kinders and camille

My TK and K classes are continuing to explore line this week. I'm using the bright, bold, graphic work of Camille Walala to introduce them to directional line and line thickness. I'm sharing a couple prints that Camille made for her "Dream Come True" series. We go through one and look at how some lines go side to side, up and down, and somewhere in between. After pointing out each one, the kids and I make those lines with our arms and "expressively" say the line name that goes with the particular line.

We then notice how those lines work together in her pieces to create shapes with straight lines- rectangles, squares, and triangles. We also compare how her name next to the image uses thin lines and the lines in the print are thick and bold.

Before starting the hands on portion of the activity, I let the kids know that this drawing will be different than their Knuffle Bunny toy drawings from the week before. With this activity, I am asking them to follow along with what I do. Doing so allows me to get a sense of where they are at in terms of understanding line concepts.

We draw out the composition together (and even though we do this, there is still a wide range of compositions due to motor control and spatial awareness) and then I model how to hold our color sticks to fill in shapes. I show them how to put "bumpers up" along the edges of shapes to keep their images neat and I also demo using the point and the side of the color sticks to fill small and large areas. Students may use any combination of colors in their drawings. I encourage them to try and repeat colors to make patterns, too.

The final step is to use a big black crayon to trace/go over our pencil lines, so that the lines are thick and dark like Camille's I encourage them to use their muscles to press hard, so the black is nice and dark.

When students finish, they may go to any of my choice building centers. After about 5-7 minutes, we clean up and regroup to build a couple sentences about the drawing process. We read the sentences, orally share different words to use, and then fill in the blanks in the pre-typed sentences.

kinders and knuffle bunny

This is my first week working with kinders this year and they are a delightful bunch!

I'm sharing the book "Knuffle Bunny Too" by Mo Willems with them as an introduction to line and shape. The main characters, Trixie and Sonja, are in TK, so it's a perfect fit:) After reading the story to them, I ask them if they have a toy that they love like the main characters of the book do. I encourage them to picture it their head.

I then ask them to practice drawing that toy. I emphasize that these do not need to be perfect! These drawings are a chance for them to share something important to me and the rest of the class. If they finish their practice drawings early, I ask them to think of a setting- where do they play with that toy? As they are planning, I make sure to go around and talk to each artist, so they can verbally share what they are drawing.

My little artists then look at their practice drawing and refine it on a larger sheet of drawing paper. I tell them that it's okay if the drawing looks a bit different than the first one and I talk about adding more details to their drawings because their paper is bigger.

They then trace their pencil lines and add color to their drawings.

This has been a great opening activity- it allows them to share something personal and it gives me an idea where students are coming in at in terms of fine motor control. It's also a nice intro to the planning stage in art.