Kinder Jasper Johns

This is a project that I have done before with kindergarten, however, in keeping with giving the students more choices and teaching them to make artistic choices for themselves, I had 3 versions of this project going at one time.

The first project started out by using tempera paint (in either warm or cool colors) to paint a folded piece of paper. Once the painting was done, they used oil pastels in the opposite color scheme to create lines in each box (wavy, zig zag, dotted, straight, etc). Then I had the letters A-H that they traced onto construction paper. They cut them out and glued them in order.

The second project used color sticks to color their paper. They used markers to create their lines and then they glue die cut letters on each square.

The third version of this project used oil pastels to color their paper, tempera paint to create their lines and then glue die cut numbers in each square.

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Kinder Jasper Johns

This was a project that I did last year with my kindergarten students. I changed it up a little bit this year.

Here are the results from last year:
Kindergarten Jasper Johns


We started out the same way, by coloring our paper using either a warm or cool color scheme. This year, I did cut the paper in half (I found that the large paper for my kinders at the beginning of the year was quite daunting!).

This year, I stayed with the numbers and letters, however I used our school's die cut machine and cut out what the students would need for the project.

I placed each one into a basket and had numbers on one side of the room (in 8 different baskets) and letters on the other side of the room (in 8 different baskets). I had the baskets color coded so that the students would know the difference between the numbers and letters.

I demonstrated how I wanted them to get 1 piece at a time and use 4 small drops of glue ("just a dot, not a lot!") on their number/letter and place it on their paper. Then they could get up and walk (again, demonstrating the correct and incorrect way to do this- the sillier I was in the demonstration, the better they understood it) to get another piece.

For the finishing touch, they used a black marker and added patterns to each square. Since they are working on patterns in their classrooms, they had fun with this! Pin It

Kindergarten Jasper Johns

Kindergarten is learning about American artists this year. Our first artist was Jasper Johns.

I pre-folded paper into 8 sections and had the children decide if they wanted to use letters or numbers. I showed them how to use their pencil to write big in each box. They used a black marker to trace over the letters and the lines so that they would still be able to see them when we began coloring.

I then did a lesson on warm/cool colors. The students who were with me in PK, were excited, because they remembered this from last year. The students who were in the PK center (I only have 2 PK classes at my school. The rest go to a PK center nearby and do not have art classes) picked up on the concept pretty quickly.

I had them choose whether they wanted to use warm or cool colors for their paper. I put a bag of oil pastels on their table and they colored all of their boxes. Usually, this is where they temptation of using oil pastels takes over and I get every color in the rainbow. However, I have to say that this year, they did a really good job of sticking with either warm or cool colors.

When they were finished coloring, I gave them a black oil pastel  and they used this to retraced all of their letters/numbers and the lines.

Then we reviewed the lines that we had learned earlier in the year and they were able to use ANY color (Yea!!) to create a lines in each box.

I have to say, I am really happy with how well they colored these. Usually, I have a bunch that get tired of coloring after about 3 minutes and don't want to continue. This year, they worked on this so hard and the colors turned out really well!

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