We started off by talking about self-portraits and emotions. We took a look at ways to change your facial expression. This can be done by changing someone's eyebrows or their mouths. Students were given a paper that was folded into fourths. They were asked to draw a self-portrait with a different emotion in each square. Lastly, they sharpie'd and colored with crayons.

The next two classes were spent making the backgrounds. We hadn't used our scissors in a while so our scissors were SUPERRR hungry. We cut tons and tons of squares and rectangles, no bigger than our hand, and glued them to the background. Some students chose to use all the colors on their background, others were much more selective with their colors. After they had finished their background, they glued their self-portraits on top. When they finished, they helped their neighbors finish their backgrounds. It was funny to see assembly lines of kindergartners cutting and gluing squares! These turned out so well!

The kiddos begged me to do a project for Valentine's Day so we made these adorable hearts. This is a project that I got from my friend, Tasha Newton, over at iartmyjob.weebly.com.

We talked about tints and shades. Tints are colors mixed with white and shades are colors mixed with black. We mixed the tints and shades right on our tempera cakes. The students added these colors however they liked to their pre-cut hearts. We glued them on a background and then used a fork with white paint to print a border.

The kinders started off by adding patterns to half a sheet of paper. Then they chose one color and painted over it. Lastly, thy used combs to scratch design into the paint. Using the combs helps to reveal the bright colors of the pastels underneath.

The second day, we learned how to draw a cup of hot chocolate. We incorporated the lines that we have learned about to decorate the mug. We also made ART MAGIC by using white crayons to add marshmallows to the mug! Then we painted them with itty bitty brushes using tempera cakes. The kids were blown away when their marshmallows began to magically appear as they painted!

The final day, we glued down a doily, carefully cut out their mugs (I cut out the inside of the handles) and glued them on top of the doily. Lastly, I came around and added some white puffy paint for steam.

We celebrated with a delicious hot chocolate party after it was all said and done. Yum!

This was a quick one day project that I got from the lovely Cassie Stephens!

We hadn't done any color mixing in a while so I thought it would be a good idea to practice up on that. We read the book Mouse Paint which tells of three mice who get paint on their feet and accidentally mix their footsteps together to create new colors.

We drew 3 adorable mice using black crayon and mixed two primary colors together under each of them to create one of the secondary colors.

Just like the first graders, kindergarten is also learning about Jasper Johns! I chose Jasper because he works a lot with numbers and since we were celebrating our 100th day of school, it seemed like a perfect fit!

The first day we got extra messy! We used primary colors to mix tints and shades all over our paper! The kinders loved this part of the project! For the second day, we used white paint to paint whatever numbers we wanted facing all different directions. They were tickled pink when they got to paint 100! The final day, I created a bunch of number tracers out of card stock. Students used oil pastels to trace and color in different numbers all over their papers. Lastly, they glued on 4 numbers that I had die-cut out of the primary colors.

We worked with clay again in kindergarten and once again focused on texture. Texture is how something feels, or how something looks like it feels. Each student was a given a chunk of clay that they flattened out with the palm of their hand. Then we used different materials to press textures into the clay. When they were finished, I draped their clay slab over a styrofoam bowl and let it sit. Eventually, the clay starts to harden and takes on the shape of the bowl. After I bisque fired the bowls, students then glazed their bowl.