Like every good early childhood educator, I have the paint and easel out for a good portion of the day.  At the very start of the school year it was used regularly and every time someone painted the end result looked  something like this:

For the first few weeks they each took about one or two turns at the easel, lathering as much paint as the paper could handle, but after that was over the easel just sat there going unused for weeks. The plain white paper seemed lonely and the whiteness screamed to be set free of its blank and pointless existance. The kids had no interest and despite my encouragement, seemed bored with the idea of painting. It  seemed as if they felt they'd reached their creative peak and didn't know where to go from there. 

I was disheartened too, but not about their art. Art is more about process than product and to be honest, I think their product was beautiful.  I was disappointed that I couldn't figure out how to engage them in using the easel creatively. I wanted them to want to paint more and to be proud of what they painted. I needed something that would get their creative juices flowing.  Besides, I had to do something with all that easel paper I bought at IKEA, right?  

That was when I found the idea for art dice from Tinkerlab and got inspired to transfer it to the easel to see what would happen. I had a Discovery Toys "Crazy Cubes" that I purchased at a garage sale that allowed me to change pictures through the plastic sides.  I drew some simple line designs so the pictures would fit in the plastic slots and also made some extra ones so they could change them whenever they wanted. The die only has four slots so I when it lands on "Crazy Cube" they just giggle and yell "CrazyCubeCrazyCubeCrazyCube!!!" which adds a touch of much needed silliness to the game.  I'm sure I could add some plastic, but I think I like watching them yell "CrazyCubeCrazyCubeCrazyCube!!!" too much.

Within a week they were all at the easel playing the Crazy Cubes game. Sometimes they took turns rolling the die and painting the same picture together, other times they did it alone.  Just two weeks after introducing the Cube their painting has gone from this:

To this:

To this:

This last painting is the students' attempt to paint the horse, Seabiscuit, from the book,  Seabiscuit the Wonder Horse, a picture book we read in preparation for our trip to the Northstar Youth Ranch.

What excites me is that it's clear that the students used many of the shapes from the die in their paintings, even though the die wasn't out for this picture. Prior to us practicing with the die, they refused to attempt to paint anything specific. Now we look for shapes we know in pictures and that seems to give them a base to go off of.

I plan to add more shapes and eventually pictures for them to try their hand at.  The creative possibilities are endless!