Kindergarten Tar Beach

 This is the first year that I have done a project using "Tar Beach" with my students. I did this one with my kindergartners. We looked at the art print and the students told me everything they could find- and boy, did they find a lot!

After discussing the print, I gave each of them a piece of blue paper and we started working on the border. For this, we used a combination of fabric

squares (I found an entire box at a resale shop for $5!) and wallpaper squares. We used regular school glue for this and this was my first mistake. Next year, I believe that I will adapt this and use craft glue. We lost a lot of squares because they wouldn't stick.

For the center of the project, they made a self-portrait of themselves flying in through the sky. I wanted to make sure they made them large enough. One

thing that I am always struggling with with my little ones is getting their images LARGE! So I put a basket of shape tracers (square, rectangle and circle) on each table (I am not a fan of tracers, but this is one way for me to make sure that their image is large enough).

They used these to trace shapes onto scrap paper. We talked about using symmetry- if they made 1 arm blue, the other one should be blue,also. They cut

the shapes out and glued them onto their sky to create their self-portrait.

I had a basket of yarn with different brown colors in it. I had pre-wound them into small enough balls that they could handle them without them unwinding all over the room. They chose the color they wanted and cut hair to glue onto their head. Many of them would show me their pictures with 1 piece of yarn. We then had to have the discussion about how much hair we have on our head-

"Do you only have 1 hair on your head or do you have lots of hair?"

I gave them 2 googly eyes (oh, how they love googly eyes!) and then they used marker and crayons to decorate and add details.

After doing this project once, I want to adapt this for the next time. I want to have the children add a skyline in the background and instead of using blue

paper, I believe we might actually paint our sky.

Pin It