Agate Watercolor Paintings

Kindergarteners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders were inspired by the incredible watercolor paintings in the book Agate. They immediately noticed how the animals were sparkly and shimmery - and not the right colors! Agate taught us that not only are we all special, but that art can be unique!

To create paintings inspired by Agate, each student received a piece of 9x12 tag board. I set up stations with liquid watercolors at each table and after a quick demonstration, the students were free to go to each station and mix colors. They could focus on just making agate colors, or create an animal they had in mind.

The next time classes met, they used watercolor crayons to add emphasis and details to the paintings. They sure are wonderful!

Kindergarten Tiny Seed

My cooperating teacher challenged me to plan a lesson for kindergarten that integrated with their curriculum. For two weeks they were studying plants and seeds, and I decided to use this book as inspiration!

We started with 12x18 tag board, on which we painted our flowers. We used big brushes to give it a textured effect, and experimented with mixing colors. The next week we added line designs with construction paper crayons. Then we cut it out and glued it onto a blue piece of paper. It became a great end-of-the-year assessment for these kindergarteners.

This one was particularly striking. Unfortunately she was called out of art class and was not able to finish.

When the next kindergarten class came in, they were bustling with excitement because they had a cage full of butterfly cocoons that they were waiting to hatch! So I suggested we paint butterflies as well, and use sparkly gold paint to create monarch butterfly patterns. They did not cut out their paintings because they were a week behind, but I don't think they needed too! This class excelled at filling up the entire space with paint.