We're working through genres, and the Kinders and First graders are on portraiture. With the Kindergartners we read "Too Purpley" to help us start thinking about clothing and patterns. Since we're in the dead of winter, a bundled-up self-portrait seemed appropriate.
First we filled a whole page with patterns in crayon. Then we used a tracer for the hat and mitten shapes to cut out and glue on a background paper (I'm trying to throw in lots of cutting and gluing practice!!). Next we drew our faces, hair,eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and jackets. Finally we colored the backgrounds and added some swooshing wind and falling snowflakes. Some kids drew themselves with a tongue sticking out to catch the flakes!
We ended our Friday with a snowstorm, so I kept imagining the Kinders all going out after school with their tongues sticking out.
In first grade we looked at Mary Cassatt's family portraits to get ideas for our own portraits. We drew an oval picture frame and decorated it, then used a face tracer for each family member. I don't really like using tracers, but the first time I tried to do this project without tracers the kids all drew their family members so small that you couldn't really see anything and wasted a ton of space in their big sheet of paper. The tracers helped place the faces so that afterwards they could overlap the bodies.
Some kids added family pets. Some only drew themselves with mom and dad and left out all their siblings (isn't that revealing? we all want to be the center of our parents' attention!)
I encouraged the kids to add a background showing where their family was, but only a few let their imaginations carry them off. In the portrait above, one student shows himself at his birthday party- a perfect time for a family portrait!
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