To celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, we begin happy little messes with a discussion about our 16th president. He was tall, he wore a cool hat, he helped to end slavery. Many artists have been inspired by honest Abe. There’s lots of portraits made of President Lincoln…statues, paintings, photographs and he’s even pictured on money. His profile is on our penny.
In the 5+ class, I trace each child’s profile onto paper, using an overhead projector. The children will collage their silhouettes using magazines, construction paper and mod podge. There are 2 centers: one space for cutting with scissors and one space for collaging the paper using Mod Podge in little pots with paintbrushes.
In the 2-4 year old class, we focus on our scissor skills. When we’ve gathered enough snippings, we move to the glue table.
For scissor skills, we hold our hands out as if we are going to shake someone’s hand. We insert fingers and thumb and talk about how the scissors are like alligators, hungry for paper. The scissors open, the alligator mouth is open. The kids say, yum yum yum, chomp chomp chomp. Their hands get tired quickly so they move between snipping with scissors to gluing, back and forth.
