Hungry caterpillar paper chains!!

Paper chains are a basic easy activity, that I find don't usually have a use in the art room, until now! I was inspired to do this by a pin on pinterest that I took and made my own. I had the students paint like Eric Carle first on a 9x 12 sheet of green construction paper. The following class I past back the papers and as I did I chopped them up into strips using the part cutter. I had the students fold and glue their strips into a chain, as well as a single red strip for the head. I also past out yellow ovals for the eyes. Finally, we took a pipecleaner and twisted it around to make the antennas! The students loved this and the library looks fabulous with these hanging from the ceiling!!!!

Pumpkin Patch by kindergarten!

This week our kindergarten, 1st grade, and pre-k students all visited a pumpkin patch for a field trip! Part of our MNPS curriculum is to teach our kindergarten kiddos landscape. So I read a fabulous story of "Pumpkin Town," which the students loved, and then taught them a step by step drawing lesson on creating their very own pumpkin patch. We started with a brown crayon in drawing a horizon line and a wooden fence on that line. We next made a "spooky tree" without any leaves. Next I had the students draw their pumpkins, inside the patch including squiggly green vines. Finally we ended with the white moon and yellow stars. The following class I had the students use my home-made watercolor paints to complete their artwork with a blue sky and a brown ground. The students loved this, and it is a festive way to teach landscape!

Kinder- Kandinsky's

Kindergarten has been practicing mixing their primary colors to make secondary colors. They did a great job of demonstrating this in their versions of a very recognizable Kandinsky painting. The students used tempera cakes for this assignment. A little tip- go to the dollar tree, and buy up all of their muffin tins. They make wonderful containers for those tempera cakes which are easy to pass out, but often come in plastic trays that crack and fall apart!

Lesson Flop? Help!

So this happens all the time to all of us, especially those of us who are still fairly newer teachers; we teach a lesson that doesn't turn out as well as we'd hoped. This lesson I did with Kindergarten kinda turned out this way so suggestions are welcomed and appreciated!

I began the lesson by reading the book "What did you put in your Pocket?" in discussing textures and describing those textures. Next we learned about the magic of color mixing, which is always a crowd pleaser! I had the students make their own secondary colors using tempera cakes on a paper divided into thirds. When those papers were dry the following class the students traced a pocket shape on each section of their painted papers, to use to make their own "What did you MAKE in your Pocket?" Book.


The books were completed by cutting and pasting the colored pockets and title, drawing stitches on their pockets, and writing a single sentence on each page that read "I made (insert color made here.)"

I want to figure out a way for the students to make these more individualized, I hate it when it occurs to me, every single artwork looks the same! Check out the results and let me know how I could make this better! Thanks so much!