Kindergarten Sunset Sailboats

My kindergartners are currently working through units on the elements of art shape and color. They painted sunsets using tempera cakes, and learned about how artists sometimes find creative ways to add beautiful colors to their artwork, like making a sunset sky instead of a solid blue sky. I gave each table three tempera cakes in colors that would blend well, to avoid having any mud-colored skies.

The water for the sailboat began with a review of lines they had learned earlier (a wavy line is the one we used here), and then they composed the sailboat out of shapes. We used regular tempera paints for the sailboat and water. The students learned to wash their brush in the water cup, and then pinch out the excess water, because unlike the tempera cakes we used for the sunset, the regular tempera paints should not have water added to them.

Next year, I might tie in some J. M. W. Turner art history into this lesson.

Here are some student results from the lesson: