Although most of my other grades will be doing new projects this year, I am keeping kindergarten largely the same. I was SUPER impressed with where they were at by the end of last year so I want to repeat what was so successful. Like last year, we are working really hard on learning about lines.

This is a continuation of Cassie Stephens unit on lines. So we started off class looking at some snake lines that I had made. Each snake was a different kind of line and we practiced saying their names. As we called out the name of the line, we made that particular line with our arms. I couldn't help but giggle at 20+ kindergartners chanting out "vertical (with their arms straight in the air),  horizontal, angle..." After that, we learned a poem about Larry the Line (he's a stuffed snake). After reciting the poem a few times, we got to meet Larry the Line (a toy stuffed snake). Larry's FAVORITEEEE thing to do in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD is to make lines. So as Larry made lines with his body, students who could tell me the name of the line got to come up and pet him. Next, I challenged them to paint the same lines that I could paint. Typically, I'm not one for doing guided lessons, but I wanted to see what the students were capable of painting. By the end of class, I had tons of beautifully painted black lines. We set the paintings on the back burner for a couple classes and then came back to them. We watched a funny music video about ROY G BIV that the kids LOVED! ROY G BIV is the acronym to remember the order of the colors for the rainbow. Then we watched another quick video of a lady reading a book about rainbows. Then we got to paint again! The students were given back their guided line paintings. They were shown how to paint a rainbow between the lines of their painting and then were asked to do the same. The paintings turned out lovely!

 This was a quick one-dayer that i saw somewhere on Pinterest. We watched a quick video about Paul Klee and noticed that he likes to break up figures into squares.

We drew our cats using black crayons so that it would resist our paint later on in the project. We talked about the difference between warm and cool colors. Warm colors reminded us of fire while cool colors reminded us of things like water and ice. Students used watercolors to paint their cat either cool colors with a warm background or a warm cat with a cool background. This was also a good project to practice our good brush use. I couldn't help but laugh at hearing kinders whispering "ballerinas dance on their toes, not their bootys" (this is a little saying I got from Cassie Stephens to help the kids remember how to use the brush right).

​I'd say this project was a pretty cooooool one. Get it?

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!

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.

Mr. Pollock was a painter who lived from 1912 to 1956, ultimately dying in a car crash at the young age of 44. As most of you probably know, Jackson was famous for his "drip paintings." Oftentimes, people exclaim "Well I could've done that!" But the reason Mr. Pollock is famous is because he was a pioneer of the method during a time when people were dabbling more and more into abstract art. He was known for splattering, spraying, squirting, dripping, and pouring paint onto his canvas. He used all sorts of materials to do this such as brushes, sticks, spatulas, spoons, etc. He worked with his canvas on the floor so that he could "dance" around it as he worked. 

So I'm pretty sure that I have a few more grey hairs after this project than when I started it! We started off by talking about Mr. Pollock and his different ways that he made art. Then I introduced them to string painting. Each table had a different color and they were encouraged to string paint with as many colors as they wanted to. For the second day of project, every two tables were given three boxes with an artwork in the bottom and marbles in it. The students didn't know whose artwork was in their box. I walked around and put a squirt of paint in each box. The students then had 40 seconds to roll the marbles around through the paint. After 40 seconds, they were asked to pass their box to the next person and I put a new color in it. Then we repeated the process again. We did this over and over until each painting had several different colors marble painted on to it. For the final day of the project, we reviewed our lines and shapes. I was so impressed with how well they remembered their lines after not having talked about them for so long! They were given black paint to paint different lines and shapes onto their artwork. Using the black paint as the final step was inspired by Deep Space Sparkle's Pollock project. We also reviewed how to use a paint brush correctly. Overall, I love how expressive the works turned out and how stark the black lines and shapes are against their backgrounds.

This was a project that I did when I student-taught with the fabulous Jen Dahl in Black River Falls. We started off reading a quick book about pumpkins then we made some art MAGIC! We retouched on the difference between 2D and 3D. The kiddos would be making two different pumpkins. Their first job was to stuff a paper bag full of crumpled up newspapers and then twist the top of the bag shut to make a stem. I gave them each a small cup of red and yellow and told them to mix it together to create some magic. 'It makes orange!' They shrieked as they mixed the colors together. It literally blew their minds! They used the orange to paint the rounded part of their 3D pumpkin. When they were finished, they put it in the pumpkin patch (on the counter) in front of the window so that our pumpkins could get some sunlight to grow! After they had finished that, they then painted a HUGE orange oval on a paper. This would later become their 2D pumpkin.

On day two, we used brown slick-sticks to add lines to both our pumpkins. Then they cut out their 2D pumpkin. Next, they added a small brown stem and I showed them how to cut out a spiral for their pumpkin's vine. After they had finished their 2D pumpkin, they made some more art magic by mixing yellow and blue together to make green! They used this to paint their 3D pumpkin stem.

Because one class had a short schedule, they fell behind. So to catch them back up, I had the other two classes turn their 2D pumpkins into jack o' lanterns. Typically, I would not have them make something that is geared towards a holiday, just in case we had some friends that don't celebrate. But I checked with the kindergarten teachers and they said that I should be good to go to make jack o' lanterns. For the two classes who made jack o' lanterns, we cut out eyes, noses, mouths, and teeth out of black and white paper and glued them on.

I want it to be known that a kindergarten class said that I was the funniest teacher they knew because I called them kinder-GARDENERS. Get it? Gardeners? They were making/growing pumpkins?! Eh. Well at least they think I'm funny....

Like our last project, after creating our shape boxes, we painted shapes! This was the kiddos' first time using tempera paint so I had to go over some basics with them. I emphasized that their brush needs to paint on it's toes like a ballerina (got this from Cassie Stephens) not scoot around on it's booty. I often times see kids scrubbing their paper with their brush when trying to paint so I am working on teaching proper brush usage. The students used the tempera paint to paint different colored shapes. When switching to a different color, we worked on making sure to clean our brush in our water cups and then drying them off on our sponge. This helps to keep the kids from mixing and dirtying the paint cups. After they had a bunch of shapes, we worked on giving the shapes outlines and eventually filling in the rest of the background.