Saturday, December 24, 2011

Kindergarten Gingerbread Men


This is a Christmas display I made using the gingerbread men painted by my Junior (4 years old) and Senior (5 years old) Kindergarten students. Beforehand, my teaching assistant (a wonderful Grade 12 student who gets volunteer hours helping me) pre-traced all the gingerbread men onto heavy brown 9x12" construction paper.

I started off by reading the cute story "The Gingerbread Man". Then, the Kinders were given a small paint brush and white tempera paint and simply painted away. When working with the Kinders, I try to pre-distribute the paint into empty baby food jar lids and then refill as necessary during class. Then I dump them all into a bucket of water in the sink and clean them after school.

I demonstrated first how to slowly and carefully outline the gingerbread man with the white paint. Then they cut and glued on bits of paper for extra embellishments. Kindergartens can be a handful to work with at the beginning of the year, but once you get them into a routine, they are loads of fun because they are happy with any project and always fearless when trying new things! When you ask Kindergarteners how many of them are artists, they will generally all raise their hands- sadly, that number diminishes as you go up the grades.
Great work Kinders!
 
UPDATE: I had a question about my border mini-posters: "Christmas Around the World".
You can download them free (downloads as a Microsoft Word doc) from this website:
 



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