Kindergarten - Mixed Up Animals
To follow up my line lesson, I decided to talk with my kindergarten about shapes. We started by reading Eric Carle’s Mixed Up Chameleon (my favorite Carle title!). We then had a discussion about what kinds of animals we saw in the story, and what kinds of animals they would mix up if they could make their own mixed-up-animals.
The students were overjoyed to find out that they were in fact, going to make their own mixed up animals! We spent a whole day cutting out shapes from different colored papers. We had a discussion about kinds of shapes, and I drew some on the smartboard so that they would have something to reference. This was a great opportunity to get those flex those fine motor skills - somes students had not had much experience cutting before and needed some assistance and extra guidance. Over all though we ended up with a ton of fantastic and interesting shapes.
The following class I showed the students how to arrange their shapes to create mixed up animals. I would hold up a shape and ask them what part of an animals I could make with this. I also named specific animals and asked them what kinds of shape I needed to make them. Once I was confident that they understood what I wanted from them, I let them go to their work stations and start gluing. The results are posted in these pictures.
We also had a discussion about what kinds of animals they created, and what shapes they used to create them. Listening to a room full of 5 year olds describe their wacky creations was a ton of fun!
Kindergarten - Mixed up Lines
Kindergarten is quite possibly the most fun grade to work with. Kindergarten students are eager to learn, cute as buttons, and have a genuine joy to them that really just brightens up your day. I had a blast teaching this lesson on lines to my kindergarten students this year.
I was inspired by one of Mrs. Brown’s art lessons. I liked the idea so I modified it a bit to suit my teaching style and gave it a shot, the results were fantastic.
We started by talking about different kinds of lines - I actually had the students stand up and act out the kinds of lines they named. One student, for example, hopped around the room like a “dotted line”, another weaved in and out through the desks to show me how a ”zig-zag line” moves. It was a good time!
After we talked for about 10 minutes about lines, I showed the students how to set up a grid of all the different lines we talked about. I wanted them to create four different lines going “up and down”, and two lines going “side-to-side” using crayons. Once the lines were drawn, I showed them how to add color to their grids using tempera paints.
We talked about how to hold the paint brush, how to get enough paint on the brush, and how to wipe the brush off so that their paper didn’t get too wet. I did not go into warm/cool colors, but I did group all the warm colors together and the cool colors together. My thought process here was that when they did learn warm and cool colors in later grades, they would be used to seeing those particular colors together, making it easier to understand.
Kindergarten Texture Mosaics!
This was a great unit that lasted a little over a month. It started out as a unit on texture - I had kids actually touch things like their hair, the rug, their shoes, and talk about the way these different things felt. I really wanted to drive home the idea that texture can describe both the way things feel and look.
We made two major texture based artworks, one was a tempera painting that we put saran wrap over to create a texture as it dried, and the other was a texture grid that we used rubbing plates and crayons to produce.
While the artwork came out pretty cool, and the kids liked the activity a lot, I wanted to make something a little more meaningful. So I spoke with my cooperating teacher, and together we came up with the idea of mosaics. We talked as a class about what a mosaic actually is - a big picture made up of tiny shapes, sort of like a puzzle!We had the kids practice on a small scale at first, and then eventually they moved to a large scale mosaic that took up about a third of the wall in the hallway outside of the art room.
The students cut up their texture artwork into small squares (fine motor skills!), and then glued them onto the large scale mosaic (gross motor skills!). This project really fostered a sense of community and collaboration, as the entire kindergarten got the opportunity to work on it at one point or another.
I have to say I am super proud of my students, they really knocked this one out of the ball park!
