Kindergarten Animals with Marshmallow Background

My Kindergarten Art To Remember Project for this year was a lot of fun and I think they turned out adorable! Here is how we did it!

I saw this post from @Raising.Kinley and thought, yes!! I want to do that with my Kindergarten! So... I did. The video below is how it worked for my class. The kids did a great job. They did not eat them (that I know of)... I brought the kids back in small groups so I could watch them closely. It went well. The only change I would make next time is I would leave the marshmallows out for a while to let them harden. They got a little slimy with the paint.

I was inspired by Pin Koro video of How to Draw 30 Animals. I chose only three to simplify it for my Kindergarten students. I also wanted to show how large to make the animal and how to break it down a bit.  Here is my video...

I had students draw all three animals. They used sharpies right away. I have found that Kindergarten isn't afraid of making mistakes like older grades are, so just get right to it by cutting out the pencil and tracing over the lines and go straight to black outline. Then I had them choose their favorite drawing and that was the one they handed to me. The other two they colored and were able to bring home with them right away.

This year I have 50 kindergarten students, so my lesson plans look different. There wasn't enough room in my schedule to have all 5 sections of Kindergarten.  It breaks my heart but it does allow me to make different choices with their lesson plans. For example... I could do this lesson and be able to make time to cut around the animals and glue them to the background without being overwhelmed.  

Most of the time, I do have the students cut and outline, but since these are beginning of the year kindergarten students and they did make the background and they did draw the animal... I cut and mounted them for our Art To Remember project. When I'm working on Art To Remember the idea of a 'pretty' picture does have to be part of the plan. Parents want to purchase a lovely image for their keepsake and I can appreciate that. So... for one project only, I do the cutting and mounting for them.

Here is the good news... because I had these videos and materials, the three kindergarten teachers whose students do not come to my classroom did this lesson with their students too. They brought in volunteers and each classroom made the project as well so all students will have the opportunity to have an Art To Remember project. Here are some of their examples!!