Hello! I am currently teaching a Kindy class and discovering how hard it is to get them to engage and create a great piece of art with limited resources. They are sick of using similar media every week (so am I!) - oil pastels and collage. Any age appropriate art ideas would be great! We are doing 'hot and cold colours' soon as well as focusing on the weather/seasons.
I can't share a link here .. but you could search "kindergarten art ideas" on pinterest. There are a few on seasons - one involves the kids creating trees and leaves for the different seasons using colored cotton.
Where are you in the school year? I start my K classes with shapes and discovering how to create animals with basic shapes. In the past we made a T-Rex but I think I may do a Shark this year. I move on to primary colors, continuing to reinforce shapes. We create a sea turtle. We do a lot of sharing & teamwork with cutting shapes. Like an assembly line. I have one table trace/cut blue circles, another table yellow.. activities like that. By the end of the year, they are learning about horizon line and Van Gogh; discovering the paintings of his room in France and the Church. They draw/color an interior (their room) and landscape (their house and yard). They use a lot of colored pencils. I prefer the neatness of them over crayon. Seems crayon brings out the "scribbler" in them. Colored pencils makes them focus on detail and develop fine motor skills.
Have you tried doing 3-D sculptures with things like Crayola putty (or playdough if you're brave) or pipe cleaners and pompoms? As for weather and seasons, I like to have my kiddos create a flip book of all the seasons or a shadow box of just one season. For the shadow box, get a shoe box and cut out one long side and one short side, then use whatever materials are available to you (undone paperclips, crumpled pieces of paper, foam pieces, coffee filters, etc) for them to create their box. With management, kinders really like to work in small groups on this, each group can do a different season and then present it at the end. I made my example of an ocean habitat, not a season, so no one can copy mine but they can see the 3-D aspect. Also, if you mix equal parts shaving cream and white glue, you make foam paint that can be colored with food coloring and mixed to make primary colors into secondary colors. Paint the frosting on a picture of a cupcake or whatnot. Let it dry over night. I know it's not a lot, but I hope it helps. Also, for me at least, art should be about THEIR expression, so don't get too picky about how things should look, just make polite suggestions to get their little brains churning.
Water colors are a great medium as well. My students love using both traditional and liquid watercolors. Once they are comfortable with using watercolors I love to have the draw with crayons and then water color over it. They are always amazed that the watercolor doesn't "stick to" the crayon. Another one we love is salt painting (it's messy but beautiful) create a design with glue, cover with salt, once the glue/salt is dry paint with watercolor. Take a picture of the artist with their masterpieces because they won't survive the trip home. Painting with tempera paint and then adding salt on top of the wet paint makes a sparkly project. Tempra paint on tin foil is also a great experience. We also like to paint using bottles, forks, cookie cutters, wisks, etc. Another fun one is glueing paper strips that they have bent, folded and/or cutt to make 3D art.
What about doing leaf prints or using an apple for apple prints. I know we used leaves to make animals. Google leaf animals. I don't know how available leaves are.. but could be fun. Ask kiddos to bring some in. They may have fun collecting as well.
Thanks very much for your reply! I know, being a newbie and not being able to share links is pretty annoying isn't it? I'm facing the same dilemma! I don't actually have a Pinterest account yet, so I think I might create one and get searching. Thank you!
