The Christmas presents our children give their parents are their portfolios which they (and we) have been busy compiling all year.

They love to use their own decorated paper and they usually make various sorts. Last year they painted with edicol dye.

We have started to get the Christmas wrappings happening as it takes a while to get enough together for 54 children!

This last week we put out paint dabbers …

which were bath scrunchies …

and washing up sponges.

Sherry envisioned lots of dab, dab, dab …

while Donna thought there would be more swirl, swirl, swirl!

Typically the children mixed it up …

and the resulting paper …

was pretty gorgeous!

All throughout the year we compile a portfolio for each child. We call them “Memory Books“. They consist of our observations, parent’s contributions, children’s art work and stories, photos of them in action and the different incursions and excursions we do together.

At the end of the year they are given to the families as a very special present from their kindergarten children.

They are completed now and the children have had their final look through them…

… decorated the covers using posca pens and wrapped them up.

For their wrapping paper, we placed a mixture of bright edicol-coloured water by the easel and big sheets of paper.

The variety of beautiful paintings …

… with their incredible colours …

… took our breath away!!

Spectacular!

We didn’t worry about naming them as the children understood that we would be sharing the paper around, so they simply choose a sheet they liked when the time came to wrap.

::: make it irresistible :::

We love to have our easels set up outside and we find that the children love it too. In fact we’ve noticed that many more children are drawn to the painting experience when the easels are outside.

Using edicol-coloured water like we did here, can create a real mess under the easel (then again can’t all paint!)…

… so we have a large piece on lino on the ground …

… so we can easily mop up any spills.

Of course this would be a great advantage on the floor inside as well!