Kindergarten, OH, KINDERGARTEN

Sometimes it's so worth it just to have students draw:

And then there are those times when you have to do a more scripted sort of lesson to teach a specific skill:

I did kindergarten neighborhoods, and in the midst of that, my first graders made color wheel clowns, where it became very apparent that students who had the other art teacher in my building (we have a large student population, so we have two art, two music, two PE teachers, as well as two libraries, two gyms. . . ) knew how to fan/accordian fold, while the students who had me for kindergarten had no idea.  Seeing that missing skill so obviously in front of me made me step back and ask "what is she doing that I'm not?"  And then I walked down to her room to teach adaptive art (we team teach that group) and asked "what projects are you doing to teach fan folding to kindergarten?"  This is one of those projects.  
Then I was gone for day for some appointments, so I decided to write it out and have the sub start it with them.  It went OK with her and they finished them up with me today.  The sub day ended with papers like this:

They started with choosing a 6" x 6" square piece of paper (I think they had 2-3 colors to choose from) and then they were given a 4" x 18" strip (each class was given a specific color, either orange, green or violet).  They glued their strip to the square, practicing careful gluing. Then they glued the square (but not the strip) to a 12" x 18" piece of paper, gluing the square to the bottom and leaving the strip loose.  From there, I (or the sub) showed them how to accordian fold.  They added the first letter of their first name to the square with marker, and drew their favorite toys all around.
Today they added the Jack in the Box head.

I gave them each a 6" x 6" piece of white paper and had them trace a circle on it with marker.  I led them through drawing the face, and had them color them with marker.  Using leftover paper strips (cut to 4" x 6"), I had them draw a triangle and cut it out to be the hat.

I told them to glue only the head and leave the springy folded paper un-glued. I especially like the ones that look more "boingy":

I'm still debating hanging them in the hall, there's a bit of they-all-look-alike that I'm not super fond of, but with more folding practice, maybe all the first graders will be folding champs next year!