Simple K or Pre-K Spider Webs

I wanted something supper simple for Kindergarten to do for Halloween week. Can't get much simpler then an oil pastel resist. 

Art Center

Rainbow Spider Web

Setup: 2 students share tempera cake pallets, 2 brushes, towel, water bucket, and small tray with two black oil pastels.

I begin each K lesson with their name on the back and then whatever the first tool is that we're using in the air.

First, using your oil pastel (repeat that word back to me) draw a stand up line in the middle from the top to the bottom. 

Next, draw a laying down line through the middle. 

Then, two slash lines (how many?) Start one in the top right hand corner and slash it to the bottom left. Now, start in the top left hand corner and slash it to the bottom right. 

Circle time! 

Point to the middle of your web and draw a small circle, then a medium circle around it, and finally draw draw a large circle around that. Put the pastel in your tray and we're ready to paint. 

Always demo before they begin to paint. I have them hold their brush in the air while they watch me. Don't paint the whole thing while they wait. Just two color changes worth, and don't take forever. 

Swish, wipe, blot! Before you paint and when you change colors.

You may paint your webs. 

These turned out so beautiful!

 

Once the Art center was on a role I walked over to the play dough center I asked students how to make a spider. 

How many legs does a spider have? How many body parts? 

I had no requirements at the lego table, but many of them built spider homes. (sorry no pics)

Kindergarten Love Notes

Happy almost Valentine's Day!!

Kindergarteners have been working on love notes. I love this project because it is supper simple, works on basic skills, and the kids love to give "Love Notes". It also lends itself to a 10 minute art center. 

What you need: Construction paper crayons, scissors, stick glue, heart shapes, and various colors of 4 1/2"x6" construction paper. 
My table set up: My tables sit 4 to 5. I place one box with scissors and glue, and a basket of construction paper crayons between two students to share. 

First, we talk about Valentine's Day, what it means, what is a symbol we see, and what do we give people on this holiday. We also talked about who you could give a love note to. 

Then, I explain that they must first pick up a heart and a color of construction paper from my table (choice). 

Next, they need to color their heart (coloring skills), cut it out (cutting skills), and make a glue circle on their construction paper (gluing skills), and glue their heart down. 

Then, they decorate the love note with the construction paper crayons. Finally, students flipped the note over and copied the phrase, "I love you!" on the back along with their name. 

Students were really excited that they could take their notes home that day and give it to someone. One student even said they would give their note to the principal. :)

 

 All in all this project was a quick way for me to assess students' cutting, coloring, gluing, and writing skills in one cute little package. 

The other centers that took place during this class included dry erase paper free drawing/writing and play dough. 

Good Behavior Art Party / Reward Party

I love to reward my students. I began good behavior art parties my first year of teaching after one of my student teacher placements did them. The parties are not only fun for the kids but they are a part of my behavior management plan.

It all begins with my whole class behavior chart.

With this chart each class had to get 9 green days to earn a party. This made it so classes could only earn 4 parties a year at most. Some classes would only get 2 a year...

This is my new game board chart. At the beginning of class classes start with 3 points. If they get too loud, or whatever else, they lose a point. At the end of class I move their game piece the number of points they have earned. There are 27 spaces. 27/3 is 9 for 9 weeks. Again, classes can earn up to 4 parties a year.

If a class misses a day due to an event or snow day I will automatically give them 3 points for the missed day.

Closer look at the game pieces. I use Post Its brand bookmarks.

FYI students love the game board more than the chart.










PARTY TIME!!
Most of the time I use ART CENTERS. Sound familiar to my faithful followers? Check here if not. 
Good Behavior Art Party centers are a bit different, but the set up and execution are the same. 
I set up 3 centers. I have 6 tables so I set up 2 tables for each center. Students may sit where they want as long as there are still 4 chairs at each table. I explain it to the kids as follows:

"For your Art Party you will be doing three centers. You will be at each center for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off you will clean up your center and sit quietly. Change to the next center when I say "GO". You may begin the next center as soon as you get there. "

Center times will depend on the amount of time you have. Adjust accordingly. 

I like to change my centers up a bit each nine weeks. Here are pics from my first parties this year. 

Shaving cream! I buy the Barbor brand cheep good stuff. 3 squirt lines per student and one  "reload" line at the halfway time. Cleanup: Student use wash cloths to wipe their hands and selves clean. The last group cleans the table with the same towels.

Free Paint. Only one paper. Must write name first. Don't forget to Swish, Wipe, and Blot. Cleanup: Paintings to the rack and refill water cups.

Play Dough! Each student gets one container of play dough. No mixing or sharing.  Cleanup: mush up all play dough crumbs and put back into container. 

Easy as 1, 2, 3. Every nine weeks I change the centers up, but I will usually leave painting because they love it so much. Make sure to rotate around the room to monitor. I explain the clean up directions as I go around the room. They will be more likely to remember the clean up directions if you give tell them each time they are at a center. If you give them all at the beginning they will typically forget or not pay attention because they are excited.

