One of the themes we’ve been exploring in our Playgroup lately is self-portraiture. The idea came about when I noticed a few children declaring, “look it’s me!” as they described their drawings. Below are some of the ways we explored the basics of portraiture together.
Books!
A trip to the library brought us Let’s Make Faces by Hanoch Piven. It’s a an excellent book with illustrations made completely of loose parts! It quickly became a favorite in our classroom, providing great inspiration for a variety of fun activities.
Light Table
I used a dry erase marker to draw a face shape on our light table. The children then used various objects to add features. It was great practice before making our clay faces!
Clay Faces
This is probably my favorite projects we’ve done so far! I set out a bunch of random items and provided each child with a ball of clay. The children rolled the clay flat, using their self-portrait mats as a guide (You can download the template here from Picklebum). They then selected loose parts to personalize their faces with features. It was such fun watching them try different faces and the final sculptures were just lovely and really reflective of each child’s personality!