Collaborative Art in Kindergarten!

Did any other Kindergarten teacher do something awesome for MLK day? I think segregation is always a hard concept to teach to the little nuggets, but I decided I wanted to do something this week for the littles to honor a great man. And with Black History Month next month, celebrating MLK has laid the foundations for more great lesson plans next month!

I LOVE anything collaborative in my classroom. It teaches children how to share and work together for a common goal and when they are this young, they get SO excited to see the final product (and I do, too!). My friend Jenny over at Art With Jenny K. has incredible art resources that can easily be done within the classroom to integrate art with your other subjects (and she has new President's Day ones that I have my eye on!). I decided I would give one of her collaborative posters a try with my kinders. I initially thought it would be too hard and I almost decided against it, but I thought, why not?! If it is a flop, then lesson learned, but if it is a success imagine how the kids will feel when they see the finished product!

The way these posters work is each student gets a sheet with a square in it that they have to color to match the smaller square. This is pretty abstract so I was sure that some of my kiddos would struggle, but I was super impressed with their ability to transform their blank square into a colorful MATCHING square. I am SO glad I tried this project.

There were some students who struggled, naturally, so I accommodated that by putting little x's in the spaces they needed to color (pictured above). Some of the squares were certainly more difficult than others, so I gave the most challenging squares (the two with MLK's eyes, for sure) to two students who have great motor skills and patience and they did a wonderful job. I was so proud of my lowest students who struggle with attention span (well, I mean, don't they all?), who were super engaged and extremely excited about this project.

The moral of this story is, do not underestimate your students and if you want it to look real good, whip out some new markers and put some quiet Mozart in the background (made all the difference, those new markers...).

And, VOILA!

Well, with the exception of the one kiddo who was having a bad day and decided a big blue X would be better than doing what he was supposed to do, how great is THIS? I mean, the D in DREAM could have been better, but these kids are 5 years old! I am such a proud teacher right now. <3

Thank you, Jenny! Here's a link to her store that you need to check out! Art with Jenny. K.