Monday, January 16, 2017

Primary Line Study-Kindergarten


For this project, kindergartners started by listening to me read Straight Line Wonder  by Mem Fox. The story is about three straight lines that are best friends when one day one of the lines is tired of being straight. He tries lots of different styles, to the frustration of his friends when he is discovered by a famous director and becomes a movie star. This perfectly introduces students to a class discussion of line, using this presentation to show examples of lines used by different famous artists. 


After the line discussion, I demonstrated how to paint, as this was our first painting project together. I like that we started with just black so the kids could focus on lines and the steps to painting.  I showed the students how to keep the paint in the "hair" of the brush and "tickle" the paper with the tip of the brush. I prepped paper by taping watercolor paper to a piece of construction paper for each student. This gives them a colorful outline as a guide for their painting and also provides the finished painting with a nice white border. Students were asked to paint different types of lines from one tape line across the paper to another tape line. 



The next class, I introduced the students to the color wheel. We talked about how artists use the color wheel to remember color groups. We then talked about the primary colors and why they are so important to artists. 


Finally, I reminded students of the painting steps from the previous class (keep the paint in the "hair" of the brush, tickle the paper) and then demonstrated how to change colors to keep the color clear on the paper. I informed the students that I would be looking for clean colors on their final paintings. Because this was our first painting project together, I also made this storyboard to remind the students of the steps after my demo. 


When finished with the project, students completed this assessment by making different types of lines with markers. See the full lesson plan here.


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