Tall Tales and Art- Alphabet City

Today, I actually used 2 books with the students. I started out by showing them the wordless picture book Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson.We went through the book and talked about the different letters and where they were found in the city. The smallest children got excited when we got to their initial ("T... That's my letter!).

Then I read them the old classic, Dr. Seuss's ABC.They loved the silly rhymes and had fun yelling out words that started with each letter of the alphabet.

The 3-5 year olds created blinged out letters. I had large letters on hand that the students traced onto a piece of paper. Then we gave them: markers, crayons, foam shapes, colored pasta (food coloring and rubbing alcohol), GLITTER, scissors, glue, tissue paper, etc. This was very open-ended and many of them enjoyed it so much that they created 3 or 4 letters each.

The 6-8 year olds used die cut letters (I found mine at Dollar Tree in their teacher section) to trace onto a piece of paper. They overlapped their letters and then used markers, crayons, glitter, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, etc to decorate them. This was quite time consuming, and it was so quiet when I walked into the room where they were working. They were all so focused on coloring in their letters!

The oldest group of students created a 3D letter (3D Letters). We started out by tracing a letter onto a piece of posterboard 2 times. They cut the letters out and then glued 10 dixie cups (the little ones that you buy for your bathroom) onto on of the letters. After applying glue to the tops of the dixie cups, they placed the second letter on top.

From there, I had a variety of materials on hand for them to decorate their letters: wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, sequins, beads, glitter, markers, crayons. They got quite creative! This was quite time consuming and many ended up having to take them home to finish them.

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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