Integrating Art into Other Content Areas

One of the many things I love about Kindergarten is being able to use art projects to teach concepts and lessons.  (Someone please reassure me that this is also appropriate for Third Grade!  I will be so sad next year if I am frowned at if and when I do art projects in my new classroom!) 

Every Wednesday, my students particpate in what we refer to as a Classroom Meeting.  This is basically my approach to Bully Prevention, Conflict Resolution, Community Building...whatever you want to call it.  Here is what we did today:

1 - I opened up the lesson by asking the students a couple of questions:  "What is a leader?  What are some qualities of a good leader?"

2 - I read aloud Swimmy by Leo Lionni.

3 - We had a discussion about Swimmy and what made him a good leader.  We brainstormed ways we could be more like Swimmy.  We talked about how the fish worked together as a team to reach a common goal.

4 - The students worked together to splatter paint a large sheet of white butcher paper with blue paint in order to create "water."  (However, it was difficult to see the fish on the white paper, so I might suggest using blue butcher paper and then using white paint to splatter.)  I recommend laying down extra butcher paper underneath your art work to catch any fly-away splatters.  Or if you are lucky enough to be in a warm climate, paint outside!

5 - The students used an art technique called "crayon resist" to create their own unique and special fish.  First, they colored a design on their fish using crayons.  Then, they used water color paints to paint their fish.

6 - I was planning on having the kids work together to put their little fish together to make a big fish (just like the fish in the story), but this lesson and project ended up taking up a ton of time as it was, so I just did this last step by myself after school.

We had fun with this lesson.  Give it a try in your own classroom!  If you do, I would love to hear how it goes.  Have fun and thanks for stopping by!  :)