Kindergarten Picasso Inspired Guitar Collages

We’re learning about Spain in Kindergarten right now and the kids are totally fascinated by Picasso.  I am too.  I didn’t know there was a battle over who invented collage, Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque.  We did these fabulous Picasso inspired guitar collages in two parts.  First we made the guitars in four steps.  1. Cut the corners off a brown rectangle.  2.  Cut small bowls on either side.  3.  Add the neck of the guitar with glue.  4.  Add three skinny rectangle strips along the neck of the guitar for the tuners.  Everyone was successful! The next day we did the backgrounds by adding cut out bits of assorted papers.  One student even got into some confetti, which was really fun with out being too crazy.   The kids truly enjoyed the entire process.  I think they were especially impressed with their guitars, which some were strumming around the room.  They also really got that Picasso was all about his unique creativity.  I heard kids talking about how each of their guitars looked different and Picasso would have liked that.  It was pretty cool.

Pinterest Rocks, Again

Oh pinterest, how I love thee.  Seriously, this website freakin rocks and if you’re not on it you need to get on it stat.  I’ve been wanting to make an inspiration board/ideal scene type collage for a while.  I whole-heartedly believe in these things.  I made one out of stickers (searching for a photo) before I met Ev and I’m convinced that’s how I met him.  It’s kind of like Weird Science.  Firm believer.  Anyway, instead of spending hours on line trying to find all the photos and images that inspire me I just went to my boards and found my absolute favs.  Cut those suckers out and voila!  Along with some words from mags that I am still adding here and there.  We’re going to hang this in the family room in constant view.  I believe you have to stare at these things and really put the images in your consciousness for them to manifest.  Anyhoo, wish me luck.  There are some serious European adventures on here, plus Alien Army on the cover of Time Magazine inspiration, and photos of our future home.

Our Classroom Pumpkin Patch

We started our classroom pumpkin patch last week by making beautiful watercolor leaves on diffuse paper, but I forgot to take a picture, so this is really part two of this bulletin board.  Part three will be the TLC scarecrows we’re going to make tomorrow.  The kids loved painting these huge panels of supercool textured paper someone donated to the classroom.  I don’t think they will ever forget that red and yellow make orange!  Then we used pumpkin templates for tracing and cut out our own stems.  We used pencil and pastels to add realistic details as our last step. Voila!  A beautiful thriving pumpkin patch.  Thanks to KinderKorner for passing along all these great ideas!

Collage Self Portraits

I LOVE this project.  It was so much fun to make and the kids had a good laugh at the results.  We call them whacky, yet beautiful.  Just like people.  I got the idea from an art project I saw at a friends house.  I embellished it a bit here and there.  I’d love to give the creator credit, but I don’t know who she is.  The steps are pretty easy.  Basically, take a 9×17 piece of construction paper and hold horizontally.  I pre cut heads, necks and chests for all the kids.  I gave step by step directions for gluing them down.  For the chest, the kids picked a pattern paper and glued on the template, then cut around the template.  This kind of cutting is great for kindergarteners because there is a guide/barrier for cutting.  After the body parts were glued down we added the border, which was made from pre-cut small squares from old magazines.  I tried to pick colorful magazine covers for this part so the paper was a little thicker.  After, I set up tons of magazine faces of girls, boys, men and women on the floor and the kids got to choose which ones they wanted to cut from.  This was crucial because looking through magazines with a group of 16 five years olds is not the greatest.  This way they could focus right in on the facial features they wanted to use.  After all the facial features were glued on, Brigitte helped the kids find letters in the mags to spell their names and paste to their shirts.  Last but definitely not least, the kids directed me on the hairstyle they wanted and I cut it out.  A few did it themselves.  I was okay with this since we had already spent a nice amount of time on the other parts.  Another way to do it would be to paint on the hair.  The likeness to the designers on some of these is pretty hilariously spot on.  Super fun project and a great keepsake at home.  I want to frame mine in a lucite box frame.

This was my sample.