All About Me Art Projects
At the beginning of a new homeschool year, we like to spend the first few weeks doing something fun as we’re trying to settle into a new rhythm. We enjoy art so that is what we look forward to doing, but totally fine if that’s not your thing —maybe your fun thing is going to the park or baking a fun snack. Either way, kicking the year off with an art project has unintentionally become one of our traditions. A few times now we’ve centered our art projects around the All About Me theme and I really like that because it gives the kids an opportunity to express who they are. I’ll share what we’re working on right now, but also link a bunch of other ideas we’ve done over the years down below!
All About Me Posters
I’m loving how the kid’s pieces are turning out! We’re a week into school now and my two younger boys finished up their projects in about 2-3 days and my older girls are still working on theirs. For this project I was inspired by these art pieces over at the River Trail Middle School Art Department website. We followed her lesson outline by first printing her question prompts & writing down 10 things that describe each of my kids.
Then, we made a quick 8.5x11 rough draft —making 11 spaces for them to write their name + the things that describe them. After, we grabbed some 12x18 white sulphite construction paper to start working on their final draft. When they were done drawing everything (and I told them to draw lightly about 100x) we went over their work with a fine tip black sharpie & regular black sharpies for the divider lines. You’ll definitely want to use these if you’re planning on using watercolors so they don’t bleed.
I had told my kids they could use whatever medium they wanted to work with. My 6 year old chose to use mostly colored pencil (and a little bit of washable and non-washable crayola markers). My 8 year old primarily chose watercolor pencils because they just really pop! We’re using the ones out of his new sketch art kit, but we also have these.
Finally, they both used watercolor paints for their backgrounds (and my girls plan to as well). And, also, just a little water on the places they used the watercolor pencils. If you use markers + watercolors, you really have to be careful and think through where you want watercolor or not because, for example, washable markers will bleed a little —which can be a cool effect, or a total smear mess up. That’s why we’re careful to outline using Sharpies when we know watercolors will be involved.
Here are a few other past projects we’ve done just in case you’re in the mood for something different:
Picasso Self Portraits + Color Unit Study: One year we just started the whole school year off with a color theme and it was so fun! Probably one of my favorite years! You can read more about it over on this blog post of mine: Color Study.
Royal Self-Portraits: These turned out so cute! And, I love looking back on them! We used this YouTube tutorial: Royal First Grade Self Portrait Lesson. We used these All About Me printables with them too.
Bold Initials: We did these last year with the Deep Space Sparkle Sparkler’s Club Subscription. It’s only found inside the subscription -which only opens 2x a year -so you’ll know if you have this and can look for it inside that. It’s in the bundle called Just As You Are.
Coat of Arms: The neat thing about creating a coat of arms is that the symbols that are presented on the shield are supposed to represent who you are. This tutorial is really fun because it comes with a bunch of print outs to help your child pick symbols and colors that represent themselves. My son, 6 at the time, chose a lion that he cut out and colored. And, my older girls drew different animals that had a variety of different meanings. This tutorial is found in the Art Makes Me Smart Membership under Around the World: Great Britain.
Aboriginal Hand Art: This one is fun because it captures your child’s hand print! This tutorial goes over the symbology in the Australian aboriginals art. This tutorial is also found in the Art Makes Me Smart Membership under Around the World: Australia.
Medieval Initials: We did this project during our middle-ages study, but it’d be a great one to do at the beginning of the school year (big bonus if you’ll be studying middle-ages this year). It’s found in the Art Makes Me Smart Membership under Around the World: United Kingdom. The borders and colors and backgrounds are all things my kids chose to represent themselves -reading, plants, The Wild Robot, ect.
Name Word Play: This is another one found in the Art Makes Me Smart Membership under the Math + Art Connection.
I hope this gives you some fun art inspiration! Keep me posted what you guys do & make sure to tag me on IG!
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