Kindergarten Line Monsters

 Kindergarten Line Monsters

I found this lesson here Elements of the Art room blog

My kindergarteners explored lines in art and in the classroom. Scratch Garden on YouTube has a great song for kids about lines that they love to sing along to. Just do a search and it comes up right away! 

On the first day, students drew lines on a 12" x 18" piece of multimedia paper with neon oil pastels. They then painted the entire thing with liquid watercolors. On day two, students cut ears at the top and added eyes, etc. for the face. I gave them scrap paper if they wanted to add hairbows etc. They absolutely loved this lesson. Thanks to Elements of the Art Room for the great idea! 

Lions with Lines kindergarten art lesson

 Lions With Lines Kindergarten Art Lesson 

My demonstration video.

I came across this lesson from Pinterest. I changed it to fit the needs of my classroom. I was going to add the link to my post but it has been deleted. 

I always like to add an artist to a lesson I'm teaching my students. For this lesson I introduced the artist Henri Rousseau. I showed his jungle paintings and showed the edited version about his life from "Art with Mati and Dada Henri Roussea" on YouTube. Make sure you search for the edited version since the original shows the painting "The Dream" which has a nude. 

I provided 9" x 6" pieces of yellow paper and taught the kiddos how to draw a lion from the letter "U". Students colored the details, cut it out and glued it to the middle of a 12" x 18" piece of blue construction paper. This took one class period.

On the next art class students glued strips of warm colored patterned paper around the lions head and drew various lions in-between the paper. Fun and easy lesson! 

Great lesson to introduce various lines and the concept of warm and cool colors. 

line game for kindergarten and 1st grade

Line game for kindergarten and 1st grade 

I wasn't sure how this game would work with my kiddos but it has been a great success. I used to create games like this when I was a classroom teacher for students' sight words and math facts, so why not for art?! 

You need the game board I created above, a dry erase marker, dice, baby wash cloth (to wipe the boards when the game is over) and a basket. I bought the dice and baby wash cloths at the Dollar Tree.  I laminated the game board with my personal laminator since the lamination seems to be stronger then the schools. 

Students used a piece of 12" x 18" white drawing paper, markers and crayons to create their art. 

Have them roll a dice into a basket. If they don't they  usually roll off the tables and under a cabinet. Save your sanity and have them roll the dice in a basket! 

I have the students mark at the top of the game board each roll and then they count down the column and circle what line they land on. They have to tell their group the name of the line and then the whole table draws the line they landed on. 

The last step was to use the side of a crayon and rub colors all over their papers. This is a great lesson for subs. 

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.

Jim Dine Radiating hearts kindergarten art lesson

Jim Dine Radiating Hearts

Here is another idea I found on Pinterest. I just changed it a bit to fit the needs of my kindergartners.

 I introduced the lesson with showing pictures of Jim Dine's heart paintings.  

I then showed the children how to make a paper heart out of construction paper. They glued the heart onto the center of a 9" x 9" white multi-media piece of paper. 

They added a highlight with oil pastels and then continued to add various lines around their heart. 

 This took one, 50 minute class period. 

 The next step was to paint watercolors over the oil pastels. 

Love these, especially for Valentine's Day! 

1st grade Robert Indiana Love paintings

Robert Indiana Love Paintings

Here is another idea I found on Pinterest. It wasn't linked to any blog so if you know where the original idea came from send me a message so I can give them credit. 

I started the lesson reviewing warm and cool colors as well as positive and negative spaces in art. 

I provided 12" x 9" multi-media paper with the words "LOVE" already printed on them. 

Students were instructed to draw various lines with black and white oil pastels on the letters. 

Students  painted the positive space (letters) using only the warm colors. We used crayola watercolor paints.

The last step was to paint the negative space with cool colors. 

Aren't they lovely?!