Jasper Johns "Hidden Alphabet"

I just did this project this week and it was a blast!  We used Jasper Johns Alphabet for inspiration.  I started by showing the kids this painting and told them that this artist liked to hide things in his paintings, sometimes he hid letters or numbers.  Then I asked them what they see hiding in this painting?  The kids pointed out letters they recognized.  

Then I told them that we would be making a hidden letters painting.  

Here are the materials we used

-Large white drawing paper (something pretty sturdy)  Or tag borad would work too

-Tempera Paint

-Tissue Paper cut into strips

-Foam Paint Brushes

-Glue

-Black Foam Letters (found them at the Hobby store)

-a few other random things to glue on( like small shapes of construction paper, fuzzy puff balls, yarn)

The kids had a blast hiding their letters!   In the 4-6 yr old class they practiced spelling the whole alphabet, but with the 2-3 yr olds we just played with the letters and I let them use whatever ones they wanted in any order.  Some of them even worked on spelling their names and then hiding it!