Pumpkin Painting!

Hello, my name is Carie and I am a kindergarten teacher in Illinois! 

A few years ago, our school district decided to cut our elementary art position. Our Art teacher was AMAZING! She got our kindergarten and first graders to create masterpieces that I couldn’t even create on my own! So we were very sad to see her leave and take all of her Art Magic with her! So, for the past few years I have been trying to make Art as meaningful to my students as she did hers. After years of giving students construction paper and letting them cut and paste the pieces to make jack-o-lanterns; like this...

 The construction paper jack-o-lanterns are fun too...

but...........

This year I decided to get over my fear of letting all of my students paint at the same time and let paint do the talking! 

Painting is very therapeutic and my kiddos needed some of this therapeutic time (as did I). As I was filling paint trays, I ran out of orange paint so I used it as a teaching moment to teach students which two colors make orange and then showed them how to mix red and yellow...then WAHHH LAHHH, we had orange! We then talked about how to use each paint brush in only one color so not to mix the colors to make even more colors. We didn't want crazy color pumpkins for this activity...just orange :)

I let the students choose what size of paper they wanted (12X18 or 9X12). They then got to choose if they wanted a short, fat pumpkin or a tall, skinny pumpkin. (They all reminded me that those different kinds of pumpkins were opposites). Each student also got to choose if they just wanted to paint a pumpkin or if they wanted to paint a jack-o-lantern.  Then I let the painting begin. 

They had enjoyed it so much, they wanted to paint more pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns. If we would have had had more time, I definitely would have let them! They were so calm and serious while painting…they need this ART time to express themselves and let their true personalities show in through in their “masterpieces” 

I hope everyone has a very Happy Halloween!!