Animals, and a Cutting Lesson

I try to keep my lessons child led to keep a sense of wonder, interest, and inspiration in the classroom. Last week when this class came in, I asked them what THEY wanted to paint. I got such a mix of puppies, dragons, bunnies, etc. So I decided to do ALL of them. I let the kids work in groups to pick an image off google and trace it on aLARGE piece of butcher paper. They painted their huge pictures the first day.

The next week I covered their tables with feathers, pipe cleaners, gold wire, oil pastels, lots of colored paper scraps, glitter,glue, scissors, hole punchers, fabric scraps, and yarn. They went to town and had SO MUCH FUN! I love how the Chihuahua has a purse with lipstick, a feather boa, and a cell phone!

Disclamer: (insert controversial art teacher topic here)  if you freaked out when I said the word trace, you heard it correctly. I let them trace the image from my LCD projector. If you think kids cannot be creative with tracing here is your proof. Doing projects like this allows for PLENTY of creativity, and gives the child a sense of pride in their work. We very rarely if ever trace in my class, but once in a while a project like this gets the kids excited! It allows them to use a variety of different materials, and learn to collaborate and work together as a team to create a group masterpeice!

Easy Kinder Cutting Lesson

My 3 yr old likes to CUT CUT CUT all day long!   I gave a her a laminated piece of paper and let her cut for about thirty minutes.

She told me she wanted to make a giraffe, so I took some of the pieces and made them into a girraffe…so simple!

She gave him button eyes and drew a mouth

She was so proud of the giraffe that she even slept with him that night!!

Last week, we made a monster. She wanted the left over pieces she cut to be placed in a “purse" (ziplock bag) for “Monsterina” to keep!