Kindergarten City at Night Collages

Kindergarten students created City at Night Collages using the massive amounts of scrap paper we've collected over the year.  They were first given random sized rectangle scraps and were asked to create each building with a different shape.  Next, they added windows with black and yellow paper to represent lights on or off.  Lastly, they added a night sky with white crayon.  We were going to add a little more detail in the buildings, but I could tell they were getting bored with cutting and gluing windows, so we just skipped the details.  As I look at the artwork collectively, I don't think those details will be missed!

Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the great project inspiration!

Earth Day Art Project

I know that Earth Day has come and gone, but we've had some really sporadic bad weather here over the last few weeks and we were just NOW able to get outside to create our environmental art pieces.  The students looked at the art of Andy Goldsworthy as their inspiration for their artwork.  They were to use only natural items from the schoolyard for their creations.  Once photographed, everything was put back where it was found.

This is a project that I've done every year and the kids never get tired of it...probably because they get to go outside. :) 

Kindergarten Dale Chihuly Macchia

We have such a great local museum for our students to view a real-life Dale Chihuly artwork and the Kindergarten students visited the museum during a recent field trip.  The Kindergarten teachers have been so wonderful in allowing a little collaboration between what they're studying in the classroom and what we do in the art room.

Each student was given a coffee filter and a piece of scrap newspaper (to protect the table).  They then chose 3 colors of water-based markers and created some kind of pattern design on the coffee filter.  Once colored, the students sprayed the coffee filter with water to let the colors start to blend together.  We dabbed away excess water and then set the wet coffee filter on a cup to dry to create the macchia shape.  Once dry, I glued the macchia shapes on poster board to create a collaborative kindergarten art project!

Thanks to We Heart Art for this AMAZING project idea!  They suggest using spray starch to help keep the macchia shape, but I found that plain water worked just as well!

Kindergarten "A Color of His Own" Chameleon Paintings

Kindergarten students LOVE to read books, so we read the book "A Color of His Own" by Leo Lionni and created a very colorful chameleon.  The students followed along with me to create the very basic chameleon shape.  Even though they watched me draw, notice how different the chameleons look!  Next, they added details inside the chameleon.  They used texture plates and crayons to give the chameleon a variety of textures.  We found that the textures didn't show up very well on construction paper, so we gave the chameleon a light coat of watercolor paint to bring out the textures.  This was a fun, quick project to do in between two larger projects! 

Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the inspiration for this project!

Kindergarten Jasper Johns Inspired Number Paintings

This has to have been the most messy project I've ever taught.  Sometimes I think to myself, "Why in the world am I doing THIS with KINDERGARTEN?!"  But when the project is finished and I see the end result, I'm so glad I went ahead and persevered through the mess. 

Day 1:  Kindergarteners studied the art of Jasper Johns, specifically his number paintings.  I drew a "tic-tac-toe" grid on their paper and they added the numbers 1-9 inside the grid.  Choosing one color of tempera paint, they painted over their numbers. 

Day 2:  Trying to eliminate dirty water and dirty paint colors, we started with yellow, and they painted around three of the numbers, then three more with orange, and the last three with red.  I gave them clean water again, and they used green, blue, and then purple. 

Day 3:  Starting back at yellow, they filled in the empty spaces around the numbers.

Kindergarten Spider Webs and Spiders

Some background:  This project was the result of an incredibly messy painting project I started with Kindergarten a few weeks ago.  I walked out of school that day with paint just about everywhere and decided on the spot to hold this project for a month or so while I recovered my sanity!  I started a Jasper Johns inspired number painting with the kids, which I have done (and successfully!) in previous years.  Due to time constraints this year, I'm finding myself rushing through procedures and demonstrations so that the students have time to work.  Maybe my lack of direction at the beginning of the project or my weak procedure reinforcement caused the mess...or maybe I just have extra messy kids this year!

So, I scrambled to find a non-messy project for the Kindergarteners and stumbled across these very colorful spiderwebs on Art with Mr. E's blog.  Perfect.  Drawing and coloring, while reinforcing their knowledge of pattern.  I always attempt to tweak the art projects I find, so I had the students make colorful spiders out of Model Magic to attach at the end.   

Maybe we should have had a conversation about REAL colorful spiders and their poisonous attributes as I overheard a parent in the hallway talking about this very thing.  Oh well...



Kindergarten Owls

Oh my goodness, these owls turned out so adorable!  Although it was tedious and time-consuming tearing the paper, the Kindergarten students were very patient and the results were well worth it...and great practice in developing fine motor skills!  On black paper, the students drew two ovals, one for the head and the other for the body.  Next, they tore quarter-size pieces of a variety of brown construction paper for the feathers.  Lastly, they added eyes, a beak, and feet.  Check out the last picture for the artwork display. 

Thanks to Wallenpaupack North Primary School's Arsonia page for inspiring this project. 

Kindergarten "Starry Night" Paintings