Eric Carle's books art absolutely perfect for the art room. The stories are really made by their illustrations. I read this to Kindergarten and they were just blown away by his pages that fold up and down and out and under. After reading the story, I gave each of them a blue piece of construction paper and white crayons. I had them press down super hard and create a moon, then they drew texture lines with blue markers in the sky. We spent the rest of the first class period building our ladders out of popsicle sticks. I worried they wouldn't be able to figure this out, but as soon as I got done demonstrating, they got to work and were successful. A couple of them had trouble getting the cross bars to reach all the way across, but I just had them scoot them into place while the glue was still wet. Obviously, they tend to use too much glue no matter how many times you say "raindrops, not puddles," so after we got this step done, they placed them in the drying rack to dry until next time.
Once they got done, I gave them a coloring sheet I made that had a person (in climbing position) and stars. (I didn't want to throw star and figure drawing at them quite this early...) Some of them had the cutest outfits!
To begin our next class, I read them a story about art supplies in order to introduce scissors. They have used them a little bit with their classroom teacher, so that is helpful. But, I went ahead and had them do a warm-up before they cut out their person. I admitted to them that I sometimes struggle cutting out hard shapes like people. A few of them let their guard down and admitted they struggled sometimes too. I made the sheet below in Word and showed them some helpful tips. (It helps to take small bites and keep your scissors facing forward at all times so you turn the paper and not your scissors.)
They did really well with their warm-up, so I gave them their coloring sheet with the person and stars from the previous week to start cutting. They were so cute... "Mrs. Byrd! These scissors aren't doing what I ask them to do!" "Mrs. Byrd, these scissors are making it difficult for me. I need a new pair!" I would take them and show them how to use them correctly to prove they were not broken. :) So, once they got their stars and person cut out, they glued them into place on their ladder. Everyone at school was extremely complimentary of them! And man, they were so proud of themselves!
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