keep materials such as empty milk cartons, fabric, glue, and collage materials available. Invite families to donate household objects that reflect their home culture.

Curriculum Connection: TAKE-HOME MATH ACTIVITY

Identifying Shapes. Prepare a sheet of paper for children to write or draw pictures of things in their homes that are round. Send the paper home along with a note to families explaining the activity. Ask them to assist their children with writing or drawing the names of the things they have identified. Encourage children to share and discuss their findings during group time. Continue the activity by asking children to find items in their homes that are rectangular or square, or things that come in pairs, sets, or different types of patterns or designs.

Risa Young is the former director of two early childhood programs in the New York City area, the Children's Aid Society's Greenwich Village Center and the Innovative Learning Center at the Long Island College Hospital. She has been a consultant to Early Childhood Today for more than eight years.

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