Kindergarten Painted Bears

I saw this super cute lesson on Hannah’s Art Club and I just loved it.  My kindergartners have a whole “teddy bear” unit where they read books about bears, do related activities and have a teddy bear picnic (they all bring in their favorite teddy bear to attend the picnic.)

At the beginning of the year, simply cutting out pieces, gluing them and following directions is a huge challenge for 5 and 6 year olds.  This project introduced creating texture with a paintbrush (the brown fur), printing with found objects (on the bear’s t-shirt), cutting, gluing and using oil pastels.  It took one period to paint the brown paper (I had another short, low-mess activity for kids to do when they finished.)  One class was spent stamping the t-shirts and the final class was spent cutting and assembling the parts.