using cars, trucks, anything with wheels, we made tracks by running these wheeled vehicles through blobs of paint.
i taped paper on the entire table and drew a simple “road” ahead of time. then i would drop blobs of paint as needed….you can imagine those became oil slicks (time to talk about pollution), rain puddles (time to talk about weather), ice spots (time to talk about seasons), ketchup (time to talk about car accidents when trucks can spill their load), dirt (time to talk about way-back-when before there were paved roads)…ah yes.
i also introduced the concept of clockwise and counter-clockwise…we walked around the table in one direction and then switch!
once dried, everyone could take home a section of the big paper…there are no names written on them, this is one way i like to nurture the “we’re a team” feeling…we all help as much as we like and everyone gets to take some of it home. comparing and competition dissolves. mmmmmmm.
and then since next week was w week, we washed the wheels in water…and it was tricky since the paint dried by then. but with old toothbrushes and baby shampoo..no problem. : )