Our Stories

As part of their studies, students completed a series of different self portraits with a variety of materials. These portraits often tied into, or utilized skills from, other areas of study. Many of these portraits were on display around the room—but the students completed such a large number that many were also displayed in binders that the students got to look through with their families. This included pencil and light board portraits made with shells, rocks, and transparent shapes.

Highlights included plastilina (or clay) portraits, which the students used to create a guessing game that was displayed on tables lining the side of the room. The plastilina portraits sat in a line along the tables, while above each portrait was a photo of a student holding it up to cover their face. Families had to guess whose portrait was whose.

Another highlight was the students’ Eric Carle-style portraits, which they designed during their unit on his books and artistic process. Eric Carle is a prolific author and illustrator of many children’s books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and is known for his distinctive collage-style illustrations. Students learned how he made these illustrations—by hand-painting papers, and then cutting them out and layering them to form vibrant collages. Then, using their studies in color theory that they developed in Sadnah class, the students worked to blend paint colors to match their own skin and eye tones. They painted paper with their blended colors, and created their own self portrait collages.

In their work on “invisible” parts of their identities, students made “All About Me” pages discussing different aspects of their lives such as favorite things, family members, what they might want to be when they grow up, and activities they enjoy. They also created books about things they love and began recording favorite memories from field trips and class activities.

The students also viewed art and read books that explored identity like “I Am Human” by Peter Reynolds, “I Like Me” by Nancy Carlson, and “When I was Little–A Four Year Old’s Memoir of Her Youth” by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell. Often, they developed their writing skills through writing prompts reflecting on their identities inspired by these books such as “I am ___,” “I like me because ___,” “I can ____,” and “When I was little, I ___ but now I _____.”

On a trip to the Phillips Collection, students made connections between their lives and those they observed in the artwork. When viewing a painting of girls playing hide and seek, for example, the students drew their favorite game. They posed like the different people from Renoir’s “The Luncheon of the Boating Party” and imagined themselves in different scenes they saw.

The culmination of the identity unit was the students’ “I love” self portraits, which combined visible and invisible elements of identity to display what students look like and what they love. Students first painted canvases with a favorite color, and then used shapes that they had learned in math to draw full-body portraits of themselves in the center. All around their portraits, students covered their canvases with things they loved made out of different materials. They included their favorite foods, movies, books, toys, activities, people, and more.

At their Chagigat Halomedim, students presented these large, colorful portraits one by one to their families, explaining some of their favorite parts. After their presentations, students led their families in a gallery walk of their projects from the year, including ones on other units of study such as the five senses and what it means to be a mensch.

It was a wonderful display of each Pre-K student’s personality, uniqueness, sense of self, and developing skills—and of the entire class’s strong sense of community!