Carpenter Art Room: Kindergarten Art

My Kindergarten classes come to Art 3 times a week. We have a one hour Art session and two 38 minute Humanity sessions. For Humanities I use the curriculum from their Science and Social Studies to help determine what the theme of the lesson should be. By providing different modalities of learning students have different ways of learning a concept.

Below you will find artwork from lesson taught from September to the beginning of December.

We started this year in Art learning the basics. We learned about the rules in the Art Room through the Monster Rules project which had a list of rules attached to it so students would not forget. Our Rules included be nice to your friends, use inside voice, be safe and make good choices. Carpenter follows the PBIS- Positive Behavior Intervention and Support.

http://www.preschoolplaybook.com/2009/09/monster-rules.html

The next project we did was based on The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, Ruth E. Harper and Nancy M. Leak. Students traced their hand and than cut it out. They made a heart to represent the kiss.

We discussed the color wheel. I read the book Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh. We made color wheels with yellow, orange, red, purple, blue and green mice.

Kindergarten students learned about the artist Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. I read Katie and the Sunflowers by James Mayhew to the students. We created sunflower paintings using forks and knifes. Students only used yellow and orange paint.

When we discuss line I always like to introduce students to Piet Modrian's work. He used lines to create spaces for color. He used the primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Students create their own work by glueing on pieces of black paper and colored in between the black lines being careful not to have the same color touching.

We looked at work done by Jackson Pollack. I read the book Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. After discussing how he did his work by dripping and splattering paint we did our own version. We used Matchbox cars from my son's collection.

Another lesson the students did on lines were inspired by the book Lines That Wiggle by Candace Whitman. Below you will find students lines. We discussed the difference between a line and a shape as well. A shape is a closed line. While a line has a beginning and an end.

Students had the opportunity to look at the work of Joan Miro. Miro was a Spanish painter who used line to create shapes and images. He is considered an abstract artist. Below are some images made by students in crayon and paint.

One of the science units that Kindergarten students do is Collections. In the Fall I spend a lot of time showing them different leaves. Below you will find leaf rubbings, leaf painting and sponge tree paintings.

We discussed how scientist can use rubbings to document the details of objects they are looking at. In First Grade they will be drawing a leaf.

The above paintings were inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Patterns of Leaves found below.

The tree sponge painting was used to show how leaves overlap and how the color of a leaf goes from green to yellow to orange to red and eventually brown. We focused on yellow, orange and red.

In Math students study patterns. We used circles to create patterns with construction paper crayons.

Students went on a field trip to the Apple Orchard this past Fall. After their trip we drew apple shapes with crayons. We focused on how light affects how we color the apples.

Also, in the Fall we looked at pumpkins and I read the story Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troaino and Susan Banta. We used black card stock to create the images with construction paper crayon. Students started with a simple oval for the pumpkin and added lines to create the segments on the pumpkin and curly vines. Their pumpkin landscapes had a foreground (ground), middle ground (pumpkin and vines) and a background (the sky).

Veterans Day was November 11, 2012. Students created a bouquet of red poppies in honor of the Veterans. They used patterns on the vase as well as made a pattern with their red poppies.

As Fall was turning to Winter I read the book Frederick by Leo Lionni to my students. The main character is a mouse, Frederick, who gathers colors and images rather that food. His imagination and images helped his family survive the winter.

Another book and art project my students enjoyed was Elmer the Patchwork Elephant by David McKee. We did a color by number worksheet and than they made their own Elmer using squares of tissue paper they glued on.