PreK Self Portraits

I've been trying to get caught up on my high school posts lately and haven't written much about working with my younger students. So, we're gonna jump all the way to the other end of the spectrum and talk PreK today! Most of the PreK Arts Standards are about playing with materials, sharing materials and tools, and engaging in self-directed art making. I saw my PreK classes for 40 minutes every other week. I usually showed something new for them to try like cutting papers for collage, mixing paint to create new colors, wax-resist, etc., for the first half of class and for the second half (most of them aren't developmentally ready to focus on one task for a full 40 minutes) I let them choose to draw or play with the blocks and toy animals I have in the room. (Here is another post about PreK art)
One of the lessons I taught that had a teacher-directed theme was self-portraits. We used 11x17 inch card stock for this project. In the first day we talked about what portraits are and that a self-portrait is a picture you make of yourself. We talked about the ways we all looked alike and different- we all have eyes, a nose, a mouth but some of us have glasses, freckles, different hair, different colored skin. I pointed out that the things that are different are really cool because they make us look like "us!" Our school district is not very diverse but there were actually some PreK students of different ethnicities so I wanted to start talking about it in a positive way.
I asked the students how they thought we could mix color that would look like skin. The students guessed some colors and then I showed them how I usually start with brown, white, yellow, and red but use different amounts of each based on who I'm painting. I squirted the colors out on trays and students worked together to mix a color that they thought would match each students' skin. Next, we talked about how to take good care of our paint brushes and about what shapes they might use to paint a head and neck. After the students painted their heads and necks, we put the papers up to dry.
In the next class period, I had a bunch of different supplies that students could use to add features to their self-portraits. Students were most excited about crayons and collage. My preschoolers LOVE collage. I love how the students all finished their portraits differently and how their personalities and understanding of self is communicated.

PreK Explorations

In my last post I shared one of the few PreK lessons I did where I asked them to make something specific- a self-portrait. Tonight I wanted to show what my PreK students' artwork was like most often.
Since I have PreK-12 in the same classroom and the majority of my courses are high school, I could never really figure out how to set up centers. Instead I usually put out 2-3 different media for the students to choose from. Sometimes it was just one medium at the beginning of class, like paint or clay, and then the students who finished early could either choose to build with blocks or draw with crayons.

Some PreK students like to paint objects that are important to them while many are more interested in just exploring colors and brush strokes creating nonobjective paintings.

Collage was always a fun option for my students. I have tall tables and counters so for something like collage where I have LOTS of materials, I usually put boxes or trays on the floor for the younger students.

Some students would start with one medium and switch to another part way through and there is nothing wrong with that.

Here are some of the national standards for PreK under "create". A play-based choice-based approach works perfectly.
VA:Cr1.1.Pk
Engage in self-directed play with materials.
VA:Cr1.2.PkEngage in self-directed, creative making.
VA:Cr2.1.PkUse a variety of art-making tools
VA:Cr2.2.PkShare materials with others.
VA:Cr2.3.PkCreate and tell about art that communicates a story about a familiar place or object.VA:Cr3.1.Pk
Share and talk about personal artwork.

PreK Process Art

I think that the art process is more important than the product especially in early childhood. I usually see my PreK students for 40 minutes once a week and since 40 minutes can be a long time for 3-5 year olds, I've started reading a lot more books to them. I wanted the book to connect to what we'd be doing while still having open ended lessons. Here is an example of how we worked on some process art over 3 weeks last spring.

Day 1: We read Mouse Paint and after talking about what happens when you mix colors, each student was given the primary colors and a 12x18 inch piece of construction paper. The students explored mixing colors and painted whatever they liked.

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Day 2: We read the book Mouse Shapes and talked about how you can put simple shapes together to make a picture. I spread out pieces of paper on the tables (my room is set up for middle and high school students and has tall stools so it's not easy for little ones to get their own supplies) and the students cut and glued papers on top of their paintings.

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Day 3: The students wanted to keep working on their artwork. Someone asked about adding crayons and since there was no reason not to, I added some crayon tubs in the mix. The students worked on their projects until they were satisfied.

Every art work was different, the students all practiced skills and learned how art supplies work, but the end result was up to the student.

I'm working on growing my collection of books that tie in to PreK art concepts. What are your favorite books for PreK?

Kwik Stix Review

A while back I was sent a couple products from The Pencil Grip, Inc. to test out and review. The pencil grip "ergonomic writing aids" seemed to work well, but since PreK and Kindergarten are only a small portion of my class load, I kept one set and shared the other set with the special education PreK class for their writing center. The product that I was most excited about are "Kwik Stix" which are tempera paint sticks in kind of a glue stick form. The colors go on smooth and creamy and dry really quickly. The resulting "paintings" are vibrant and you have to try to make the colors look muddy due to the fast drying time. 

