Thursday, July 25, 2013

Stamp Printmaking

I wanted my Kindergarten students to get some practice printmaking and was trying to decide which approach would work best. I thought about stamping and decided it would work for the students to make their own stamps. The base for the stamps was a small piece of cardboard. Shapes were cut out of  thin craft foam and glued to the cardboard to dry.

I asked the students to draw a few designs on paper before starting on their foam. This helped some of the students who started drawing lines instead of shapes.  Then the signs were cut out of foam and attached to the cardboard with bottled glue. I asked the students to write their names on the back of the cardboard before gluing then put the stamps on a tray labeled with the class to dry.
I didn't worry about cutting the cardboard to an exact size.
 In the next class period, The students chose a piece of construction paper and printed their stamp with tempera paint. I showed how the stamps could be rotated to make a pattern.
This student used her pencil to draw into her foam.
 I don't have many brayers so the students used flat brushes to "ink" their stamps.  This worked ok, but some had trouble getting the right amount.
Sometimes even on the same paper it's hard to use the right amount!
There's always a question of what to do with students who miss the first day. I had these students use scrap foam pieces to make a design and I used a tiny bit of hot glue to attach the pieces for them so they would have time to print.

 Here are some of the Kindergarten pieces. I totally love them!
 Some of my 2nd graders also tried out making their own stamps. You can definitely see more organization in the design work and printing  by the older students. I think that this process would be appropriate for many grade levels. It would also work to use a bigger piece of cardboard for regular printmaking.
2nd grade stamp examples

1 comment:

  1. Hi Katie

    Wow! Those are some awesome prints! Great work, kinders!
    I used a similar technique last year with my sixth graders. We used self adhesive foam shapes left over from the hiolidays. The kids had to cut them up to create new shapes. We inked with office ink pads and crayola markers (I wrote it up on my blog k6art.com if you want to see pics).
    Seriously, I never thought about trying this with kinders. You've inspired me.

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