Winter Snowmen (K)

Two years ago I did a cut-and-glue snowman project with my Kindergarteners that was a little meh.
So this year I've revamped it a bit!
On the first day we started by talking about primary colors and secondary colors (this is the first time I've introduced it to them). We read "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh (of course!) and looked at my color mixing PowerPoint presentation. Then I gave my students a 9"x12" piece of drawing paper and yellow, blue, and magenta tempera paint. I explained to my students that since pink is made by just adding a bit of white to red... that it works very similarly to red. *I find that the magenta I have mixes much more vibrant colors than the red tempera I currently have.
Then they were asked to paint their paper however they wanted to - the only rule was that I didn't want to see any white left on the paper.
Then on the second day when they came in we started by reading "Snowballs" by Lois Ehlert. We talked about how the illustrations in the book were collages and not just drawings or paintings.
Then I told students that they were going to be creating their own snowmen collages!
At each table I put three circle stencils - one that was labeled large, one medium, and one small. I told students that they needed to trace each circle onto a new sheet of white drawing paper. Then I gave them aqua-colored chalk pastels and asked them to trace over HALF of each circle and smudge it inward (that way we could layer them and still be able to make out the separate circles). Once that was done, they cut out their circles and glued them onto their painting from the first day in the correct order (large first, then medium, then small).
Students also got some scrap orange and brown construction paper to create the carrot nose and stick arms and sharpies to draw in any other details.
Students that finished up early were invited to use some extra scrap paper that I've collected from other projects to add anything else to their snowmen.
Overall I'm 80% pleased with this. I think my biggest issue with this project is that most kinders finished painting their paper early on the first day.. and naturally want to keep painting.. so their beautiful bright colorful paintings eventually turn into a brown/green puddle. So I think in my next rotation I might give my students 12"x18" paper so they have more space to paint.. then I'll just cut it down to a 9"x12" when it comes time to make the collage. We'll see!

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