Kindergarten Projects From My Long-Term Sub Gig

Hello!

So, it's been a busy Spring for me since I finished student teacherin' in December--I subbed a bit in preschool, kindergarten, elementary and high school and then landed a wonderful 6 1/2 weeks long-term sub gig at an elementary school nearby teaching art to grades K-5. What a blast I had--the students and staff at Fairgrounds rock and I was sad to go (it's hard to stop doing something you love when your next big thing isn't settled upon yet). Since then, I haven't blogged much because I've been daily subbing and working on my dang art teacher portfolio (more on that in a future post or ten). ANYHOW....I thought I'd break out some of the projects that appear in the collage here so that you had a bit more info on them...ENJOY!!

For more info on this awesome project--READ ON!

Kindergarten Art Projects From Fairgrounds Elementary School:

Week 1: Lots of Hearts (1 day)

A getting-to-know-you project.

Inspired by Valentine’s Day, students used chalk pastels to trace the outline of a heart shape (line) and then smudge the edges with cotton balls. Once the heart tracer is removed a glowing heart (shape) remains. Students were asked to repeat the procedure 5-6 times using whatever colors they wished.

 

Sorry, all I have of this project is my teacher example.
The finished pieces were WAY better!

Week 2: Picasso Bouquets (1 day) See post here

Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s drawing: Hands With Bouquet

Students looked at and talked about the drawing “Hands With Bouquet” by  Pablo Picasso. Students then used oil pastels to create a similar bouquet of flowers using circles and ovals and vertical lines. When they were done, I painted the palm of their hand with black paint and they stamped their handprint onto the work to look as though they were holding the bouquet.

Week 3 and 4: Mondrian Mixed Media Collages (2 days) From Art Room 104

Inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian

Students looked at the work of Mondrian and discussed how his work was similar to (and different from) the work of Picasso. Students then used scissors to cut squares and rectangles from paper to create a collage. On day two of the project, students added horizontal and vertical lines to the work using scraps of mat board and black tempera paint.

 

This is the info I put with my displays.
Many people comment about how helpful the info is.

A student example.

The finished display--there's one class in here, I think.

Week 5 and 6: Class Quilt From Pinterest (Image from Solana Highlands School)

Inspired by the 19^th and 20^th Century Quilts from the Picturing America Series (Particularly the “Crazy Quilt” Image)

We reviewed the shapes we had been using the past few weeks and the art method they had used recently (collage). Students then used scissors, glue and a variety of papers to create individual quilt squares that had whatever colors and shapes they wanted. On day 2, the teacher used a hole punch to add holes to each quilt square (about 8 per square) and students used yarn to sew their quilt square. Individual student work was mounted together to create a whole-class composition displayed in the individual Kindergarten classrooms.

Each Kindergarten class made their own quilt for their classroom.

An example of a quilt square (they are 6" square).

I needed one more square and decided to create this piece--
the teachers LOVED the quote.

Week 7: Kandinsky group mural See post here

Inspired by Kandinsky’s color studies

Students used paint to create a composition of concentric rings based on the color studies by Kandinsky. Individual student work was displayed with other grade levels to create a multi-age group mural for the hallway.

A close-up of the individual 6" squares all glued together
onto the larger roll of paper using Elmer's glue (a dot in each corner).

The finished mural. Beautiful!!

What a Relief! Monet Waterlilies

Last week my Modern Art class created pictures based on van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting. The focus was on little strokes of color and using MANY colors in each section. It seemed to me that a natural next step would be to learn about Monet. With this project, the students could, again, work from a reproduction in order to increase their awareness of the artist's technique and color choices, and build on what they learned last week.

Monet also used little dashes of color in his work. We used oil pastels to create our dashes of color. I told the children that we weren't doing to connect these dashes with watercolor paint like we did last week in our van Gogh pieces--this week they needed to cover the entire surface of their piece with dashes of color. To make this less daunting, I reduced the size of the paper. I also used a nice blue color of matte board as their "base." This way, if a bit of blue poke through between the dashes, it still looked like water.

