hearts abound.

On Monday I introduced my kinders to the work of Romero Britto. We looked at how he uses shapes, lines, and colors to make patterns. We also looked at how some of his colors are bold and bright and others are light.

Since this is the last time I see my littlest kids before Valentines Day, I thought it would be fun to do a heart based project with them.

I based the drawing activity on the image above. Students used a range of materials- pencils, crayons, and markers.

Each student had a large heart shape to trace for the central image and for the smaller ones, I modeled how a heart is a "V" followed by a "3".

The composition was drawn out in pencil, patterns were added to the hearts and ground with markers, the outlines were traced with a large black crayon, and then the background was colored with crayon.

When students got to the crayon part, I emphasized that they should press softly so that the color would look lighter than the bold marker colors.

The student work featured above are great examples of bold and light coloring. The concept of pressing softly is a tough one for the kids to master and these boys and girls are off to a great start:)