Side note: If a student has had to pull their card through the nine weeks and has ended up in time out, they will serve the time out time again at their party. DON! DON! DON!

Do you have good behavior rewards? What are they? 

What are some other quick and easy centers you could have at your party?

200 and Ahh-Ha Kindergarten Cutting

Thank you loyal followers! My little blog has reached 200 followers and is reaching 200,000 views! Thank you for always checking in time after time. 

Now for my AHH-HA moment.

My school has been low on paper this year.  Budget stuff, you know how it goes.  Therefore, any copies we make need to be reasonable.  Well, it's time for me to test some Kinder cutting skills.  I always wait until a month into school to do this.  In the past I have used this idea I got from Fun Art 4 Kids. 

I love this idea!  Working on cutting skills and showing growth from the beginning of the year and then again at the end of the year.  Students can take this home to show their parents as well.  But, this year I wasn't sure I wanted to use the paper just for this.  

So I thought to myself... How can we still work on cutting skills alone, and have it be repurposed... 

AHH - HA!

Why don't Kinders cut paper to be used for other projects.  Just like Painted Paper and Deep Space Sparkle have students paint and paint papers to use for other projects.  But, what to have them cut... I want to use my construction paper for other things...

AHH - HA!

My wonderful father-in-law works for Sherwin Williams and donated a ton of wall paper books just waiting for collages. 

Let's let those Kinders cut on these.  Here's the idea:

I love to use wall paper books, but don't always like the "big" paper covering the tables making mass chaos.  So I'm going to exacto the papers out of the books. Then draw out some quick squigglish, and straight lines and have the Kinders cut up the papers.  I know I will have to draw the lines, but it doesn't take long to draw simple curvy and straight lines.  I may even ask some student helpers to draw the lines during a "free choice" time. 

I will put the cut up wall paper pieces into my Warm - Cool - Neutral scrap drawers so they can be used for collages and mosaics. 

Wallpaper and what the back will look like before cutting.  Notice the lines progress in difficulty.  

26 Kindergartners! A possible new spin on Art Centers

My followers know I love to teach Kinders with Art Centers.  But this year is going to put them to the test.  I have always had Kinder classes of 20 or less.  It was pretty simple to divide them into three groups of 6 or 7.  This year we have a record number of Kinders enrolled.  5 classes with 24 to 26 in each!

My whole reason behind art centers was to cut down on behavior problems, keep them focused on a task, and teach them in a small group setting.  All of which encouraged learning and creating.  Would the centers still work?  Why of course they will.  I will just have to be a little more resourceful.

Here's the plan.  I have 6 round tables and 1 kidney table.  I will still have 3 main art centers, except this time; I'll have two tables per center.  For example, 2 tables of building activities, 2 tables of play dough, and 2 tables of Toobers and Zots rotating every 12 minutes (45 min. class).  So where will we create projects and have a lesson?

Kidney table allows for small group work. Teacher is always
facing the entire class so classroom management will be easier.

 I will "pull out" one table at a time from the rotation to come to the "Art Center" at the kidney table for 12 minutes.  When the 12 minutes are up I will pull another table and send the other back into the rotation.  So only 3 tables will come to the art table each class time.  The next class time the other three tables will come.

I know this means two art days of the same project, but I have had kinders master skills so much better when I can teach them in a small group.  I love centers because they work.

All kinders start on Monday! I'll let you know how it goes.

Tables / Centers

Baby Glue Dots

Glue on your hands, glue on the table, glue on the floor? I hate it when glue gets in places where it just shouldn't be. If students are not taught how to use their glue correctly or in some kind of manner, it will typically end with a razor blade scraping it off the table. Here's how I solved this problem.

My students use these steps for gluing.

1. Open the glue by making the tongue disappear. (We also stick out our tongues and stick em back in)

2. With the top up, squeeze gently to make sure it's breathing. If air comes out we're good to go.

3. If no air comes out then we have to open close, open close and pick out the glue boogers!!! 

4. Then we flip over and gently squeeze one "Baby Dot" onto our finger. 

I have them do this exercise in grades K-2 every time we use glue to make it sink in in the upper grades. 

A "Baby Dot" fits in the center of your finger. If they learn this early with their tiny hands, the dots stay small and it seems to stick with them in the later grades.

We also compare it to a Momma Dot and a Daddy Dot.

"What will happen if we use a Momma or a Daddy Dot?"

"It will go smooosh!"

If a smooosh does happen we leave it to dry clear. If we leave it and kids don't like it they are sure to try not to do it again. 

5. To get the glue off our finger we rub our hands together and "Turn it to DUST!"

Kids love this and it's great because we don't always have time to wash everyone's hands. 

Below are some pictures of the first activity I do with Kinders in the Fall to teach them this technique. 

We are making a mosaic with many pre-cut shapes. The shapes are small which makes it great to teach why we use Baby Dots and not Daddy Dots. This activity is definitely more about the process than the product.

