Patterned Turtles

  This project allowed the students to be creative while practicing their drawing skills. We used turtles the subject for these artworks. Each child drew a turtle and was able to decorate their shells however they wanted. They were told to be creative, think about patterns or textures and try to make it unique. After they drew their turtles with pencils, they outlined them in sharpie and colored them with metallic pencils.  to be creative, think about patterns or textures and try to make it unique. After they drew their turtles with pencils, they outlined them in sharpie and colored them with metallic pencils. 

Textured Ice Cream

First grade loved making these texture collages inspired by Brown Bear author Eric Carle. We first looked at several Eric Carle books and how his illustrations were made. I set up different painting stations with tempera paint, scraping tools and other texturing tools. The girls were give paper to paint and scrape and create textures on. They then used a template shaped like a scoop of ice cream to make "scoop" shapes on the dried textures. After cutting out 3-4 ice cream scoops. they made one of their texture papers into a cone shape. The girls then glued the ice cream cones together and created a patterned border around the edge.

Winter Wonderland

In an effort to help my little ones understand how important details are to artworks, we looked at artworks that had wintry scenes in them such as Peter Brugel's "The Hunters in the Snow". We had a discussion about all the picture clues-- that tell us as the viewer--what the subject of the painting is. The girls pointed out the bare trees, the heavy coats, the ice skating, snow on rooftops, the fire, etc.

I gave the students light grey construction paper and construction paper crayons. They were told to draw a wintry scene that had many clues about the subject.

                                                      The Hunters in the Snow, Peter Brugel

Flower Collage

Kindergartners need plenty of opportunity to work those "pincers" and this is a perfect project for that. I laid out a ton of scrap paper of a variety of colors and let them go for it! Their instructions were to make a garden with flowers, grass, and if they had time, bugs and sky. They had to tear the pieces into small sizes before gluing. We also went over proper gluing procedures.

Tree Collage

I like to teach kids early about the shape of trees, so that they can get out of the habit of making what I call "cloud-top trees". We look at pictures of real trees and talk about their branches, limbs, twigs and leaves. I gave them a lot of brown strips of paper in different widths. They were able to cut them however they liked. They then used these strips to make the trunk (a thicker strip), the branches (a medium strip) and the limbs and twigs (out of the thinnest strips). 

After they glued their brown strips, they cut out a yellow and red leaves and added them to the branches. They also added some to the ground that had already fallen.

Little Yellow Leaf Collage

Before we began this project, I read the sweet story called "Little Yellow Leaf"  by Carin Berger. It's a story of a leaf that was afraid to fall from the tree. A red leaf was also afraid, so they decided to fall together. The kids loved it and we were able to talk about friendship and fears.

I like to teach the pre-k students about the shape of trees, so that they don't make what I call "cloud-top trees". We looked at pictures of trees and at real trees outside and discussed the trunk, branches and limbs. They then painted the tree part using brown tempera paint. After the painting was dry, they cut out one red and one yellow leaf and glued them to the branches.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Here's another idea for Georgia O'Keeffe flowers. For this project, I used oil pastels and took advantage of the girls having a background in value study (we first did the abstract value study lesson found on this blog). I have a lot of flower pictures from old calendars. I allowed the girls to choose which flower they wanted, or they could print one from home. They first cropped the image by making a paper frame and focusing it on one area of the flower. After drawing the flower on paper with a pencil,they began blending and mixing oil pastels to fill in the color. They turned out beautifully as you can see.

Abstract Value Study

Learning how to blend and change the value of a color can be challenging. Instead of learning these skills on a still life or a drawing of shapes, I opted to use abstract spaces. I had the girls use a pencil first to draw random overlapping lines on a small piece of paper (the paper was 8X10"). I advised the girls not to end up with tiny spaces that could not contain a value study of a color. The objective was to color a gradual value change, from light to dark or from dark to light. The students chose a few colors that they felt made an interesting color scheme. After they drew their lines in pencil, they drew over it in black sharpie. They then filled the spaces with value studies using colored pencil. Once they got the hang of a one-color study, they had the option of trying to blend two different colors together.