For this super fun Pre-K projects, students figured out how to create their own robots using shapes.  To get this started, we watched a clip from the movie Robots (which I can't even believe is already 10 years old-older than these students).

The Pre-K'ers had a dance party while we watched this, danced around the room and giggling.  I was super impressed that one student even knew that the song was by James Brown.  

Next I showed students my examples of robots and asked them what shapes they could see.  I heard "triangles, squares, rectangles, star, circle, oval", etc etc. I asked students to think of shapes that they could use to start making their robots head.  They were full of ideas.  I also asked what shapes they could use for the eyes, body, legs, hands, etc.  By the time they had their paper in front of them, they had so many ideas and immediately began working.  I supplied them with these images for reference:   

They first drew their robots with pencil, the next class they traced their lines with Sharpies and erased the pencil marks.  Students then spent two class periods filling in their robot with bright colors, using colored pencils.  This project took four 25 minute class periods.  During the last class, each student got to select a background color to post their artwork on.  

This project was really fun and the results are awesome!  I will definitely be doing this again next year!

I FINALLY have the Pre-K students in art class!  Hooray!  The Pre-K students began art class half way through the year and what a joy it is to have these adorable, funny, sweet, creative students in my classroom.  

For our first art project of Pre-K, we did a lot of experimentation.  On the first day of class, students moved around to different stations to explore different art mediums.  The stations were oil pastels, crayons, colored pencils.  At each station, the students drew patterns and designs to fill their paper and had to come up with words to say how each materials felt and looked.  For example, oil pastels are waxy, wet, slippery, bright.  Crayons are hard, colorful, light.  Colored pencils are hard, thin, dark.  

At the next class, students explored different techniques of using watercolor paints to fill their paper up with different colors.  Some students took a strategic route of creating specific shapes/colors or filling in their drawn images, while others just had fun getting colors on the paper.

For the third and forth classes of this project, the students were shocked as I told them to cut their artwork into different shapes and to glue them onto a big piece of black paper to create a new design.  A few were reluctant at first, but once started, really enjoyed themselves.  Again, some used strategy while others just cut and glued.  I love the outcome of this project because every single students artwork looks totally different from the person next to them.

So proud of these hardworking Pre-K friends!