Flower Painting for Preschool and Kindergarten
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe was a master at seeing more. She said, “When you take a flower in your hand... it’s your world for a moment.” I love to use her paintings to train my students to use their eyes to look more deeply. Her example encourages children to look more closely and to find there truly is — more than meets the eye — if we use all of our senses in the experience. Painting flowers the O’Keeffe way is a great way to expand the learning for young children.
Training Students to Look More Deeply
Display a few vases of flowers in front of the students. What do you see? Students will immediately see flowers, but let’s expand that learning beyond the obvious. We want them to see so much more!
Take one of the flowers and place it under a document camera or on an overhead projector. Guide your students as you look at the shapes that it is composed of. Draw emphasis to lines, shapes, squiggles, etc. Guide them to see the textures, the layers, and the multiplicity of colors. After studying a flower or two, pass the flowers around and allow the students to feel, smell, and closely examine each of them. Remind students to handle the beautiful flowers with care.
Using a large chart paper, pluck one of the flowers from the vase. As you closely examine it, talk aloud about the details you see. Place the flower in front of you, examine it closely with a magnifying glass, and begin to draw as you talk through the process; drawing the lines, shapes, layers, and textures of the flower, stopping occasionally to smell and touch the flower —- appreciating it’s beauty.
Pass each student a large sheet of art paper, a pencil for drawing, a magnifying glass, and a flower from the vase. Guide the activity. Together, let’s draw our stem. Walking around, make sure that each stem fills at least 2/3 of the page. Great! Now you will begin drawing the flower to fill your page.
From this point on, allow students to draw their flower, constantly encouraging lines, shapes, textures, and layering as they proceed to draw. And encouraging use of the magnifying glass to look closely at their flower.
After the flower is drawn with pencil, allow students to trace their lines with oil pastels or a sharpie and then use watercolors or tempura to paint their work of art. (You will want to demonstrate how to trace the pencil lines with pastels or sharpies and complete with paint).
Young children will love their masterpieces as the world is opened to the multi- layers of nature.
Extend the project by taking an art notebook with you on a walk to a garden, park, farm, etc. Encourage students to work beyond flowers to trees, bushes, rocks, mountains, and even into their own back yard. Giving students the gift of looking beyond to see more, will bring joy to all elements of their life.
Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Product Description
This Spring Activities packet is filled with authentic active learning activities that will thrill your classroom or homeschool students as they learn important academic skills.
It's a Spring Thing is strategically linked to the common core standards, based on proven reading, math, and science research and best practices.
The activities are divided into areas of literature, music, art, literacy, math, science, creative writing, word wall, and guided reading. The activities are clearly written, differentiated, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. When laminated and filed, these become Ready to Go for your teaching years ahead!
Contents Include:
Literacy Games
Lambs & Lions: Naming Letters Quickly
Lambs & Lions: Sight Word Fluency
Let’s Go Fly a Kite: Alphabet Fluency
Let’s Go Fly a Kite: Sight Word Fluency
The Bird’s Nest: Building Familiarity With Punctuation Marks
Abracadabra: Decoding CVC Words (Or Nonsense Words)
Hens and Chicks: Reading Reading CVC Words
Spring Words Worksheet: Distinguishing Between Similar Words
Math Games:
April Showers Bring May Flowers: Decomposing Numbers
Fly Away Birdie: Solving Subtraction Problems
Spring Fling: Solving Addition Problems
Runaway Chicks: Solving Mathematical Problems Using 5-Frames
Bountiful Bunnies: Decomposing Numbers
Who Is Ready For Spring?: Connecting Numbers 1-43
Hippity Hop: Connecting Numbers 1-47
Songs and Fingerplays
It is Springtime
Springtime
March Wind
Put Up Your Umbrella
Science Projects
Jello Mixing: Mixing Colors Tactilely
Color Mixing: Making Secondary Colors
Paint Mixing: Recording Data From an Experiment
Art Projects
Lamb & Lion: Portfolio Sample
Under the Umbrella: Portfolio Sample
Vase of Flowers: Artist Study
Easter Bunny Hat
Writing
What I Like About Spring
The Easter Bunny
Guided Reading Books
Mix It Up
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Pond Independent Writing Center Activities
Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Product Description
Strategically Linked to the common core, this best-selling Thematic plant unit is divided into areas of literature, media, music, art, literacy activities, math activities, worksheets, science activities, creative writing, word wall words, and guided reading for cross-curricular learning.
The activities are clearly written, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. The lessons are fun and engaging and will leave your classroom or homeschool students begging for more.
Math Center Activities
Flowering Math: Joining Sets
Watermelon War: Comparing Numerals
Garden Party: Demonstrating Subtraction
Counting Seeds: Count out items to match a given number.
Planting Seeds: Making Combinations to 10
Adding Flowers
Garden Takeaway
Plant a Garden Ways to Make 8
Reading Center Activities:
Flower Garden: Reading Sight Word & CVC Word Sentences (or alphabet recognition).
Tip Toe Through the Tulips: Alphabet letter sound fluency (or sight word fluency)
Run Rabbit Run: Alphabet Letter Fluency
In the Garden: Naming Sight Words
Greenhouse Words: Reading Sight Words
Blooming Words: Isolating Phonemes & Writing CVC Words From Dictation
The Garden Show: Writing Color Words
Science Activities
Building a Science Center
A Seed Grows: Planting a seed in a bag
Kitchen Science: Edible Dirt
Plant Parts: Observation of Plants
The Thirsty Stem: Capillary Action In Plants
Seed Sorting: Using the Scientific Process
Art Projects
Plant Parts: Portfolio Sample
Artful Flowers
Mother's Day Flower
Fingerprint Flowers
Songs
Watermelon Pie
Inch by Inch (adapted) by David Mallet
Plant A Seed
Guided Reading
The Little Seed
Writing
Plant Word Wall Words
Prompts: All About Seeds,What I Know About Plants
I Can Writing: Label it, list it card it
Pond Independent Writing Center Activities
Spring Themed Intervention Games
Lamb and Lion Spring Themed Activities
Each activity is clearly written, easy to use, and needs limited preparation. The lessons are fun and engaging and will leave your students begging for more!