Harold and the Purple Crayon - A Kindergarten Lesson in Line

An Introduction to the Art Element of Line

This is one of my first lessons of the school year with my Kindergarten students. I always target the Element of Line first with all students so this fits very well into that. We begin with a discussion of what lines are and how to we can make a variety of them. Then I read Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.  We go back over the book after reading letting the students pick out the different kinds of lines Harold made. Then students are given a paper that has Harold on it and they use a purple crayon to draw some of the lines that Harold drew.

Large paper for group drawing - about 5 feet long

As students work on this individual paper. I lay out a large piece of white bulletin paper onto the floor. I have students, one group at a time come over and draw on the big paper with extra large purple crayons (ones like Crayola So Big crayons).

This paper is displayed with a big version of a cut out of Harold holding a purple crayon.

This book is a fairly small book and sometimes hard to share with a large group of students. This year I created a PowerPoint to show to the students on the Smartboard or projected on a screen.

You can find this PowerPoint here on my Art with Mrs. G website. That website is currently under construction as I set it up for my different schools and move some data onto it from a MobileMe website. But the Harold ppt is there for anyone to use.