Warm and Cool Dino silhouettes, Kindergarten

Each year, my kindergarten classes learn about art from prehistoric times. We imagined what it would have been like to live in the days of the dinosaur, and how artists would have created landscapes - it was fun to imagine together what the world may have looked like during these early days. I added a new lesson to the unit this year after admiring a similar project over at That Artist Woman blog.  I love the dino silhouettes against the colorful backgrounds, and I made a few changes to the lesson to make it a good fit for my kindergarteners, such as using chalk pastel.  We started by adding chalk pastel stripes to our construction paper - one piece with warm and the other cool.  I wish my camera wasn't a "dinosaur" and could catch the glowing beauty of the blended chalk.  We cut a sun and some reflections from the warm piece, with the cool background representing sky and water.

Next, we cut a large and small palm tree from a black sheet after discussing what type of environment dinosaurs liked.  We also cut a large and small dinosaur and placed them on the page to show depth of space.  Students drew their own dinos, and cutting them was quite a challenge, but I really like the personality they have when free drawn. I am not against the use of templates (a real hot button issue in certain circles : ) ), and I know the cutting would have been much easier if we had used them, but I just thought we'd give it a shot and I think they turned out really fun and cute.  My kindergarteners are pretty advanced this year, I must say. We did look at a few step-by-step "how to draw" sheets to help us choose which shapes to combine to make the dinosaurs we liked best. I think this lesson is a keeper!



a poster I salvaged from a giveaway pile, eons ago : )