Art, Literacy, and Emotions!

  Students in kindergarten and first grade have been learning about drawing ourselves, showing emotion, and connecting colors to emotions in their artwork! At the beginning of each class we read aloud our "targets" or "goals" for the day.  Here are our goals for this multi-class and multi-step project!

* I can draw myself using shapes.                                    

* I can draw myself showing how I feel.

                                          * I can match colors to feelings in my artwork.

   We started out by simply practicing drawing ourselves, using ovals, circles, and all sorts of shapes to represent our body.  Then we focused in on our face and how it tells the way we feel about something.  We read the story "Today I feel Silly, and Other Moods that Make my Day" by Jamie Lee Curtis.  While I read the story each student made the face of the feeling on each page paying special attention to the changes they saw on their face.....

 Afterwards we chose four different feelings to illustrate ourselves.  While students drew themselves they focused on using shapes and really capturing on paper the changes in their eyes, nose, mouth, and especially eyebrows.  Students all chose different feelings which made it a unique project because each picture is different!  

We then looked at two pieces of artwork and talked about the ways an artist can use color to help create the mood within an artwork.  We noticed through discussion, that dark colors typically match more negative feelings and light colors tend to match positive feelings.  This conversation also brought up that each person has their own thoughts and opinions about which colors go with positive feelings, and which go with negative feelings.  Finally, students used colored pencils to assign one color to each self-portrait based on it's feeling.  Check out the results!