Still Life Collage

This has been one of the most fun projects I have ever done with kindergartners. This project is more developmentally appropriate during the second semester of the kindergarten year. There are a lot of steps but the students really learned about overlapping shapes, still life, and patterns. The first step was to learn about still life paintings. we viewed many works of art from famous painters and discussed what makes a still life. Next, the students drew pictures of the still life that was sitting on their table. With this step I was really able to see what developmental art stage each child was in.

Before we began drawing we had to discuss that you could only draw what you could see. If something was hidden on the other side of the basket it could not be drawn. 

Once the students finished drawing the still life they had to choose 5 items that they could see in the still life. Each of these items was going to be drawn on a separate piece of paper. they were given as assortment of paper sizes and they had to choose the one that best fit the object they were going to draw. Often students do not fill the space on paper so they would draw the object once and then show it to me. If they object was large enough they could outline in sharpie. a drawing that was not big enough they could draw it again bigger on the back. Erasing takes too long and is hard for little artist. Once the objects were big enough and outlined with sharpie they could color them in with plastipastels and paint to create a wax resist.

One of the hardest things about this project was cutting out the objects. At this age students have trouble recognizing groups of shapes as one whole object when they are cutting. If they needed help cutting they could draw a line around the outer edge of the object and then cut on that line. 

Next we created a basket and a table cloth using patterns and then glued everything together while we looked at the still life. Everyone was so proud of their  amazing art!