Open Ended Art - Bean Mosic

It's our first week participating in Open Ended Art hosted by Growing and Learning by Leaps and Bounds. The theme was Bean Mosaics and it was a TOTAL hit!  Turbo was very excited to use the beans and to make it even more fun, we had his best buddy Crash over today too.  We've been reading and learning about Fall, so I printed off a leaf template for the boys to glue their beans.

I did mention I was going to try to work with beans (a lot of beans) and glue with two 2 year old boys, right?  In efforts to make an easy outcome for the clean up crew, we spent about 30 minutes playing outside to wear them out a bit. Oh so smart!

There was excitement in the air as I put them in their chairs as they couldn't wait to get started! They were terrific with the beans and spilled very few of them. It was most adorable to see the different way they used the beans. They both started by putting down some glue and then placing a few beans at a time.

Then Turbo started playing with the beans being disinterested in the project.  It was sooo hard not to do it for him - even just placing one or two to get him started again. Yea, I resisted!  After a bit, I encouraged him back to the beans. He was into putting drops of glue everywhere on the leaf as he loves to squeeze the glue. Then (with encouragement) he scooped out most of his beans onto the leaf and then smoothed them around.  While he loved the project, he would have been very happy making glue art and playing with the beans.

Crash had a different approach. After placing a few at a time, he squeeze more glue on top of them and place more beans. He enjoyed placing a few at a time then adding more glue on top of them and adding more beans - forming a taller pile in the middle. He stayed focused on the project the whole time and really enjoyed it.   I was so proud of both boys for a job very well done!!