Artist Self Portraits

This became one of my new favorite lessons to teach. I might just do it every year from now on for Kindergarten. What better way to make them feel like genuine artists then to draw themselves as one! We talked about what a self portrait is and then did a full body exercise for the students to become aware of the parts of us we have to draw. For example, we began by standing beside our seats straight and tall and touched the top of our head. We then touched our ears and felt down to our neck. We noticed how our shoulders come out from our necks and how our arms hang down past our hips. We patted our thighs with our hands to notice their length and then touched our knees and touched our toes to point out how long our legs are. I then passed out paper and demonstrated how to start drawing a face and body for our self portrait. Students added the extra details such as their face and outfit themselves. I traced their self portrait drawings in Sharpie and the next week they colored them in. The next part of their project was to make a mini easel out of popsicle sticks and to draw and paint a tiny picture to put on top. They used their favorite color as the background.