Kindergarten Sunflower Drawings

Whoops! This one got away from me. This lesson was from waaaay back in January. It seems so long ago now that teachers report back to school in a little over a week! Kansas Day is January 29th so I had planned a Kansas-themed project for each K-3rd grade in January. My plan for Kindergarten was to integrate some more Art History by making Kandinsky-inspired concentric circles to use as the center of drawn sunflowers. The concentric circles turned out too cool to cut, so I changed it into two lessons and. The students learned about Vincent van Gogh and his sunflower series, as well as how a sunflower grows. We even watched a time lapse video of some dwarf sunflowers growing, then because the students had lots of energy that day, each found his/her own spot on the floor and acted out a sunflower's life cycle from seed to wilting.

Source: youtube.com via Katie on Pinterest

My inside-the-classroom bulletin boards were full, and honestly, they're kind of hard for big groups to see, so I made a portable van Gogh display that I could hold while the students sat on the floor around me for our talk. I wrapped a skinny box I had saved in yellow butcher paper then just stapled in some of the van Gogh sunflower prints I had recently been given as well as some labels- his name and dates, the word "sunflowers" and the word "series" with the definition, "several works based on one idea".

The first class period was spent talking about sunflowers and Vincent van Gogh, and getting pencil drawings laid out on black construction paper. Some students finished drawing early and were excited to recognize one of the sunflower prints they had just learned about in a book.

The next class period was spent adding color to the drawings with construction paper crayons. Admittedly, it was a struggle to get the students to cover all the black paper. Most got the point where I decided it was as solid as it was gonna get. Now that I ordered some better tempera paint, I might try having the Kinders paint on black construction paper instead of coloring.

Yes, this is the same photo from above... I wanted a drawing to be the first photo that showed up but I also wanted you to see this drawing next to the other two. I was so impressed by this 6 year-old's drawing!

State "Space" Symbol Drawings

 There were lots of "S" words involved in this 2nd grade lesson. The Shape of our State was used as the base. The students learned about Space (not outer) and chose to draw at least 5 Kansas Symbols in either the positive or negative space.

In the 1st class period, we read part of One Kansas Farmer, focusing on the symbols for our state like the Sunflower, Cottonwood Tree, Ornate Box Turtle, Meadowlark, Buffalo, Tiger Salamander, and the Honey Bee. We talked about how other things not in the book could be symbols like our capital building and wheat. 

We hadn't talked much about "Space" before so I introduced positive and negative space. I like to stand like a statue with my hand on my head so I can point out that the statue (my body) is positive space and the space around me, as well as the "hole" between my arm and my body are negative space. I showed a piece of paper with the shape of the state of Kansas printed on it and the students identified the shape as positive space and the empty border as negative.

I told the students they would be choosing positive or negative to work in and showed examples of filling the chosen space with symbols. I had lots of pictures printed off for the students to reference at each table. They all "got" the positive/negative space idea, the only challenge was getting them to fill the space. We all know it's tricky to get students to draw big- some would draw their 5 symbols then tell me they were done even though they needed to add more to fill in the gaps.

In the 2nd class, the students used Color Sticks and colored pencils to fill in their drawings. I think that I added a 3rd class period for some classes when the schedule allowed it. When the students finished coloring, they cut out their drawings and glued to a bigger piece of paper. The drawings were started on copy paper so I could reproduce the shape of the state so this step added some stability. I did not tell the students their states needed to face the proper direction, mostly because I didn't think about it in time. Some put their states the "right" way, some just turned the shapes however they wanted.

 Students who finished early wrote artist statements about their work before moving on to free draw. One of the 2nd graders told her teacher this was "The BEST Art project ever!" Kids are so easy to please. :)