Kindergarten Alligators

This lesson (another I borrowed from my student teaching experience) made use of the shapes students had already learned and made something BIG out of them! That's right, alligators!! The students LOVED these (and the teachers even commented on how cute they are!)

Each section was executed in a similar way. I cut strips of paper (yellow for squares and circles, green for feet) and figured out how many times they would have to be folded in order to create squares. We folded our paper together as a class. I had students cut out each square by cutting on the fold mark. The squares were glued on as is. For circles, I had students draw circles on each square.

Here is a visual for the face and teeth. I drew and photocopied the eyes/teeth paper. When I taught students how to create toes, I related it to letters (V, W) they had been learning (woo!)

My kindergartners did SUCH a good job following directions on how to glue the teeth/feet on! Their end products were even cuter than my example! But isn't that always the case?

More Kindergarten Shapes: Organic and Shape Family

Since I am at two schools with two different schedules, a lot of my classes finish projects at different times. I am sharing a few stand-outs from my kinders/1st graders projects on organic/free-form shapes and the shape family. The creativity contained within these children is always so astounding!

This student graded her own artwork, ha!

3rd Grade Shape Resist

This is another lesson I stole from my supervising teacher during student teaching. Basically, students traced shapes onto their large sheet of paper. Students were told to overlap all of the shapes and fill the page. Some shapes should even go off the page!

Next, students color in each section (not each shape) with a different colored crayon. This means spaces that overlap are a different color than the rest of the shape. Students were told not to use black.

When students are finished coloring in their shapes, they use black watercolor to paint over the top of the entire thing.

Kindergarten: Shape Family

This lesson allows for students to use the four main geometric shapes: square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. I borrowed this lesson from my student teaching experience!

I review the shapes with the class, pass out a paper with all four shapes, instruct students to color, cut, and glue!

After reviewing the shapes, I ask students to raise their hand and tell me an idea for how to use all the shapes together. This helps get the creativity flowing. A lot of my students did "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" in one class ; however, I did not get any pictures of these.

Here are the pictures that I managed to capture! I allowed students to pick out the color of construction paper they wished to use.

The arrow shows his dad's head rolling off. These Kinders are silly!

Kitty!

I love when I get their little hands in the pictures!!

2nd Grade: Mondrian Lines & Color Blocks

I showed third grade examples of Piet Mondrian's work, as well as a clip from this episode of Arthur. Binky, one of the characters, is proven to be an "expert" on art when he uncovers that Mondrian's work is hung the wrong way!

I also show students examples of things that have utilized Mondrian's works:

This lesson deals with vertical and horizontal lines. I go over the definition of these words with the students. Each student is handed a ruler. I then instruct students, on their papers, to draw three vertical lines and two horizontal lines.  From there, students are to add their own lines. My only guidelines are that the lines must ONLY be vertical and horizontal. The lines must also start and end at either another line or the edge of the page.

The next step is for students to trace over their lines with a black crayon. After finishing this, students fill in each block with a color. Unlike Mondrian's work, students are not permitted to use the same color in two blocks adjacent to one another.

Here are a few examples. I did not take picture of the entire class's since they all look pretty similar! They are VERY colorful though!

Kindergarten Houses: Using Squares

This lesson is basically just a repeat of the rectangle lesson, only squares are discussed instead. The students point out squares in the room. I find that students think many rectangular things are actually squares. I suppose it is easy to confuse these two shapes as they are very similar. I did not even attempt to explain to my students that squares are rectangles but rectangles are not squares!! We did discuss the difference between squares and rectangles again.

Students make the brown square into a house and have the freedom to make whatever they would like out of the second, purple square. Some made a second house, a garage, a tree-house (my favorite!), and others just glued it down and ignored it. 

For instruction, I mostly just reviewed the same steps as last week, i.e. where to glue, how much glue to use, which paper to put the glue on, etc. Next week we will tackle triangles (and scissors!! Yikes!)

Kindergarten is so diverse! Here are some student examples! You may notice some of the paper is different colors. Both colors are blue, just some of them are more green-y!