First Days of Art with Kindergarten!

I have found that nearly every art teacher has struggled with teaching kindergarten at some time. I think the reason is that they are like a magical bag of tricks: you never EVER know what to expect! That’s why I dedicated an entire section of my book Art Teacherin’ 101 just to them! I share all of my tips and tricks of working with that herd of cats. 

As an art teacher, I like to change things up. I don’t repeat a lot of lessons (unless I know they are kid-faves) but with kindergarten, I have a routine that I use at the start of every year. In fact, if you’ve been following my YouTube channel then you may experience deja-vu when you watch these next couple of videos I’m going to share as this is my same song-n-dance routine for kindergarten. If you tap the link A Glimpse Inside on my playlist, you can find many more videos just like these! I’ve also been sharing snippets of these on my Instagram

Just a little backstory: my art classes are 30 minutes long. I see my students twice a week. I have no more than 20 students in each class (I know, I’m very lucky). We work on these paper sculptures for two art classes and then dive into painting the third week. At the bottom of this post, I’ll add more links to kindergarten lessons and project ideas for you. Until then, here’s a glimpse inside my first day of art with kindergarten:

My second day of art, I introduce some of my behavior routines. I use a happy/sad board to help manage behavior. I use an open/closed sign to help keep the chatting to a minimum because, hello!, 30 minute art classes here! Here’s my second day:

Want to hear more about the happy/sad board? You can check out this video. I will say that I’m doing an extension to my board this year which I’ll share in a blog post later this week. I’m really excited about it!

I’ll be sharing more of a look inside other grade levels first days of art soon but, if you just can’t wait, try these blog posts! This one is from 2019-2020 (I just shuddered at that one…we all know how that ended!) and this one from last year! 


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