It is possible to blend colors if you work really quickly and deliberately. This would not be a good choice for teaching color mixing, but they are perfect for letting kids be kids and make art that's important to them. Right now I just have one 12 pack and since my Kindergarten and PreK classes have 12 or fewer students, it's worked perfectly. I basically just passed out one color to each student without looking or taking requests and the students did a great job taking turns and sharing colors. I do plan to order a couple more sets as soon as I can. They are listed at $11.99 on the Pencil Grip's website but Blick has the 12 pack for $9.59. I think these would work really well in a painting center since they are easy for the students to use and not very messy.

I let my 5 year old test the Kwik Stix before I took them to school and he was a big fan.

I tried different things just to see what the possibilities are. I found that you can use a paintbrush and water to spread the paint around.

Overlapping colors without mud.

This student kept experimenting and figured out how to blend colors.

 I had some interesting findings when my Pre-K students used Kwik Stix for the first time. It was either the supplies or some sort of magic. I have 40 minutes for all of my elementary classes and 40 minutes is a long time for preschool students. I noticed that the students stayed engaged with their artwork longer and took the time to fill more of the paper than they typically do. The paras in that class were writing down the name of the supply to tell the Pre-K teacher because they also noticed how engaged the students were. I think that older elementary students would also enjoy Kwik Stix, I just haven't used the product with them yet. I plan to let them try as soon as I can order more sets.

Verdict? Highly recommend!

PreK Lilacs

One time I read an article that was about how to teach a child to draw. Rather than follow step by step directions which teach one way to draw one thing, you spend some time activating their thinking by talking about what you notice in the thing you are observing. It was an awesome article and I hope I can find it again someday. That is the process we used for these PreK lilac watercolor paintings. The students and I talked about what we noticed in the lilacs and then they painted, first the stem, then the flowers. For simplicity's sake since we were nearing the end of the school year and had one day to finish the paintings, I gave each student just a purple and a green prang watercolor well instead of a whole set of paints.

We use ice cream buckets or coffee containers for cleaning brushes when painting. They are much less likely to spill than smaller cups and they are big enough that I can pretty much get by with putting one in the center of each table for students to share.

Here are the finished paintings from my PreK artists!

I'm Not Just a Scribble

Have you heard of the book "I'm Not Just a Scribble"? If not, and you teach early childhood art classes, you should totally check it out. Not only does the book embrace our youngest artists' scribbles as valid, it has a message of inclusion.

I see my PreK students once a week for 40 minutes. I've started using a book to kick off most classes and I'm glad to have added I'm NOT Just a Scribble to that collection. After reading the book we talked about the message and then the students used crayons on 9x12 inch paper to make a scribble and to add other details (friends) for the scribble to play with. 

 The book comes with stickers but when those run out, you can just switch to google eyes! I had the students come over one at a time to choose their eyes and place them where they wanted before I used a hot glue gun to attach. Bottled glue would work as well, but the hot glue dries a lot faster.

What are your favorite books to use for PreK? We'll be using Mouse Paint next week as the students mix colors and Mouse Shapes the week after to introduce collage.

8th Grade Pottery

Since 8th graders made ceramic hand sculptures earlier in the semester and wanted to make something functional, I told them I would make sure they got the chance before the end of the class! The students had a day to research and find examples of pottery that fit into 3 categories: functional, decorative, and sculptural. I said functional pottery might have cool glaze, but is pretty simple, decorative has more design work added to it like carving, underglaze painting, stamping, etc., and sculptural has sculpted elements. After some initial confusion on which category to put each chosen image in, the students had some inspiration to design their own projects.

A couple students made slumped bowls.

I have a mug template that is a pretty nice size and involves only a slab-rolled rectangle and a circle made with a cookie cutter and many students chose that base.

Some students made handles, some left their cups plain.

Sgraffito is one of my all time favorite techniques so I was excited to have some students give it a try!

Bowl on a pedestal with tree pillars. Layered glazes inside the bowl.

The students could make any type of functional pottery, they just had to think about their designs and get a plan approved. This year I think I found a pretty good balance between having open-ended but still structured lessons with choice-based projects in between. 

I've struggled the most with finding the right balance between structure and freedom in my middle school classes out of all PreK-12 and I'm hoping this structure continues to work well with my 7th graders who will be have art 2nd semester.