Kindergarten Jasper John's alphabet collages

 

Kindergarten Jasper John's alphabet collages

I found this great idea from Cassie Stephens art blog. You can find the original post here cassiestephens.blogspot. I always like to include artists so we discussed the art of Jasper Johns and viewed his alphabet collages. 

I provided each student with a 12" x 18" multi media paper with 28 boxes copied onto them. They used rubbing plates and neon construction paper crayons to create textures into each box. Lastly, they used neon tempera cakes to paint over each box. I had to really rush my kindergarteners so they could put the letters on the art during their next art class. If you don't have rubbing plates you can use cardboard squares and draw designs on them with glue. Cassie shows you how to make them on her blog. 

On day two I provided copies of the alphabet for students to copy the letters onto their papers with the paint daubers. I was so surprised on how well they did! They were careful and really enjoyed this process! Yeah! Just remind them to not squeeze the bottles. 

Thanks Cassie for the idea! 

kindergarten textured alphabet painting

Jasper Johns Inspired textured Alphabet lesson 

I found this great lesson from the talented art teacher Cassie Stephens. You can find her original lesson here 

https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-art-room-kindergarten-alphabet.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+CassieStephens+(Cassie+Stephens)

Here is a video of me teaching it. 

 I copied a grid onto 12" x 18" multi-media paper for each student on the copy machine.  Each paper contained 32 boxes. When the students copy they alphabet at the end of the lesson they will be allowed to add additional shapes to complete the boxes. 

We viewed many examples of Jasper Johns letters and alphabet paintings and then got straight to work. 

Students traced their grid with a neon oil pastel and then used rubbing plates to create textures in each box. 

After each box was completed they painted each box with watercolors to create an oil pastel resist. 

This was pre COVID and when the kids were allowed to have art in the art room. I started this lesson right before COVID hit so the kiddos didn't get to finish them. 

This year with my kindergarteners we used crayons to rub the textures in each box. I can now have one class come to the art room every day so the kiddos did the rubbings in their classrooms and when they came to the art room they added watercolors and instead of using paint daubers they used black paint sticks. The paint sticks worked better on the wet paper. 

Thanks Cassie for the great idea! 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom kindergarten art lesson

 Chicka Chicka Boom Boom kindergarten art lesson 

I got this great idea from Cassie Stephens. You can see her original post here Cassie Stephens Chicka Chicka boom boom

I just changed it to fit the needs of my classroom. You can watch my demonstration video below. 

Because I'm on a cart because of COVID I have to keep coming up with messy free art projects. Our kindergarten classrooms do not have sinks so it has really been a challenge coming up with projects. 

For this project I had my students use Black bingo daubers to draw letters all over a piece of 12" x 18" multi-media paper. After they drew their letters we then watched the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video by Andre Penn on YouTube. It's a little over four minutes long. I also played another ABC video just to give the papers time to dry. They dry in about ten minutes. 

The next step was to take neon paint sticks and draw lines around all the letters. I stressed how important it was to not draw on top of the letters in case they weren't dry. In Cassie's art project they used water soluble markers to trace around the letters and then painted the letters with water to make them bleed. They look really cool but my teachers wouldn't appreciate the mess in their classrooms. Paint sticks have been a great alternative this year! 

Self Portraits with masks 1st grade art lesson

 Self Portraits in 1st grade with masks

I got this great idea from art teacher Cassie Stephens. Head on over to her page for her video on how to create these. https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2020/07/behind-my-mask-super-kid-self-portrait.html

I love art history so I discussed the many self portraits of Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Frida Kahlo. They all have great stories so I highly recommend discussing their lives and displaying their self portraits. 

I was a little worried about teaching this in first grade but they did great! Some of the kids needed help folding their paper and some guidance on where to place the heads but other then that they did an amazing job!

Kindergarten Penguin art lesson

 Kindergarten Penguin art lesson 

Thanks to Cassie Stephens for this idea. Here is her original  post https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2019/01/in-art-room-penguins-with-first-grade.html

She actually did it for 1st graders. I changed it a bit to fit the needs of my kindergarteners. 

I did a step by step tutorial on how to draw the penguin with the class. I always have to stress to make their drawings big and to use the whole paper. We always practice drawing with our fingers first before we draw the actual subject. They actually did great on this.

Here is my demonstration video.

Students used the cool colors of paint sticks to make swirls all over their 12" x 18" drawing paper. I wanted them to use cool colors to make a wintery feeling. They turned out great! Thanks to Cassie Stephens for the idea! 

kindergarten paper sculptures

Paper sculptures

I found this awesome lesson for kindergarten from Cassie Stephens. Thanks Cassie!! Her original blog post can be found here https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2018/08/in-art-room-getting-to-know-you-paper.html
This is a perfect lesson to do at the beginning of year for kindergartners. Honestly kindergarten is tough in August. I love this lesson because all they have to do is fold the paper and use glue and crayons. On the first day of class (we have 50 minute classes) we discussed what sculptures and paintings are and the difference between the two. I try to use examples that students may be exposed to such as a statue on display at the Solid Rock Church in our community.  This photo was taken from Wikipedia.

This statue is pretty popular and all the students were pretty excited when I showed them this photo.

For the art project I provided various colors of cut construction paper strips for students to fold and glue onto their 12" x 9" multi-media white paper. Cassie has a great way to teach them how to fold the paper. You will have to check out her video posted on her blog. She teaches them to make little feet for their paper lines. It works like a charm!

On the second day we discussed various types of lines. They used crayons to draw lines onto the strips before they glued them to their previous sculptures. 

I was so surprised how well these turned out. 

They absolutely loved this lesson and were so proud of their sculptures.

These were hard to store so I allowed them to take them home after the glue had dried. I like to provide parents with an explanation of the project so students took home a little note about what they had learned from the project.