Kinder Pezzettino drawings

My Kindergartners have been learning about shapes and how they can go together to make pictures. We started off by reading "Pezzettino" by Leo Lionni about a small square who thinks he must be a missing piece of someone else. He goes to all his friends who do daring and wonderful things, but they are all complete. Finally Pezzettino trips and breaks into many tiny pieces and he realizes that he is complete too.

We introduced shapes using the mosaic blocks, and I gave kids a challenge to try to make a sun, a flower, a cat, and finally their own creature out of the shapes. I showed kids how to trace their shapes onto paper to keep their creature since they're not allowed to keep my blocks (oh the silence of 24 kinders tracing blocks!)

The next week we practiced coloring carefully by outlining each shape and coloring it in solid. I went around to each child to ask what their creature could do, and wrote their title on the page in sharpie using the naming style of Lionni. It's not a bunny, it's "One who hops". It's not a snake but "One who slithers".

 Finally for some color and interest in the background we laid squares of bleeding tissue paper over the blank white areas, and I walked around with a spray bottle to make it "rain" on their picture and make magic paint.The kids loved seeing the paint instantly appear on their pages. However, I'm not 100% sold on this technique. It's very messy, and I had some overenthusiastic helpers crumple up a LOT of extra tissue paper into the trash instead of saving it. Luckily I have my intern on Thursdays and a high school helper on Fridays to assist in managing the drying rack traffic.

The students who had clearly made creatures and colored well had more successful results with the tissue. For those who had more random shapes the background color addition jut seemed distracting. Oh well, it was an experiment I'd never tried before, and it was mostly a success.

We have lots more shape things happening in other grades. Our quarter is almost finished and I've got to get kids to finish projects this week!!