Heart Art and Kindness Challenge

 

Happy Valentine's Day!! Last week I read the book In My Heart by Jo Witek to my kindergarten and first grade students. It's a book about feelings and it sparked some really interesting conversations with my little ones. They also connected the feelings in the book to the movie Inside Out. While both the book and the movie had many of the same feelings there were different ones as well. It was interesting to hear them discuss it.

Sharing this book with them is not my usual game plan for Valentine's Day. We usually make cards. I like teaching them symmetry by having them make hearts. I also do a little positive/negative intro with them after show them how to cut out the heart.

But, I found this book in Target last Halloween (had to go check out all the Day of the Dead stuff the art teachers were posting) and I thought it would be something a little different. Each page shows a girl with a heart inside a larger picture. Inside a house with all the other feelings, inside a red cross because her heart is broken, inside a wolf because she is scared and so on.

The above student is feeling creative-her heart is in a palette.

Above, he was feeling like having a pizza........

 

 

I really enjoyed the art the children were making to express themselves. There was one boy who did a picture of himself watching the Super Bowl, he was feeling lazy..... Unfortunately I neglected to get  a photo of that one. Students used oil pastels and could make their own heart shape or use a tracer.

On a another note- a few weeks ago we had a Kindness Challenge for the students, organized by our guidance counselor. I was asked to have students make posters. I used the flyer below and turned the items on the list into separate statements to inspire the children's posters. They got to pick the sentence they would illustrate.

 

   

 

I'm hoping the success of that week carries throughout the school year! It's so important to show kindness to one another.

 I know some of you do Valentine projects-I would love to hear about them

Thanks for reading!!