Kindergarteners love building stuff. Even if the stuff is cups, bottle caps, lids, and toilet paper tubes. Let them play and they’ll create cities, airplanes, fish, people, robots, and trees. After reading The Dot, students used these “dot objects” to construct abstract 3D collages. Next, I have to decide if we’re going to paper mache over, smooth aluminum foil over, or gesso and paint?
For the next month, 15 students will have their self portraits on display in Superintendent Young’s office. The 4th, 3rd, 1st, and JK students show a lovely progression of knowledge and skills in regards to self portraits. This timeline of sorts is a small sample of self portraits that every student will create every year.
The Junior kindergarteners just finished 2 versions of jellyfish. They used cardboard to stamp lines for tentacles. They practiced making straight, wavy, and zig zag lines using cardboard.
Second, they finished their jellyfish mobiles. Using wire, beads, and tissue paper, students focused on patterns and lines. They created simple patterns with the beads and tissue paper, and experimented with making zig zag, wavy, and spiral lines in pipe cleaner wire.
The JK class is wrapping up a big fish unit with jellyfish sculptures. Inspired by the mobiles and wire sculptures of Alexander Calder, students began by bending soft wire into a jellyfish shape. They strung beads and found objects onto pipe cleaners for tentacles, as well as patterns of tissue paper. Tomorrow, they’ll create straight, wavy, zig zag, and curly lines in wire to add to the mobile.
The soon-to-be-finished group of jellies:
The junior kindergarteners are nearing the end of their fish unit. They drew fish, sculpted clay fish, created fish from yarn, collaged fish, and painted patterns onto fish. Next up will be wire jellyfish mobiles!
For the collage fish, students looked at the art of Eric Carle and noticed how he uses painted paper for the shapes. Selecting from pre-cut shapes, students had to identify appropriate shapes for the body, tail, and fins. Eyes, mouths, gills, and a background were added with oil pastels.
After reading Pattern Fish, students painted patterns using shapes, colors, letters, and numbers onto large pre-drawn fish.
The JK class just finished a multimedia still life drawing. Along with the Van Gogh-inspired plaster flowers, students observed and drew vases of flowers. Each bouquet of flowers featured one large sunflower. Students outlined their drawings with black glue, glued sunflower seeds to the center, and colored the drawings with construction paper colored pencils. Do you know about these? They are fabulous and my favorite colored pencils. They need to be sharpened about 1,000x more often than regular colored pencils, but sometimes, for the right project, they’re worth it.
The Junior K students have been learning about Vincent Van Gogh and his paintings, in particular, his sunflowers. Last week, they used plaster gauze to create 3D sunflowers, and today they began painting. Their goal with painting was to use yellow, orange, and white in short, choppy brushstrokes- similar to Van Gogh’s style. The colors mixed and swirled together in beautiful ways. And added bonus today- they got to taste test sunflower seeds!
Some students at work:
After reading Eric Carle’s, A House for Hermit Crab, the junior K students talked about how they could decorate paper the way Eric Carle does for his books. With one huge sheet of paper per table, the kids painted anything they wanted! Besides paint brushes, the students worked with rollers, stampers, and scrapers. I even overheard one girl say, “this is the best Art class ever.” The huge sheets will be used for a collage project next week.
The junior kindergarteners learned how to make ceramic pinch pots, and transformed them into some open-mouthed fish. They will be painting these fish this week.
What 5 year old doesn’t love the book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom?! With the JK class, I read that, along with The Alphabet Tree. The students created multimedia trees of their own. First, they painted with watercolors for the background. Second, they used tempera paint to paint the trunk and branches. Third, they cut out leaves for the tree. And finally, they painted the alphabet onto the tree.
This project was a great way for the JK students to be introduced to the most common materials in the Art Studio, as well as routines of washing hands and cleaning up.
Here they are at work, painting the alphabet.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
The Morse Art Studio's Weblog 