In Kindergarten we made Rainbow Trains! This is Kindergarten's second painting of the year (right after the shape castle) We have been studying types of lines for a few weeks and we begin this drawing with zig-zag lines to make our mountains, cloud lines to make our hills and straight lines to make our railroad track. After the students try each lines, I have them "peer review" the person next to them. If they are having difficulties, I come over to assist. The first day of painting, I talk about my paint brush "Willy Whiskers". Every morning when Willy Whiskers wakes up, he needs to take a bath. He dives into the bathtub and goes "tap, tap, tap" on the bottom of the tub to wash off all of his paint. I ask the students to pretend to do the same. Then Willy Whiskers dries off by going "swipe, swipe, swipe" on the side of the tub. Next he decides what he wants to wear. He goes "dip, dip, dip" into his favorite color! Then he is all ready to paint. We started by creating a background with green hills, purple mountains and a blue sky. We painted our pictures making sure to fill in all the white spots. The next class period, we used construction paper of all the colors of the rainbow to make our trains. I teach the class the rainbow song that I found on Mickey mouse. You sing red and orange longer and the yellow green and blue more quickly. "Red, orange, yellow green blue, don't forget there's purple too, rainbow colors for me and you!" To finish our projects, we drew details onto our trains, like windows, wheels, and a smoke stacks. While students are finishing at different rates, early finishers are completing the rainbow worksheet shown here.
