Rainbow Trucks in the City

These were fun. 

I found this great idea on Artsonia here for a Kindergarten lesson last week. On an 12 x 18 piece of heavyweight white paper, students used Sharpie to draw a horizon line and then buildings in the background. (Some of them got very creative with their building shapes!) Then they drew some road lines (although most of these ended up being covered-up by their trucks). Students each got a small stack of coloured rectangles (I think these were 2 x 3) and arranged them in the rainbow order. I gave a brown square and rectangle for the front of the truck and some small black squares for the wheels, which they cut into circles. Once arranging their order, they glued on their trucks. Finally, some students decided to add more details (such as ice cream cones, people, planes etc.). 

Kindergarten Cardboard People

These little people were made from cut cardboard scraps, googly eyes, yarn, and paper and fabric pieces.

It was our first time in art class working with white glue. I was under the assumption that most students had already had some experience with it but I assumed wrong. Even though I demonstrated gluing techniques, I guess they just need a little more practice. (We had some very large glue spills on the tables!) Having said that, the Kinders loved creating their people and giving them personalities. And my Grade 2s came in afterwards and graciously cleaned up the big mess. Haha.

Not sure what's going on with the guy on the right but it looks unfortunate!

Thank you South School Art Studio for inspiring these!

Halloween in the Art Room

I love owls and all of my students know it. So for Halloween, it only made sense that I went as one. I painted yellow circles on sunglasses with hole in the middle to see out of. Then I glued on some feathers and made a paper nose. I found a shawl at the thrift store. Super easy but very effective!

Here are some painted and collaged Halloween pumpkins inspired by this Deep Space Sparkle project. 

Kindergarten loved doing these and then posing with them afterwards. 

Lots and Lots of Kindergarten Flowers

Kinders were on flower overload these last two weeks. First, they made wildflower paintings and then this week, they did some stamping to make flowers in vases. But hey, I needed to brighten up the art room and make it at least seem like it's springtime. (It's been an overall cool, drippy, and dismal last couple of weeks.)

The wildflower lesson was very successful. I got the idea from this Fine Lines lesson here. I showed some images of wildflowers and we talked about how to create the flower stems by first pressing hard at the bottom of the black paper with construction paper crayons and then ending with a sweeping motion. Students used Q-Tips with liquid tempera to dab the flowers. I've only included a couple of very busy examples, because the sparser ones didn't photograph well on the black paper.

And this week, we worked on flowers in vases, using the lesson that I found on Colour for Everyone. Kinders each received a 6 x 4.5 piece of coloured construction paper. They folded the paper, drew an interesting line going down the side and then cut it out to make a symmetrical vase. After pasting it on some large white paper, they painted two or three large circles on the page using liquid tempera. They then used cut foam sponges (in rectangular and triangular shapes) to stamp the petals around the flowers.

I had red, yellow, and blue paints squeezed out on one tray and students used a brush to paint their sponged different colours before stamping. Next time, I think I'd have very separate paint trays, including the secondary colours and more sponges because the sponge shapes got very muddy with all of the colours being mixed together.

Here are a few:

Kindergarten Lines and Paint Resist

With this lesson, Kinders have now moved on to painting with more than just one colour. This time, they got to use the entire tempera palette and they were sooo excited! I borrowed this line variety lesson idea from Mrs. Brown's Art. It's a great introduction and review of different types of lines.

First, I drew some examples of different types of lines as students called them out (zig-zag, bumpy, curvy, straight etc.). Then, we talked about lines that go "up and down" (vertical) and lines that go side to side (horizontal).  I modeled how I wanted students to draw four different types of lines on their papers, using four different colours of oil pastels; two vertical and two horizontal. Then, I did a quick demonstration/review of how to use the tempera paint and brush and asked that students fill in each area between the lines with different colours. Here are some of the results:

  

A different take on the lesson...but with a brilliant result!