Trays of shapes.

 Great Baby Dots

 It doesn't matter to me whether the students put the dot onto to back of the piece they are gluing down or directly on the paper. I really feel like it depends on the project as to which way is best.

How do you glue?

Pre-K & Kindergarten AHHHHH!

   I love that the big topic this week has been teaching art to Kinders!  This is a subject that I enjoy discussing because I love to teach them.  I would like to refer you to my previous post on Teaching Kinders with Art Centers before reading further. 

   Kinders aren't so bad once you understand them.  I have taught whole group instruction with this age during my student teaching and it was not too successful. I was constantly losing them! Not to mention that some would be done in 10 minutes and I still had 30 more minutes to go. And I didn't feel like constantly finding things for them to do.  I would even create projects that were tedious that they ended up hating rather than learning something from.  
   When embarking on my quest in my own classroom, I looked to the first book that I ever bought when I decided that I wanted to be an Art Teacher : The Art Teacher's Survival Guide by Helen D. Hume. It was and still is my bible. Along with her other great book: The Art Teacher's Book of Lists.  Hume lists characteristics of children at each grade level. Here are some that she lists for Kinders:
Unable to sustain any activity for terribly long
Leave out things that are not important
Allow students to experiment with materials
Give skills and media lessons step-by-step

A Kindergarten Matisse Snail

   With this knowledge I devised my plan of teaching Kindergarten with Centers. Their class period is 50 minutes long so I divided my time accordingly. 

3 centers, 15 minutes each with 5 minute clean up and line up. 
- 2 centers are "do-it-yourself" which need little supervision
- 1 center is the Project center where the main lesson is taught
   Once again please refer to my earlier post for Teaching Centers details. The art lessons are kept simple and are broken down into step-by-step directions. Most of the time I use lessons that are based on experimentation. I cover lessons on the elements and principles, and apply them to projects that will cover most art techniques (Collage, Crayon, Paper, Painting, Sculpture, etc). 
   I even teach Pre-K for 45 minutes!! The Centers are more like 12 minutes with this time frame.  I don't have standards for Pre-K; therefore, all of their project lessons are experiments with different types of art and how to correctly use art materials.  I have Pre-Ks that can "Swish, Wipe, and Blot" a paint brush during painting better than some 2nd graders! Pre-K is also made easier by having their lovely assistant Pam with them. She supervises the "DIY" centers while I spend nearly all my time at the project center. 

Classroom Management
- I use the "Give Me 5" signal to let students know I need their attention.  (Eyes Watching, Ears Listening, Mouth closed, Hands free, Feet still) I do this as soon as I close my door. Students are sitting quietly at their center with hand up or I will not let them begin. I can then check to make sure they are at the correct center.
- I clip color cards to my shirt or apron for whole class behavior and will change them if need be: 
  Green - a good day - no or one warning
  Yellow - okay day - noise and direction reminders
  Red - bad day - lots of noise and direction reminders 
Please refer to this Post for why I do this. 
- Individual behavior problems are warned first and then sent to time out for 5 minutes on the next offense. One trip to time out is usually enough to fix the issue. If not, they go back for longer time and I inform the teacher. 
- For final cleanup the project table will be given damp rags to clean the table if need be and I will ask a helper from each table to bring me the supplies. 
- The table that is the quietest and cleaned up first will line up first, second, and so on. 
- The "Quiet as a Mouse" game is the best one to play when lined up!
- I give them their "Art Mark" when their teacher arrives. 

   I know it may be scary to teach these little ones and we all teach differently. My suggestions may not help some of you, but this method is what works best for me. The best advice I can give is patience. My management methods don't work every single time, but as long as I stick to my plan everything will work out in the end. 


Here are some links to others who have addressed this issue:
Art for Itty Bitties
The Teaching Pallete
In Art Class
Barbara's Thought of the Day

Simple Kinder Snowman Painting Part 2 along with Snow day updates

After painting our snowmen in Simple Kinder Snowman Painting Part 1, the paint has dried and we are ready to finish up. 
The kinders learned that Construction Paper crayons are special crayons we use for colored papers. Students drew simple details to make their paintings come to life. 

Now for the snow days update:

Tennessee was fortunate to not be hit by the massive snow storm that rocked most of the country this week. But we have had 17 snow days since December. We may actually make it one whole work week. But alas, they are calling for snow mid day tomorrow. :(

We were only allowed 13 snow days. To make up the extra days we are using teacher inservice days, and President's day. Then today, the big decision was made......

We will be going 45 minutes longer for 9 days to make up for each day that is left to be made up... We'll see how this pans out.. I am concerned that I may not be able to have my after school art enrichment program. I'm not sure that parents want to have their kids stay longer after already being at school 45 extra minutes... I am interested in seeing how the school day schedule will be worked out. 

So I will look on the bright side of things, which is that I will be able to complete more projects in this extended time. Maybe even have students keep an art journal which I have never really had the time for. I have to say, I don't think the students will mind the extra ART time :)