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This was a brand-new lesson I developed for kindergarten. It's similar to content I teach to older grades, and I was unsure if kindergartners would be able to grasp the abstract thinking required. I think they did very well! This activity is meant to support K5's Symbols unit. They studied symbols in math (like addition or subtraction signs) symbols in our community (such as road signs) and even symbols in our culture, like the bald eagle and the Statue of Liberty! In Art, our objective was to explore ways that art communicates ideas without using words, just like symbols are a way of representing ideas. This is a big concept for kindergarten brains to grasp! We started by comparing these two artworks: These two paintings have very similar content- both features musicians- but the emotion in each painting is completely opposite! In our whole-group discussion, we identified that the differences in the artworks' moods come from both the COLOR (one painting is a dull, blue, tone, which communicates sadness and despair, while the other is bright, cheerful reds and pinks) as well as the ENERGY (the guitarist's body language is sad- his head and body are drooping- but the jazz musicians are standing tall and looking up! You can almost see them dancing!) We looked a little further into the idea of energy as communication through this video of a dancer using her body to portray feelings. I asked to students to look at how her body moved and try to identify how she may be feeling. This next video was the students' favorite part of the lesson! They loved getting to see familiar characters, yet analyzing them in a new way! We watched each character's part of this "Inside Out" video separately. After watching the part introducing Joy, I asked the students to think about what her body was doing- dancing, jumping, and flipping! Then each student painted a line representing that feeling- their lines were dancing, jumping, and flipping too! The next character was Sadness- we compared her entrance to Joy's. Sadness enters the screen by plodding slowly along- no jumping and flipping for her! So the students painted slow, even, lines. Next was Anger- we watched the video to see his harsh, bold, slashing movements, and the students replicated this in the lines they painted. The character of Disgust was really hard! Fear was tricky as well- we imagined that he was so scared he was shaking, and so the students made nervous, quivering, lines. To finish, students chose colors they thought matched each feeling and painted the white spaces of their artwork. Most students chose yellow to represent happiness, blue to show sadness, and red for anger. The other emotions were a little more subjective! Overall, this activity allowed for lots of critical thinking, and I'm already excited to teach it again next year!
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