Kindergarten Newspaper Dog Collages

Lesson Background:
This week in our kindergarten classroom we were learning the Dd sound.  We read Dogs by Emily Gravett, met the dog of our class members, posed questions to the dog owners and wrote sentences about dogs.  It's been such fun!  To help the Dd sound stick even further with the children, we created these dog pictures.

Lesson Materials (per student):
1 sheet A4 white art paper
1 A4 sized sheet of newspaper (mostly words, not images)
a strip of black paper
a strip of white paper
scissors
glue stick
lead pencil

Lesson Steps:
1.  Mrs Baker drew each segment of the dog step-by step and the children followed along.  She started by drawing a big arch shape taking up half of the A4 newspaper.  This was the dog's chest.
2.  Then we drew a big circle, oval or square for the dog's head.
3.  Next we made ears in whatever shape we liked.
4.  Then we cut out 2 white circles and 2 smaller black circles and made eyes.
5.  Next we drew and cut out a nose shape from the black paper, and then a little standing rectangle and smile for its mouth.
6.  Finally the children had the option to cut out a collar from black paper if they wished to.

Here are some of the dogs that the children made...

Kindergarten Oil Pastel Koalas

Lesson Background:

After our recent summer of bushfires and loss of wildlife, we decided to give our classroom an Australian flora & fauna theme.  We read lots of Aussie animal books, found a cuddly koala soft toy to be our mascot, set up an animal hospital in our dramatic play area, and put up lots of themed labels and toys.  These koalas were done in the second week of kindergarten- haven't they done well?!

Lesson Materials (per student):

-oil pastels (grey/silver, black, white, green, brown, pink)
-blue watercolour paint
-a brush, water and drop sheet/newspaper for table
-a sheet of A4 white paper

Lesson Steps:

1.  We began by reading stories about koalas (The Koala Who Could, Koala Lou) and looking at our soft koala toys and photos of koalas.
2.  We watched an Art Hub guided drawing of a koala video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneynNchGmI), pausing after each step to have a go.  We tried to make ours unique by changing small details like the number of leaves & branches, the scruffiness/curviness of the ears, the size of eyes and nose).
3.  We coloured each section of the koala and tree with oil pastel, focussing on having no white gaps.  We also tried to show shadow by using darker shades of green in the leaves, and show light by putting a white speck in the koala's eyes.
4.  We washed over the drawing with blue watercolour paint and learnt about the magic and science of wax resist!

Student Work Samples: