Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Kindergarten Initial Line Drawings

I tried to do something more sequential this year and started off K-3rd grade with a "line" project.  I got this idea from another elementary Art teacher in my district.  Since the Kindergarten students are practicing their names and letters of the alphabet it reinforces what is happening in the general ed classroom and also gives them a fun way to practice lines.

We used 2, 40-minute class periods to complete this project.
Day 1: I asked the students to think of their first initial then we went around the room and everybody told the class the first letter of their name.  I drew a big rectangle on the chalkboard to be my "paper" and showed the students how to write their letter in the middle of their paper, big enough to stand out, but still leaving some room around the edges.  We used 6x9" paper.  The students wrote their initial in pencil and after I checked it, I gave them a big marker to trace over.  I grabbed purple, blue, black, and green to let them choose from since I knew they would be dark enough to show up.  With remaining class time, we talked about lines.  We thought of all the different kinds of lines that we could, I drew them on the chalkboard, and the students used their fingers to draw in the air.  Naming the lines and seeing them drawn out seemed to be the students' favorite part.

Day 2: We reviewed lines and drew them again in the air and on the chalkboard.  I gave the students fine point markers and asked them to use lots of different colors to draw lots of different kinds of lines around their letters.  If students had extra time and extra space on their paper, I helped them find areas that could be filled in more without scribbling over the top of their letters.

I also did this project last fall and it went pretty smoothly then, too!



3 comments:

  1. What interesting graphics! I love it! jan

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  2. Today one of the paras told me that they rearranged some of the artwork for me... apparently I hung "A" "S" "S" in a row and never even realized it! I just pulled the top drawing off the stack. I'm glad they saw it before all the grandparents arrived for grandparent's day!

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  3. Your last comment cracked me up!

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