Kindergarten Vertical and Horiztontial Snowmen

And for the Kindergarten winter project...MORE snowmen. Can you tell I love them? So do the kids :)

I use the words vertical and horizontal so much in my classroom that I felt the need to have it as the main objective for a Kindergarten lesson. Before this project I had to repeat myself and walk around to make sure everyone was the right way, I don't think I have had to do that once since we finished these!

I was inspired once again by Pinterest from this post.

Day 1: Read a story involving snowmen (can't remember which one!) as they are always excited to have me read to them...Then I introduced the vocabulary of vertical and horizontal. They caught on pretty quick to each word and we used our arms when we said the word to help remind our brains which way is which. We did a draw along for our snowman in white crayon to make sure we successfully used the whole page and made our snowmen as tall as possible. I still had a few who made it less than a quarter up the page.... The last part of the class was spent painting in the snowmen and the ground they were on.

Day 2: I was surprised to find out over a week later (with our 6 day rotation) that many students remembered the words and showed the correct way with their arms. Of course they struggled saying both vertically and horizontally (but come on they are 5!). We started this class with a new paper that was smaller and had it go horizontally. We drew together and painted another snowman drawing this time having 3 or more snowmen on the page. Once we got cleaned up we gathered in front of the projector to look at different cartoon pictures of snowmen and talked about all the different ways a snowman could look. So very happy with taking the time to do this otherwise I think they would of either all done a classic snowman or just added things endlessly to theirs. They went back to their spots and got to work on adding oil pastels to their first vertical snowman.

Day 3: They still remembered vertical and horizontal and used oil pastels once again to complete their horizontal snowman pictures. This only took about 15 minutes so I introduced the next project in the same class.

Two schools were hung with the 1st grade winter windows since the snowman process was the same.

Kennedy Elementary...

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Had so much to hang up at Jefferson that I could only fit this small batch!

Winter Windows

Continuing with the winter theme, 1st graders made these awesome winter windows!

 Inspired by this Pinterest/Artsonia post. I knew I liked the idea of the project, but wanted to do more, so LIGHTBULB! Curtains! And they ended up being a great addition! I love Art that interacts with viewers. However, I am waiting to see curtains on the ground from students doing a little too much peeking!

This was a great two class project.

At the end of the previous class I gave them a blank window with the cross in the middle to unknowingly "brainstorm" without them knowing this was going to be our next project. It was interesting to see what kids did four separate pictures and which understood it was the cross of the window.

Day 1: Read a winter story! (Since we started this project a few weeks ago I can't remember which one I read!) Any story works as long as it takes place outside in the winter....Then we talked about interior/exterior/inside/outside. They spent the rest of the time painting our snow and snowmen.

Day 2: They used oil pastels to add features and items to the snowmen and other things that could be outside our windows in the winter. Windows were then created with pre-cut strips and a tracer for the curtain shape. It was really important that I talked about how to glue the curtains because many had the natural instinct to just glue the entire thing down. I used my own example to show the magic in lifting it up and discovering more parts of the picture :)

At two schools, they did get hung with some Kindergarten snowmen who were working on vertical and horizontal..

Kennedy Elementary...

 McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Ugh, Strips are so boring!

4th POV Snowmen

And snow so it begins the projects about winter and snow! And let me tell you, we have snow. Stevens Point, Wisconsin right now has 15 inches of snow on the ground and a new load comes every week. Also, POLAR VORTEX (which means 4 "cold days" off school). That Polar Vortex is one of the biggest reasons for lack of posts!

So here is the first winter project finished and displayed at all 3 schools...

These awesome guys were an extension from the POV Charcoal Trees I did with 4th. It was only a two class project but all of the students seemed to enjoy it and I will be doing this again next year! Once again a Pinterest inspired project that originated from this post.

Day 1, I started by taking 5 minutes at the beginning of class, without explanation as of why, having them draw a simple snowman. The only direction was a to chose a color to draw the snow in and keep it consistent, and to make it wearing something (or have accessories). Then I walked them through my examples which were 5 different views of my snowman and how they were drawn. The main objective was to have viewers piece together the snowman with each illustration. They were instructed to do this by not drawing the snowman as a whole in a regular forward view but in unique and different ways. By the end of the class most students had 2 or 3 finished.

Day 2, Work day and assembling! Right at the start of this project I was asked "How many do we do!?" My answer to that was at least 3 but we will keep making them until the last 15 minutes of class. This resulted in first moans or cheers, and followed with some students doing 10+ views (others managed to stretch out their drawings to do the minimum)! During the last 15 minutes students picked a color and assembled their strips.

I took up a lot of hall space for this but I wanted to hang every single one! They were just that awesome!

Kennedy Elementary...

Some students went a little more non-traditional...

Jefferson Elementary...

Another "non-traditional"

Some got smart and added a blank square as "really close up" 

McDill Elementary...

Arrows were added to ones that needed to be cut to display all of their drawings!

This one makes me so HAPPY when I look at it!

OWLS!

My kindergarteners were begging me for a first paint project, and how could I resist those adorable little faces!

This owl project I dreamed up seemed like the best answer! My goals for this project were to introduce paint and the concept of what happens when you mix two different colors of paint. Another goal was introducing different cutting strategies (like if you fold the paper or stack pieces and cut once you get multiples of the same). Needless to say, this was a success! I didn't run into any problems with the project and all of the kiddos seemed to really enjoy it.


McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Kennedy Elementary...

Keeping with my idea of themes across grades...my 1st graders also did an owl project. My inspiration came via Pinterest through this post. My goal with this project was introducing 2D vs 3D. Our owls were done with patterns because the owl wasn't the main concept (and I knew many would struggle with the size) that is why many of these look alike. The only problem I ran into with this project was that the toilet paper rolls (our holes in the trees) needed to be hot glued and first graders cannot do that on their own. It was also difficult to introduce 3D when students almost immediately think of 3D movies. I have learned to work with that connection and talk about how it looks like you can reach out and touch it and expand off that...

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Kennedy Elementary...

And last but not least...I had the genius  idea to use the tree base from the 5th grade Collaborative Tree to display these awesome owls on!

McDill Elementary...

I made that big Momma owl by the sign to hang out with these guys.

Jefferson Elementary...

 Kennedy Elementary...