march into green art

Simple paper sculptures are a perfect introduction to 3D art for Kindergarters and first grade students. I have done these in a variety of colors, but during March when students are learning about leprechauns, I have them use only green paper.

With these green "Leprechaun Playgrounds" I encourage students to create as many three-dimensional elements as possible. Of course I demonstrate twisting and folding techniques, but it's amazing what they can come up with on their own.

Prep is easy; simply cut tons of paper strips from the 9" end of 9x12 construction paper, roughly an inch wide. No measuring is necessary so don't worry about the width. In fact, variation in widths of the paper is even better. In fact, if students are fairly practiced with scissors, it's even better to have them cut their own strips.

I like to also provide a few 4x4 inch squares on each table for kids to make cylinders, or to cut out shapes to use along with spirals, accordion fold, circles, or whatever else they might come up with. Some students may decide to make paper chain loops that hang loose. Once I even had two little girls attach several strips to end to end, creating long, long tails that hung down to the floor.

This simple art lesson that delivers a lot of learning for little ones: lots of scissor practice, lots of use of those fine motor skills, lots of experimenting with paper folding, and lots of just plain fun... all in the context of an authentic art lesson that introduces children to sculpture as an art form! 

Check out this lesson .... and two more 'green art' lessons for St. Patrick's Day, here in my TeachersPayTeachers store! Enjoy!

marshmallow sculptures

I cannot claim any part of this activity; in fact, I found it on the Internet somewhere, and unfortunately don't remember where, or I'd give credit where credit is due. Basically, I had students "build something" using mini-marshmallows and toothpicks, then draw their construction using circles for the marshmallows and lines for the toothpicks. The drawings were done with pencil, and then traced with colored markers. Very easy directions for what turned out to be not so easy of a task.

I quickly modeled the whole process, not only the building part but especially the drawing part. I did a lot of "thinking aloud" to give students an idea how I decided to draw my structure. I talked about the toothpicks going in different directions, for example; "hmm... this one sticks out on this side, and this one over here goes the opposite direction and kind of down, making kind of a triangle shape...." so they would take the time to try to replicate their structures as best as they could.

I had each student count out twenty marshmallows and provided a paper plate full of toothpicks for each table. I asked them to use as many of their marshmallows as they could, because I didn't want the sculptures to be too small. As they worked, I made some interesting observations. The building with marshmallows and toothpicks part was pretty easy for most, although there was some problem-solving for students whose structures were getting a little tall. Some students finally just laid their sculptures down sideways on the table because they had a hard time getting them to stand up. But what was really interesting was watching students translate their three-dimensional sculptures to two-dimensional drawings. Getting the depth was very, very tricky.

After they drew and traced their structures, students were allowed to eat their marshmallows, including the ones that made up their sculptures. Lucky for me, one little girl did not like marshmallows so I put her sculpture, a very complicated, organic-looking thing, on a table off to the side. In the following class an hour later, her twin sister built a very similar sculpture; her drawing looked remarkable like her twin's sculpture. Interesting.....
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green paper sculptures

My Kindergarten students had great fun making simple construction paper sculptures. In honor of March and St. Patrick's Day in the near future, I decided to have them use only green paper for these. Prep was easy; I simply cut tons of paper strips from the 9" end of 9x12 construction paper, roughly an inch wide, but truthfully I didn't measure and didn't worry about the width, so there was a lot of variation. I also provided a few 4x4 inch squares on each table for kids to make cylinders or to cut out shapes to use along with spirals, accordion folds, circles, etc. A few students made "paper chain" loops that hung loose, and two little girls attached several strips end to end, creating long, long tails.

My favorite moment was when a student found a little "googly eye" on the floor, apparently left from a project from the previous day's after school program. He squealed ecstatically that he had "found an eye!" and glued it on the top of a loop of paper. He then looked around on the floor and found a tiny piece of green yarn, maybe about a half inch long, which he glued next to the eye and announced that "now I have a mouth!" Later, when we decided to name the sculptures, he decided that his would be named "Mr. Sculpture!"

It was very interesting to watch different students' approach to this activity. One student kept walking over to a table off to the side, on which were sitting a couple of unfinished models that I had used to show different ways to fold and curl the paper strips, and to remind students how much glue to use. He would stand there with his head on his crossed arms, gazing at them for a minute or two, then come over to ask me to show him again how to do a certain thing. In the end, it was lots of fun, there was lots of success, and most students managed not to use way too much glue!