Kindergarten Architecture Prints

I stumbled across this art lesson while trying to come up with some new ideas for printmaking with my Kindergarten students. The original lesson can be found here: Smartest Artists. I really liked the idea of using simple materials to get a bold line for the architecture print.

At the beginning of the school year I had ordered a great book called "Roberto: The Insect Architect" by Nina Laden and have been wanting to share it in my classes for some time. I thought it would go great with this printing lesson! However, the book is quite lengthy for a Kindergarten class, so we mostly talked about the fun illustrations and different types of architecture seen through out the story.

After our book discussion, I asked the students about the different kinds of houses that they know. They described shapes, sizes, and materials that houses are built from. I then did a demonstration of how to print different lines and shapes on the paper to create a house.

Kindergartners began printing after the demonstration. They were really enthusiastic and the only materials used to print were different sizes of cardboard and recycled bottle caps for circles.

During the next class period we reviewed the different types of architecture discussed during the story and colored in the printed houses with crayon.