Preschool Art Lessons

In the fall, a homeschooling friend of mine began talking about doing a mini-art lesson each week with her 4 year old daughter, so we began doing just a little crafty/art time together with Ariana. 

It's evolved a little this semester, and we added another little student. I love helping little ones begin learning about simple art basics, and I thought I'd share my plans here for anyone else who'd like to play along at home! 

Last semester, we experimented a lot with color theory and mediums. We also did a lot of seasonal play! 

I got this book before Christmas and decided that during the spring semester, I would loosely follow it and we would do some veryyyyyy simple studies of the Masters. 

Last week (our first week), we talked about the colors in the rainbow and experimented with the different ways different media looks: watercolor, different tipped markers, liquid water color, acrylic paint, neocolors, and oil pastels. 

The girls made a banner that they took home, a different color & medium represented on each piece of the banner. It was cute! 

This week, we talked about the Renaissance and specifically, Leonardo Da Vinci! Before we got into all of that, though, we looked in the mirror and tried to draw our different expressions (especially paying attention to how our eyes, eyebrows, and mouth looked during each one). 

Then we watched this little video about Leonardo Da Vinci. 

After hearing about the Mona Lisa, we had to try our hands at adding hair and clothing! (This activity would be really fun to see how they did at different ages.) 

(Find this printable here)

Then we worked on self portraits, using this printable. 

Because little ones often tend to rush through an activity like this, I had them only do what I instructed them for each step instead of just free styling it. They first had to go look in the mirror and I prompted them with questions like "What shape are your eyes? Are they football shaped or circles? What color are they?" and then they would come back and just draw their eyes... and so on and so forth, so that they really took the time to look at their faces and try to draw details. I loved their results! 

 I'll continue to share our journey each week!