Kindergarten Selft Portraits

This year one of my goal's were to use self portraits as a visual arts assessment. I purchased the Deep Space Sparkle Self Portrait lesson as a guide, since I have never done one myself. I waited till December to begin the self portraits because it allowed me to teach procedures and other small techniques to my students. I also used a video from YouTube to help guide the little ones through the process of eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I choose to draw a closed mouth on my example and I gave them the same option. I believe 95% of my students drew an open mouth, they were much more daring than me.

I believe the portraits came to life when the paint was applied. The funny looking portraits began to take on the look of each kindergartner. I was very nervous and talked to my student's how I have never done this type of lesson and I was going to keep on trying even if my face looked a little crooked. I was surprised how some of my kindergartners

took it upon themselves to add their own hair bow or beads in their hair without any guidance from me. Don't you love when your idea takes on a life of its own for your little artist?

Since I teach kinder for an hour we had two painting sessions. First, we discussed and viewed the two types of self portraits, photo-realism and expressionism. Learned our "I can" statements and then I jumped into teaching them what I expect as they painted their skin and hair. This took all about 30 minutes, then they came back to the carpet to have a little painting break and for me to teach the second set of painting expectations. I wanted the students to only pick one color for their background and one color for their shirt. We discussed how I wanted our audience to focus on the most important part of the self portrait, THEIR FACE!

This whole lesson went much smoother than I expected and I can't wait to review this lesson in May after a lot more teaching instruction and experience.