In the Studio: Self-Portraits

Posted on September 20, 2018 by msmcdonell

And just like that, another school year begins! I can’t believe we are already in week three of the new year. I tend not to work on too many “projects” so early in the year, preferring to give the children time to get comfortable in our space, explore, and make connections with classmates and staff. However, the one project I will dedicate time to is self portraits. I always find the children exhibit a high level of interest in drawing and painting at this time of the year and portrait work excites them. Additionally, portrait work requires slowing down, looking closely, and noticing details: all skills I want to emphasize and encourage in the first term. At the start of the year, we are also looking to develop a rapport and make connections with our students, so small group work like this often leads to relationship building.

“When we invite children to create self-portraits, we offer them mirrors and encourage long, sustained study of their faces from [an] unfamiliar perspective. Then we ask them to re-create themselves on paper, weaving together the image that they see in the mirror with the person they experience themselves to be. Their portraits are eloquent statements of self.” (Ann Pelo, The Language of Art (2007))

If you are new to self-portraits, I highly recommend reading Ann Pelo’s book, The Language of Art, to get an idea of the process. Ann so clearly lays out this project from beginning to end, including how to set up the studio, what prompts to use, cleanup, and ways to build on the experience.

This year I decided to take a new approach to our self-portrait work. Rather than limit the children’s experiences to the Art Studio, we would take some time before drawing our portraits to look more closely at faces and facial features. We began by reading Faces by David Goodman. In this story, the author shows us how we can spot “faces” everywhere in our environment and how we can construct faces out of loose parts. After reading the story, we set up a simple provocation with loose parts and mats/cork boards:

These mats can be downloaded for free from Picklebums at https://picklebums.com/people-play-dough-mats/

Our next step was to move beyond loose parts into a drawing/sketching phase. From what I had seen of the children’s drawings so far, I knew that most children were using simple mark making (dots, lines, etc.) in their pictures. We decided to take some time to look more closely at our facial features and break down how to draw them with increased attention to detail. Each week, we take time in our schedule for a focused art and drawing lesson (if you want to read more about Art and Fine Motor Instruction, click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2014/01/16/art-and-fine-motor-instruction-snowflakes/). In our first lesson of the year, we decided to focus on faces. Now, I know that giving a large class of somewhat-new-to-school 3-5 year-olds whiteboards, erasers, and dry erase markers seems daunting in the first few weeks of school. In fact, I almost bailed on the lesson myself out of fear. In the end, I decided to have confidence that I could capably walk the children through the process of listening and following instructions, managing their materials, and successfully drawing themselves. And wow! Were we impressed! At the start of the lesson, each child gets a 9×12 whiteboard, a tissue or sponge (for erasing), and a whiteboard marker. I absolutely love using whiteboards for this kind of lesson because they are totally “risk-free” for the children. If they make a mistake or are unhappy with what they’ve drawn, they simply and easily erase it and try again. Even the most reluctant of artists are willing to give drawing a go on a whiteboard, in my experience.

During the lesson, I modeled looking in a mirror, talking the children through what I noticed, one facial feature at a time. I had extra mirrors on hand for the children to look in too. The children felt extremely successful with their finished works and we photographed them to share with our parents at home. I really believe that walking them through this process together helped to increase their interest and confidence in drawing their portraits at the Art Studio.

A few days later, we opened the studio for portrait work. This year, we decided to use sharpies on acetate (overhead paper) so that we could paint them afterwards and not lose any details of the children’s sketches. Once again, we had mirrors on hand for the children to look in.

This student was clearly very proud of his amazing dimples!

This student was so excited about his work, exclaiming, “My first nose! Ms McDonell, I did it! I drew a perfect nose!”

Honestly, the black and white portraits were beautiful enough, but we decided to carry on with the painting portion of the project. When everyone had completed their sketches, we read Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly. I absolutely love this book as it talks about all the wonderful colours of skin we see in the world. As a follow up, we set up a selection of “skin tone” coloured tempera paints (we used a collection created by Crayola) at the art studio. The trick with this technique is to flip the transparency over and paint on the back. When the paint is dry, you flip the transparency back over and all marker sketching that was covered by the paint is visible from the other side. It makes for a bit of a “surprise” when the children see all their work revealed to them in complete, detailed form. It is very important when painting on acetate to mix the tempera paint with a bit of white glue. Otherwise, when the paint dries, it will flake off the plastic sheeting.

