Holidays are such a fun time when our kids are young. While it’s at times exhausting to bring out the holiday magic with Elf on the Shelf, and baking cookies, and helping kids address Valentine’s for classmates, while also doing some heart magic at home, and hiding Easter eggs, and making that Pinterest-worthy American flag out of strawberries and blueberries for the 4th of July, OH! and don’t forget to throw that 5-star birthday party for EVERY.SINGLE.BIRTHDAY. I love Pinterest, like L-O-V-E it, but man does it bring out the overachieving Type A perfectionist flaws in me lol In the classroom, I try to incorporate holiday projects when possible, but I don’t place an emphasis on ensuring they happen for every holiday. This year I did holidays around the world for the Winter, but for Valentine’s Day, most of my classes are still wrapping up their Black History Month projects, which I will be sharing next week. So for the three grade levels that did finish their projects, we are studying two American artists that are associated with the Pop Art movement; Jim Dine and Robert Indiana. Robert Indiana was an American sculptor and painter, most known for his large LOVE sculpture located in Philadelphia. He created a series of sculptures throughout the world, all in different languages, as well as a variety of other prints showcasing letters and numbers against basic shapes and solid colored backgrounds. I use Robert Indiana as a launching point to teach one-point perspective, as his letters are 3-dimensional. On day 1, we learn about Robert Indiana and look at his works, then I teach students how to create block letters, and they create the entire alphabet. On the 2nd day, I teach students how to create 3D letters using one-point perspective, and they use their alphabet sheet from the first day to practice. I then have students choose a positive 4 letter word to create a paper version of Indiana’s original LOVE sculpture. Today, I am providing you with some printables to use as coloring pages, painting projects, bedroom decor, or just something fun to explore with your littles (or bigs) on this weekend of L-O-V-E. You can grab all 9 words here. And for my teacher pals, these are the perfect sub activity because it requires ZERO directions AND it's pretty difficult to mess-up ;)
Happy Creating!
love+light-Ally