Warm Trees, Cool Breeze.

Here's today's favorite Kindergarten quote of the week.  To introduce it, I have little Andy Warhol banana signs near my sinks reminding students to count aloud and prevent little sink and soap hogs...

Kinder girl 1:  Juliette, did you forget to count your bananas?!

Kinder girl 2: No, I was counting quiet bananas in my head!

And now in a not so smooth transition, we're moving from bananas to leaves!  We read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert to introduce this lesson.  

This story is AWESOME.  The illustrations feature hidden creatures, use warm colors (one of the objectives of our lesson), and each page features a different sort of cut line at the top of the page.  The story is seriously an art grand slam!

We started out by making painted papers, half warm and half a cool green.  Some students even used the bottom of their brushes to make little white dots for leaves.

I love making painted papers, but man oh man, that mess every time is rough!

This lesson ended up being a 3 day-er, because next class we started to work on tearing out our green hills, cutting out our warm trees, and then gluing everything down.  So, I demo-ed and then we practiced using our scissors safely as this was the first time cutting for many many kiddos.

The next class also happened to be the day that our new district superintendent popped into the Art Room to check out what exactly happens in my room.  Before he came in and witnessed the madness, I  pulled him aside, and said something along the lines of...

"Look, I just want to prepare you for what you are about to see.  You are visiting on the very first day of Kindergarten cutting.  So be prepared."

And as we know, there is no way to adequately prepare someone for Kindergarten cutting madness, so some tears were witnessed, (no digits were severed), a massive mess was made, but all in all, the class went well (and the superintendent left my room paint and glue-free....can't say the same about my clothing that day).

We also wrapped up with a really fun way to reinforce warm and cool colors too.  I'll show you that another post.

And on the last day, we finished up!  Adding trunks, branches, and a final frame to finish up these fantastic little fall scenes.

They've definitely got a sweet little Scandinavian vibe to them.  Or a little Orla Kiely-esque inspo perhaps?

Happy October everyone!