Wings, Wings, Wings


Kindergartners learned all about symmetry in this self-portrait project.  Kinders are learning about life cycles in their classrooms, so they have these giant hornworms in their class that they are observing. We looked at pictures of hornworm moths and talked about the symmetry in the wings. We listed out other animals that have symmetrical wings.

To make symmetrical paper we folded our paper in half and used tempera cakes to paint one side of the paper.  After each paint stroke we folded the paper over and rubbed it to print the color onto the other side.


Kids had to completely paint/print their paper, covering up all the white.
After the paper dried we used it to cut out symmetrical wings.  Kids were very interested in dragon wings, so we looked at some photos of dragons.  We learned how to draw and cut out symmetrical dragon, moth or butterfly wings.

We cut out photographs of ourselves that I had already taken and collaged on our wings. We added extra details like antennae and tails with the leftover paper.

Kindergarten Self-Portraits


SOOOOO much learning went into these self-portraits.  Kinders have been learning about texture, color mixing, collage, and drawing from observation.  Here's how we did it:
Day one we read this book about all the beautiful, different colors of us:

We talked about how everyone is the same but different and we learned how to mix a color for us using brown, white, yellow, and pink.  We painted an entire page our color.
Day two we talked about texture and mixed two colors to make a new color for our background. We used texture combs to draw lines in our wet paint and give our backgrounds texture.
Day three we practiced looking VERY CLOSELY at our faces with a mirror. We cut out an oval and drew our features with an oil pastel, paying close attention to our eyes.  We learned that there are three parts to our eyes, the white part, the iris (colored part), and a black pupil.
Day four we cut out a neck and ears from the rest of our skin color paper and assembled our portrait on our background. We cut out a shirt from construction paper.  At this point we looked very funny because we were all BALD!
Day five we used markers to add in some details to our shirts and then we broke out the paints again. We used brown, yellow, black, white, and red to mix a color for our hair. We talked about how everyone's hair color is unique, just like our skin.  We also practiced different types of lines for different types of hair, curly, straight, spiky, etc.

Whew, there you have it! I love how expressive each and every one of these are.