Continuing Figure Drawing with Kindergarten

As our kindergarten students continue to study the human figure, we have moved on from simply drawing the figure, or constructing the figure using different materials. First we turned one of our drawings into a white outline on black paper and then we added macaroni to it to experiment with a different way of creating a figure drawing. This also helped with student's fine motor skills.
After each student had drawn their figure, I came around with a bottle of glue and outlined it. Then students went to town gluing on those little pasta bits.

After we finished this project, we moved onto making a figure sculpture. Students followed step by step instructions to make a little man (or lady) out of pipe cleaners. They did pretty well attaching and twisting the pieces. This took them the whole class however, and when they were done we marked the sculpture with tape and their name since they all looked alike.

During the second class, the kids covered the pipe cleaner 'armature' with tin foil to make their sculpture look like metal. We talked about wrapping and then crunching together the tin foil to make sure it stayed in place. Again this helped with developing our student's fine motor skills.

After the students were finished, we affixed their sculptures to a piece of colored construction paper. I think they turned out fun and whimsical!

Shapes!

The first thing I wanted to do with shapes this year is to have the younger students cut them out! Not only are they studying shapes are learning about them for the first time, but they can also use this time to develop their fine motor skills. Many kindergarten and even first grade students do not know how to hold scissors correctly or control paper and scissors together in order to cut out squares, circles and triangles.
Both kindergarten and 1st grade students practiced cutting this year. They did squares and triangles on their own with only a small amount of guidance on how to hold the scissors and how to turn their paper. For circles I had copied paper with circles drawn on them so that the students could follow the lines. For circles we also talked about how to hold your scissors and turn your paper for better results.

As you can imagine we then had a ton of cut out shapes! What to do!?

 

The first grade students turned theirs into name tags. They simply glued shapes on to their name (pre-written) on a black piece of paper and then I laminated them.

The kinders used their shapes to decorate stuffed paper bags and turn them into houses! They had a blast and got very imaginative. The houses turned out awesome!