Monet also used MANY colors in his work. We listed all the colors we saw in the reproductions in front of us and pretty much determined that we could use all of the oil pastels in our kits (they are a collection of 12 colors). I asked them to try to use every color at least once in their backgrounds. This wasn't a set rule (like my three-colors-in-each-section rule of last week), but I wanted them to try MANY colors.

We then created the lily pads and lilies separately and attached them. The children were open to working in this way since the "collage technique" was similar to the van Gogh pieces they had made the week before. The lilies are created using tissue paper "puffs" and stick out from the background. This is not 3D, since we can't completely walk around the piece and see it from all sides, but is called a relief.

I had never done a lesson like this before, but I was VERY happy with it. I love the dashes of color and the bright hues of the oil pastels!

Monet Water Lily Relief

Supplies Needed:

• Reproduction of one of Monet's Water Lily Paintings
• Matte Board scrap in a medium blue (or other watery color), ours were 8" x 10"
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Masking tape
• Oil pastels (ours were "Cray•pas" brand, a set of 16)
• Scrap pieces of poster board or white card stock (for lily pads)
• Scissors
• Scrap bits of tissues paper in a variety of peach, pink, white, yellow colors (three colors at least)
• Clear tape
• Tacky glue

Directions:

1. Use the ruler to create a 1" border around the edge of your matte board--all four sides.

2. Attach pieces of masking tape to the matter board, using your pencil lines as a guide, to create a nice taped "frame" around the edge of the matte board. When you are done, you'll be removing the tape and this will leave a nice clean edge around your piece. **TIP: stick the masking tape strips to your shirt before placing them on the matte board so they loose some of their stickiness and are easier to remove later on.**

3. Begin filling in the background of your piece using the oil pastels. You will want to use little dashes of color--using the end of the oil pastel will give you a nice thick dash. You can change colors and layer dashes over one another. Make sure you aren't scribbling like you do with a crayon--dash, dash, dash...filling in the water and the plants on the edge of the water.

4. Once the background is done, draw three ovals with pencil onto the white card stock. The ovals should be about 1 1/2" wide. These are your lily pads. Fill in the lily pads using at least three colors (ha! I had to say it!). Cut the ovals out and put a little slit in each one coming from one edge into the center. Put aside.

5. Cut or rip three tissue paper squares. They should be of a couple different colors and be around 1 1/2" square. Layer them and pinch the center and give them a twist to make a little "pouf" of tissue paper. This will be your water lily. Insert the twisted tip of the water lily into the slit of the lily pad you created. Tape the point of the tip to the backside of the lily pad with clear tape to secure them together. Repeat with the other lily pads you have created.

6. Put a dab of glue on the back of each lily pad and place them onto the background. If you'd like, you can add some lily pads to the background with oil pastels. This gives the illusion of depth in your picture, but it is not necessary.

Lemon Still Life

A couple weeks back I started summer lessons working with a very talented young lady...this little girl is going into third grade in the fall and over the summer we'll be working on refining her drawing skills. I'm so excited to be working with her!

For our first lesson, I decided to have her do a still life with lemons. The lesson was a nice way for us to chat and get to know one another while talking about art concepts such as shape, form, balance, symmetry and so much more! She was very interested in drawing the lemon segments and we had a wonderful discussion about the colors we saw in the lemon peel and the shadows!

Lemons on drawing paper using colored pencils

I had her sketch the lemons using graphite and then add color using watercolor pencils. She could then soften the color by adding water (she didn't want to--she liked the look of the pencil lines).

We finished that up pretty quickly and I introduced her to a new (to me) technique I have been laying around with. We tried out this new technique using just one lemon, to keep it simple. She drew the lemon using craypas, or oil pastels, and then used baby oil on a Q-tip to smudge the colors and blend them. Boy, I remember using turpentine with oil pastels in high school-YUCK! What a smell and mess (at least for this watercolorist!).

She then used watercolor to add a wash of color to the background (the oil pastels act as a resist for the watercolor, so she could just paint over the entire image). She really enjoyed working with that medium and we decided our next lesson would use that technique. I can't wait!

Lemon done using the craypas/baby oil technique on watercolor paper