kindergarten Monster hair cutting art project

Monster Hair cutting art activity 

Need an idea to give your students' practice cutting that isn't crafty?  

I read the book " Even Monsters' Need Haircuts" by Matthew McElligott. The students' loved this book.

We reviewed organic (or free form) shapes and drew a big shape on their choice of colored 12" x 9" construction paper. Students then cut them out and glued them vertically onto a 12" x 18" piece of drawing paper. Students were to draw details (eyes, noses, mouth etc.) with construction paper crayons and to add a body or shoulders.
Lastly they could use their scraps or use scraps from our scrap box and cut strips of hair for their monsters.

Finished projects

1st grade Joan Miro Styrofoam printmaking art lesson

Joan Miro Styrofoam printmaking art lesson

Here is my demonstration video. 

I love Joan Miro, especially since many of his paintings look child-like. Students love looking at his paintings and finding all the various shapes and figures.
I found a great resource to view many of his paintings here  http://www.joan-miro.net/

On the first day students used watercolors and painted a 12"x 9" piece of drawing paper. Students could use a variety of colors. Many students chose to paint their papers either with warm colors, cool colors or rainbow colors.

 

On the second day students took a 6" x  4" piece of Styrofoam and drew with a dull pencil, designs inspired by Joan Miro. Remind students not to press to hard or they will make a hole in their Styrofoam. They also have to make their drawings deep enough to resist the ink. I did a lot of checking before I let them print! 

I have four students at each of my six tables so on each table I provided one tray and one Brayer with black water soluble ink. Students had no problems taking turns with the ink since they were finished with their drawings at different times.

Encourage the students to really press hard on the Styrofoam while it is on their painted paper.

This students was absent on the day we painted our papers so she used a plain piece of a paper. It still turned out nice. 

Bottle cap murals

Bottle cap murals

I had my school start collecting bottle caps around September and then I put a halt to it at the end of November. We ended up with 1000's of bottle caps!

 I believe the kids loved collecting and sorting them. I was low on a few colors such as purple and pink but I ended up having enough of the other colors to suit my needs.
I first painted the treated lumber with acrylic paint of the characters. We are the Monroe Hornets so of course we had to have one be a bee!

My principal wanted a caterpillar on one so I painted  Eric Carle's "Hungry Caterpillar" on another one. 

I used wood glue and had each child glue two bottle caps on each mural. The wood glue didn't stick very well but it didn't matter since we were going to screw each bottle cap down. 

I had my husband and a family friend come in and screw all  the bottle caps in since they were going to be hung outside.  Yep, love family and friends!! I really don't think it takes away from the art. 

I had one board left(not as wide) so I bought DAP Dynaflex 230 caulking. This one will be hung indoors so we don't need to worry about screwing them in. This glue worked much better than the wood glue.

This one wasn't my idea. I found this at http://www.katiemorrisart.com/2015/04/2015-bottle-cap-murals.html

Her's was much bigger. Thanks for the idea Katie Morris! 

kindergarten Fall leaf printing with rubber replicas

Leaf printing with kindergarten

In the past with my  kindergarteners, I provided real leaves for the them to use for printing. I always thought it would be great  to take my classes outside and collect the leaves, but in reality there isn't enough time (seeing them once a week for fifty minutes). I found a great alternative to using real leaves when I came across rubber replicas from Blick art materials. You can also find them on Amazon. They look exactly like real leaves (probably because they used real leaves to  make them). 

We discussed what colors we see in the Fall and how they are warm colors. 

I provided trays covered in newspapers with various leaf replicas and Fall colors. I rotated the trays from each table to table so everyone had a chance to use all the colors. No one had to carry their paper to other tables to use the color they wanted and no one dropped their paper! It kept me hopping! 

This was a great introduction to Fall and printmaking.