I have done this before with kindergarten, but this year, the students were offered choices in their projects.
We started out by talking about our eyes and what we use them for. Then we talked about how an artist uses their eyes: looking at shapes, colors, lines, etc.
The project was for each child to make their own Artist Eyes. Stations were set up for the children and they chose which station they wanted to go to.
***Disclaimer- I am starting the year with a student teacher (a wonderful young lady who was actually with me for the Spring semester last year in an observing capacity- she was actually teaching most of the classes by the end of the year), she has been a great help getting little kinder students into stations, making sure they stay in their station and clean up when they are done. By the time she is finished with her student teaching and leaves me, the students will have a good understanding of the procedures.
The first station was decorating a set of art glasses. In the past, I had students cut these out themselves before decorating. This year, we gave them pre-cut glasses and gave them the entire time to decorate. They were given a box with a variety of materials (sequins, foam shapes, crayons, etc). They used regular school glue to attach their materials.
The second station was a painting station. They students used tempera cakes to paint a large eye on their paper, using a wide range of colors. They learned how to keep the colors pure, clean their brushes, wipe them on the edge of their water container and clean their materials when they were finished.
The third station was a sculpture station. The students were given a set of egg cartons (cut into sets of 2) and a variety of materials (pipe cleaners, sequins, foam shapes, permanent markers). They used craft glue to attach their materials to make a set of googly eyes.
All of these went on display for Open House when we were finished.
The follow up activity to this was using our own Artist Eyes to look for things in art prints. Tables were given an art print and a list of shapes and colors (the list was laminated). They had a dry erase marker and a sock. Their task was to count the number of squares in the art print and write the number on the shape on the list. They went through the entire list, counting and writing numbers (excellent math practice for beginning of the year kinders) and then got to erase the numbers when they had filled their list.
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