Kindergarten Gets heARTsy

What would Valentine's Day be without a little lesson about Jim Dine?  Jim Dine: I know you're out there, here's my question for you--"Do you love or hate that you've become the iconic artist that most art teachers (elementary) love talking about right around February?"  Really though...I wonder.  I searched for Jim Dine on twitter, no such luck, but boy would I love to tweet him that question.  So if anybody knows how I can get in contact with him (like maybe he's your cousin or uncle or something),  let me know it'd be pretty rad. 

I did this lesson with kindergarten last year, so go to this post to see more of the "how to" details.  There was a slight change to the lesson.  Because of time constraints, instead of using toilet paper rolls to stamp hearts around the border students just drew their own with sharpie markers.  Although, I thought the stamping was pretty cool, I love the personalities of the hearts the students drew. When a heart all of sudden turns into a little person or magically develops a weird growth--I dig it.  

  

With all the Valentine's Parties underway in classrooms this is what the Art Teacher's Valentine looks like:

If only the colored pencils were always that sharp...

What are you doing for V-day?  I'm attending a super awesome Vintage Valentine event at the Joslyn Art Museum, you can call me Zelda Fitzgerald for the night.   

Kindergarten Warm/Cool Colors Jim Dine Batik Hearts

Kindergarteners learned about warm and cool colors.  This really is a simple 2 day lesson that I really liked.  I did something different last year and I love these results even more!  

On day 1 of the lesson we simply drew a heart on a 9x12 piece of white paper and then discussed warm and cool colors.  Students were then given warm colored crayons first.  They were to choose if they wanted the heart or the outside to be colored in using warm colors.  I told them they could make patterns or just use the colors, BUT everyone must press hard and leave no white spaces.  When students finished with the warm colors students were given the cool colors to finish the remaining uncolored portion.  Most students were able to finish the coloring portion in the first class.

Day 2 of the lesson was the fun day.  I wanted the hearts to have a "batik-esque" look to it so after students got their hearts back they were instructed to crumple up their paper 8 times as if they were going to throw their paper across the room.  When I started crumpling my heart drawing the faces of those kindergarteners look horrified, but I promised them there was a good reason we were doing this.

After this portions as done students gathered around to see the next step.  Using watered down black tempera paint we painted over the entire paper and then using a paper towel the paint was dabbed off not wiped.  Students then got an orange or green piece of construction paper and glued their hear onto it. I then demonstrated stamping around the border with black paint to make hearts.  For some classes I used toilet paper rolls simply folding them in to make a heart shape.  The hearts that are a little longer I made out of strip of oak tag paper and stapled the ends in a heart form.  Those hearts did look nicer, but they were a bit time consuming to make.

Here are the lovely results just in time for Valentine's Day!

More Adapted Art Lessons

This penguin lesson was a spin off from the 1st grade penguin lesson.  To make the snowflake background I had a foam printing sheet that I had made snowflakes in and they used silver printing ink to print onto a piece of paper.  We used stencils to create the penguin.

This was our Valentine's lesson.  Using contact paper I cut out a heart shape and put it on the piece of paper.  Using bright green, blue, and yellow students simply painted the paper.  Using hearts made from oak tag paper students printed with purple paint over top.  At the end we peeled off the heart to see the surprise!