Mondrian Hearts

This art activity was inspired by Mrs. T's First Grade Class. 

  Our version was done a bit differently.  We drew lines on heart templates with pencils and rulers and then painted in our shapes.  When the paint was dry we cut out our hearts and glued them onto black construction paper.  We then glued down black strips of paper to cover our pencil lines and then cut our the hearts again leaving a black border.

This bulletin board display might be my favorite of all time.  Here is what my board looked like before the art work was put up:

Valentine Mailboxes

We made these super sweet mailboxes for Valentine's day! 

I had all the kids bring in cardboard boxes from crackers, instant oatmeal, Kleenex, etc.  We cut off all the loose cardboard at one end to make the opening.  The toughest part was wrapping the black craft paper around the boxes.  My aide and I helped the kids with that part but the rest of it was up to them.  They had lots of different heart tracers to create the tummies, beaks and feet and even the flippers which were a heart cut in half.  Some of the kids were so into them that every free moment they were creating all sorts of accessories: hats, sunglasses, bracelets...  Some even wanted to play with them at center time! 

Valentine's Day

This is a little late, but... here is what we did for our Valentine's day art:

I was inspired by Merrilee's post at Mer Mag to create these lovely valentines.  Check out her post for the instructions on the painting portion of this lesson.

After painting our grids we cut our different sized hearts and individual colour squares to embellish our papers.  It was great fine motor practice - something my students need a tonne of! 

The final display in our hallway