The most beautiful papers...that you'll never see!

My kindergartners make this amazing art book throughout the year as they explore all things art. Primary colors, lines, shapes, cutting, glueing, patterns, self-portraits...whew! Well, my favorite page is Page 9 - Warm and Cool Colors. Here's the jist of it: they put a piece of plain white paper on a large tray, I come around and shoot the paper with a large spray bottle of water, they quickly drop individual pieces of tissue paper onto the wet paper and POOF - the tissue papers stick! I walk around spraying and they keep adding squares of tissues. 

The next day, when the entire piece is finally dry, I take it to the garbage can and shake, shake, shake until all the tissue papers fall off! Because we used BLEEDING tissue papers, their white paper has transformed into a beautiful tie-dye masterpiece!




The kids love the wet tissue papers but they have no idea how beautiful my garbage gets to be for the day! I only wish I didn't have to throw it all away - there MUST be another project that I could use these tissues for...any ideas?!?

~Amy

Good idea? Maybe!

I'm not sure if this was a GENIUS idea or maybe a waste of time, but either way, I thought I'd share! The kindergarteners were going to be painting with watercolors today and I wanted them to only use the primary colors. So, I made a cover, of sorts, that covered up all the watercolors EXCEPT the colors they needed. It was kind of tedious cutting out the ovals but it kind of worked! Because they're kindergarteners, they totally smashed down the watercolors, but at least they only smashed down the primary colors!

I'll take that as a win!

How do you limited your supplies with the itty-bitties?

Free Lesson Plan #1: Kindergarten Cows

Our school is on Spring Break, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite lessons this week! These are the lessons I used for our recent Art Show, "The Art of Charlotte's Web." 

These crayon/watercolor cows were the hit of the show - each one had as much personality as our kindergartners!

I've been borrowing/stealing/adapting lessons for years because of the online generosity of art teachers around the world. So, I figure it is time to give back a little. Each day, I'll share a project that I have found to be a successful addition to my vault of lessons. I don't claim that any of these lessons are mine and mine alone, so if you recognize them, send me a message and I'll give credit where credit is due!
Enjoy!
~Amy

I almost missed this!

If it weren't for THIS post at The Art of Education, I may have missed an opportunity to see a beautiful example of growth from one of my kindergartners.  Can you believe the top picture is from the first day of art class in September and the bottom one is from today?! 

What a difference a year can make!

It's things like this that make the craziness of the last few days of school so totally worth it. Thank you to Sarah at the Art of Education for encouraging us to keep an eye out for those successes!