On Friday, the kindergarteners took turns presenting their artwork to their peers at their tables. Students were asked to explain the buildings in their neighborhood and what their symbols stand for. They practiced being good listeners and giving compliments.
Afterwards, I told students that we are going to start to learn about artwork from all around the world. Since the students have spent the last few weeks working on their neighborhood collage, I asked them to write a pretend post card about Philadelphia. They drew pictures of Clark Park, their school, their home and described their drawings in a brief message to a friend. They will continue to write postcards after our around the world projects as a way to reflect on what they learned. We will miss art this week due to the report card conference schedule, but I'm looking forward to our next class!
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Parents- if you were able to fill out the "Art and Culture" worksheet I sent home, thank you! Last Friday, I talked to students about what makes up culture (a complex topic) so any input you provided helped me to talk with students about their artwork.
After reading "Wherever You Are" by Mem Fox and discussing what makes up culture, the students did their best to create symbols of their culture to complete their collage. These symbols ranged from cultural foods and flags to holidays and traditional clothing. I'm looking forward to hearing the students talk about their artwork with their peers, this coming week! On Friday. I asked kindergarteners about some of their favorite things. What do they like to do? What's their favorite place to go? Favorite food? Book? Movie? Once they had their answers, they were asked to turn their idea into a symbol. For instance, if someone liked ballet, instead of drawing a ballerina dancing, they could just draw the ballet shoes. I asked them not to label these, because their symbols are meant to tell us about them.
This coming week, they will wrap up their collages with symbols from their culture. Please look in your child's pony mail on Monday for a worksheet to complete with your child. Since culture is a complex concept, it is very helpful for parents to talk to their child about their culture before hand. After this, we will begin our Around The World Unit, and practice art traditions from every continent. I'm looking forward to "traveling" with them! On Friday, I talked to the kindergarteners about symmetry because their project for the day was to learn how to draw and cut a symmetrical heart to add to their collage. After showing students some cut out symmetrical shapes and explaining how the body and face are symmetrical, they set out in pairs to find symmetry around the room. Below you can see photos of students testing various objects to see if they have matching sides when divided in half. From there, students did a very impressive job at folding their paper, drawing half a heart and cutting it out. This heart is a background to their family portraits, which they continued to color, cut out and add to their collage.
On Friday, the kindergarteners continued to make pieces for their collage about them. Setting their people portraits aside, we talked about common things in a neighborhood. Each class came up with the same essentials- places to live, eat, shop and learn and play. From there, I had students cut and glue shapes to build where they live, where they like to eat, where they learn, like to play and shop. They're saving room for more art at the bottom! Students also worked to label each place. Looking good!
The kindergarteners started the new year practicing something that is still difficult for me- drawing people. I revealed that over the next few weeks they will be making parts of a collage about themselves. I emphasized all of the details that encompass a full body portrait, from the eyebrows, nose and ears to the often forgotten shoulders and necks. The students drew themselves and their family memebers. They look great!
Sorry for the late post! Last week, the kindergarteners worked together to complete their storybook land murals. They took turns coming up to the board and decided where to place their characters and elements of setting. They continued to add embellishments and final details and practiced putting their small trees in the background and bigger trees up front to show space. Yesterday, I worked with the teachers to help them complete their gingerbread men and women characters. They had some amazing ideas!
On Friday, the kindergarteners began creating characters and elements of a setting from some of the books they've read this year with their classroom teachers. Next week, they will work together to create a scene with their amazing drawings, keeping in mind what they've learned about perspective. Each table was assigned a book, and each child, a character/piece of scenery. I gave them images for reference and they honestly blew me away with their drawings. I provided them with small, medium and large paper and talked to them about scale. It would not make sense for our 3 little pigs to be larger than their house, or they wouldn't fit! Students had to select the paper size that they thought appropriate. I am really looking forward to see all of this artwork come together.
Each class, I pull out my elements of art chart and go down the list of what we've learned so far. On Friday, I introduced the concept of perspective as a way to creating an illusion of space on a flat piece of paper. With the help of two volunteers, the kindergarteners observed their friends appearing smaller as they moved away from the group. Following this idea, students created a fores, by placing large trees in the foreground, medium sized trees in the middleground and small trees in the background.
Last Friday the kindergarteners reviewed their primary and secondary colors by completing a color wheel after cutting and assembling all the parts of their secondary pumpkins. At the end of class, I read students "The Day The Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt to give students another perspective on color. Many of them already know and love this book.
Their final pumpkins are beautiful! I love the texture. |
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