And voila! Our first art project of the year is complete! I love how each portrait is unique and special and I can see the children’s personalities and characteristics so clearly represented in their work. This is the first time I have scaffolded the children’s portrait work in this way, and it just reminded me of how truly capable children are when given the tools and support they need. If you haven’t given portraits a try, I hope this post will inspire you to do so!

In the Art Studio: Plasticine Art Inspired by Barbara Reid

Posted on May 23, 2016 by msmcdonell

This month we have been inspired by renowned Canadian author and illustrator Barbara Reid. Barbara Reid has worked on some of my class’s favourite read-alouds: Picture a Tree, Perfect Snow, and Subway Mouse. When reading, we often discuss how an artist may have created their illustrations. My students were very interested in how Barbara was able to achieve such realistic and detailed pictures using Plasticine.

Lucky for us, Barbara Reid has created a series of tutorial videos which you can find on YouTube (links below). In her videos, Barbara talks about how she goes about creating her artworks: from the planning stage (researching, sketching a picture), to creating a background, to adding fine details and textures to her work.

Video: Making Plasticine Pictures with Barbara Reid Part 1

Video: Making Plasticine Pictures with Barbara Reid Part 2

Video: Making Plasticine Pictures with Barbara Reid Part 3

For this project, I cut our Plasticine into very small pieces so it would be easy for the children to manipulate (and because a little goes a long way!). I arranged the pieces in small containers by colour. I also included some of Barbara Reid’s books and a non-fiction book about Barbara Reid herself. We also had dry cloths for wiping our hands (as Barbara suggested) and some tools for adding texture. For the planning process, the children had pieces of cardstock and pencils for sketching. We made our Plasticine pictures on small canvas boards I found at the dollar store. The children were extremely excited to do their work with “real artist materials.” For me, it is very important to give the children beautiful and authentic art materials to use and work with. Their art is more than deserving of quality materials and in my experience, they seem to take their art more seriously when they perceive materials to be “special.” For this project, the strength of the canvas boards was an added advantage, as it made it easier for the children to spread the Plasticine.

During the planning process, I really didn’t meddle too much in what the children were sketching or wanting to create, thinking the children would figure out on their own what was going to work and what wasn’t. For example, the first group of children who visited the studio realized that creating people with Plasticine was a big challenge, and advised their classmates accordingly during reflection time. Spreading the Plasticine was also a challenge for some (and a great fine motor muscle workout!). Some children took a few sessions to complete their backgrounds, pausing and coming back later to give their fingers a rest. Other children wanted to persevere and complete their backgrounds so they could get to adding their flowers or bugs or animals. If you’re wondering how long it took the children to complete their pictures, it varied between one session (about half an hour) to a few days, depending on each child.

Y.A.: “I want to make a picture of a cat.”

A.J. spreads the Plasticine to make a sky. “I’m mixing the colours. A little bit of dark blue and a little bit of light blue.”

Y.A.: “I’m making my grass like Barbara Reid. I’m rolling snakes and making them flat like grass. I’m doing a pattern: light green, dark green, light green, dark green…”

R.A.: “I’m making a little mousey like Barbara Reid. It’s just like The Subway Mouse.”

Here are some of the children’s completed art works. I have them displayed on a low chalkboard ledge in our classroom and the children can often be found admiring them!

S.C. “I made a rainbow and a little girl is camping in the tent.”

Honestly, the children were SO proud of their completed art works. They loved showing them off during reflection time and talking about the process they used to make them. During one reflection session, we started talking about how Barbara Reid gets her Plasticine pictures in the pages of her books. One student remembered that Barbara’s husband photographs her art for her so the pictures can be used as illustrations. One student suggested that we take photographs of our work and use the pictures to make a book by writing our own stories. I loved that the children were inspired to create their own stories, so we set up a story-writing invitation.

At the writing table, I gave the children some mini easels to place their art on. I put out plain paper and some black pens. The children could choose to write about their own work or a classmate’s work that inspired them. This proved to be a popular invitation! Some children returned each day to write a new story! We loved listening to each other’s stories during reflection time – some children’s stories were so popular, the class asked them to read it aloud more than once.

IMG_2045 - Copy

E.H. “Once there was a little ladybug. She wanted to rest on a flower. The red flower was wet but the purple flower was just right. The End.”

