Using Clay with Kindergarten and Figure Drawing with Kindergarten!

This post will be about all things kindergarten today! They have been busy little bees and have been working on two very exciting and fun projects. The first of which deals with clay. We are using Model Magic because it lessens the mess and is easy to work with, but also allows students to get an idea of what clay feels like and to learn the basic techniques. Their project was to make a pinch pot owl. And although they don't quite look like owls, they turned out so cute!

On the first day we talked on the rug for a bit about what we knew about owls. Then students went back to their table to work on their pinch pots. I did a demo on how to make a pinch pot, but then of course went around and helped students to make it correctly. There were a lot of pinch plates on the first try :)

On the second day we painted our, now dry, pinch pots using watercolors. Students had to make sure to give them several coats so that the color was nice and dark.

On the third day I had students do an owl coloring sheet, while I called students back to a separate table where I hot glued eyes and three feathers of their choice onto their owl. They're so adorable and the students loved their experience with clay.

Now students are working on figure drawing. What's fun about this unit is that I really wanted to students to be drawing from observation. So to achieve that we have students take turns standing on the table (yikes!) and modeling for their classmates. They have to be so still and careful or else they could lose their balance and fall! Or at least that's what I tell them.

I usually only pick students that I know can handle standing still for that long. Which trust me, isn't many of them in kindergarten! We usually do this for two class periods. Students use markers so that there's no erasing.

They just work on doing their best and if they mess up the move onto another open area of their paper and try again. This is great practice in observational drawing and looking at and drawing a figure. I don't do much instruction during this time, just give them the freedom to try it and see where it goes. We get much more detailed in later grades.