A Cluster of Clouds

The weather is cloudy at Briargrove - in the hallways, that is! The walls are covered in clouds, carefully constructed from recycled materials by our talented kindergartners. We began this unit studying clouds a while back - to see more, check out this blog post.

After drawing and cutting out their own clouds from thin cardboard boxes, kindergartners selected round or curved recycled materials such as bottle caps, soda tabs, yarn scraps (which can be positioned into curvy, wavy, or spiral lines), and leftover bubble wrap and attached them to their clouds using Elmer's glue.


After their clouds had dried, it was time to add some color! Since clouds often appear white (but are usually not JUST white) I thought it would be appropriate to introduce the idea of tints. We discussed how a tint is any color mixed with white. Every student got to choose one or two colors we see in clouds besides white (like yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue at sunset, grey on an overcast day, black for storm clouds, etc.) On their own pallet, I gave them a small drop of that color paint and about a quarter-sized squirt of white paint. We used washable tempera based paint. (Ideally acrylic would work better, as it is less likely to chip or flake off the plastic surfaces. Still, I think this paint looked pretty great!)

Then comes the fun and surprisingly not too messy part - painting! I left the color-mixing for the students to do themselves. We talked about how clouds have lighter and darker parts, and I showed them how they could mix lots of different tints as they worked instead of mixing everything together at once. And it was especially fun to try mixing on the cloud instead of in the palette. The resulting clouds were full of beautiful colors and interesting textures.



Last week I put up a huge installation in our hallways using all 175 or so kinder clouds. To prep them for hanging, I had to do some work myself! On the back of each cloud, I attached a small loop of fishing line using tape and then a drop of hot glue for reinforcement. I also hot glued one bottle cap on the back of each cloud so that they would hang slightly raised from the wall. Then I hung them to the wall using one staple on the fishing line. This method really paid off - the clouds appear to be suspended on the wall as if they are just floating there!

Everyone in the school has loved this installation, and can't believe its kindergarten!