Kindergarten Self Portraits

Kindergarten students will learn how to draw self portraits and experiment with watercolour paints for their backgrounds.

By Laurie McIntosh

What You Need:

• Pencils
• Erasers
• Sharpie Markers
• Scissors
• Watercolour paper
• Watercolour paints
• Watercolour brushes

What You Do:

Have the students draw a picture of themselves with pencil on a piece of paper divided in half.

Teach a lesson on drawing people (we used Mat Man from the Handwriting Without Tears program).

Encourage kids to go back and draw themselves again in pencil. This time check for specific body parts; head, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, 2 arms, 2 hands, 2 legs, 2 feet and hair.

Teachers trace the pencil line drawing with Sharpie marker. Kids cut out the person leaving an amount of white space around the drawing.

Have students use watercolour paints to paint a background for their person. (We chose not to paint words or a scene. We encouraged them to paint lines, patterns, dots and more abstract ideas.

Kids can glue their cut-out portraits onto their watercolour backgrounds once dry.

Display and enjoy!

About the Author:

Laurie McIntosh is a creative kindergarten teacher from Alberta, Canada. You can follow her on Instagram at @mrsmacskinders or on Twitter at @lauriesmcintosh or @MrsMacsKinders