“I went out on a stormy day.”

We are still in the midst of our story writing. I was interested to see the emergence of a narrative voice in the children’s work and am curious about exploring this further with the class. Stay tuned!

Beautiful Stuff

Posted on October 20, 2013 by msmcdonell

Maintaining a variety of supplies at the Art Studio can be a challenge on a limited budget. I often have visitors to my classroom ask me where I get my materials. One simple way to stock your studio is to involve the children and their families in setting it up. This year we stocked our studio by embarking on a “Beautiful Stuff Project” – an idea I read about in Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini. Just like the book suggests, we wrote a letter to the parents with the children. Here is what the children said:

Each student received a large paper bag with a clothespin on top. They were told their stuff must fit in the bag and should be clipped shut to ensure their materials stayed top secret until sharing day.

Along with stocking our Art Studio, I was also interested in creating an authentic opportunity for the children to sort. We have been working on sorting as one of our Math goals. One of the questions we have been asking is: “How does sorting the materials in the classroom help us with our learning?”

On sharing day, we asked each student to talk about one special item from their bag in our sharing circle. And then…we dumped our Beautiful Stuff out on the the carpet. After a few minutes of excited exploration, we got down to the business of figuring out what to do with our collections.

Some children thought we should put our stuff back in our bags and share as needed, but it was decided that it would be too hard to know what we had and besides, the idea was for everyone to put their stuff together. We decided the materials definitely needed to be sorted…but how? By colour? By size? When we thought about how we were going to use our stuff (at the Art Studio to make creations) the children decided it would be best to sort our stuff by type of material. After all, sometimes you might just need a straw or a button and you want to know exactly where to find it! We proceeded by making a list of categories on the SMART Board from the stuff that we could find: buttons, straws, paper, tissue, wooden things, metal things, caps, small boxes, beads, etc. We ended up with over 20 different kinds of materials! Finally, we sorted – adding materials to different containers that we had gathered at the carpet. Our Art Studio is now brimming with materials just waiting to be turned into beautiful creations!

Here is the first creation that came out of our newly stocked Art Studio:

E: “I made a ‘Beautiful Maker’. It’s a machine that makes things beautiful.” 🙂

A new year, a new classroom!

Posted on September 9, 2013 by msmcdonell

Our classroom Art Studio – the hub of our classroom.

Currently stocked with beach related natural materials from my summer adventures. A lot of students have been inspired to share their own summer beach experiences while visiting this centre.

The Science and Nature Centre. Currently stocked with beach related natural materials from my summer adventures. A lot of students have been inspired to share their own summer beach experiences while visiting this centre.

The Teacher Centre. Where our students try their hand at playing teacher. Also a cozy spot to curl up with a book.

Buddha Boards! A magical place to creatively experiment with water.

Math materials have been chosen purposely to encourage counting and sorting.

Natural materials appear in the math centre too. The numbered blocks are coasters I found at Winners!

Math Centre. Labeled bins contain building materials for our Math Science Investigations building program.

An important centre at the beginning of the year. The familiar homey objects here often create a cozy atmosphere in the classroom.

The Drama/House Centre. An important centre at the beginning of the year. The familiar homey objects here help to create a cozy atmosphere in the classroom.

We chose to put out familiar sand tools and continue our extension of summer experiences with sand castle molds. All the materials are placed on a mat so children know where to put them when they are finished.

The Sand Centre. We chose to put out familiar sand tools and continue our extension of summer experiences with sand castle molds. All the materials are placed on a mat so children know where to put them when they are finished.

I opted for a large variety of materials here - scoops, cups of various shapes and sizes, squirters and pumps as well as whimsical objects like boats and rubber duckies.

The Water Centre. I opted for a large variety of materials here – scoops, cups of various shapes and sizes, squirters and pumps as well as whimsical objects like boats and rubber duckies.

*Update: I get a lot of requests for wide-angle shots of my classroom which show what it looks like mid-year (after the children’s learning has taken over!). Here are a few pictures from the middle of the year so you can get a feel for the actual set up and space in our room:

The Curious Kindergarten

Tag Archives: kindergarten art studio

In the Studio: Self-Portraits

In the Art Studio: Plasticine Art Inspired by Barbara Reid

Beautiful Stuff

A new year, a new classroom!