One Friday afternoon when I was unsure of what to do...

We had been doing about light and dark and reading the "The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark ". The children loved the chapter about the stars and we had talked a lot about them. I got the picture by Van Gogh "Starry Starry night" and we sat and talked about the colours in the sky... blue, silver, black etc. (also in the story book).

We also talked about what stars actually looked like from a long, long way away - just a circle of bright light.

So on large pieces of paper we squirted blue / silver / black / white paint and the children used their fingers to make the sky look a bit windy and cloudy, and then we went out to play!

On our return, the pictures had dried so we used pastel crayons in orange / yellow / white and drew spirals, building each spiral up with all the different colours.

We stuck them on the ceiling so when the real stars are not out we can look at our own! The final pieces looked very effective but took no time at all and fitted in beautifully with the work we had been doing.