“What does it feel like if someone else gets the one you want?” Hands shoot up into the air. “Mad” “Sad” “Jealousy” “Anger” “Disappointed”
“Oh! And what does your body look like when you are mad?”
Now I am surrounded by small grumpy faces, arms crossed, brows deeply furrowed and mouths turned down into contortionist frowns.
This is the first day of my 4-Day Monster Makers residency with Kindergarten and 1st grade in 2025. Monster Makers is one of my oldest residency plans, and over the years I’ve made changes, adapted it to different learning standards, and edited it to meet the needs of different age groups.
Originally, Monster Makers was meant for kids in 2nd grade and older; kids who generally have stronger hand-building skills that will allow them to work with the clay, draw the forms in sketchbooks, and even make their own sketchbooks. But with these little guys – the Kinders and 1st graders, who are now making the saddest sad faces I’ve ever seen, with the added heartbreaking sounds of sobbing – Monster Makers has revealed itself to be a quite useful project for working through Social Emotional Learning Competencies.
See previous Monster Makers lessons at The Annex Charter School and The Arts Center
An Overview of Social-Emotional Learning
If you’re in education or spend time around kids who are in public education, this is possibly a familiar term: Social-Emotional Learning, SEL. It’s a set of age-based competency skills that are essential to living healthfully in communities: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, decision-making, and relationship skills. The importance of each of these skill areas is impossible to overstate; these are the skills that are needed for any person to live well emotionally, psychologically and with others.
For more research and background on SEL, see: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/
SEL in Schools
Over the past few years, Social Emotional Learning standards (competencies) have been adopted into public schools by state education departments. In my state of Oregon, schools were required to integrate SEL competencies into their curricula in 2024. I was part of a statewide arts-based SEL project led by Arts for Learning Northwest (Portland), to provide K-5 classroom teachers with accessible options for teaching to SEL standards through art projects. See more about the Arts, Care and Connection project here:
Explore the modules here: https://artsforlearningnw.org/acc/
Just like other subjects we’re used to seeing in school – math, reading, science, physical education, history – social emotional learning supports students in learning and practicing skills that are vital to healthy living. SEL skills are how students understand themselves and others, how they communicate needs, and how they solve problems on their own and in collaboration. These are skills they will need as they grow and throughout their entire adult lives. School is a perfect place for this learning and practice as students from different backgrounds, of different ages, needs, and abilities are all working together.
Home, of course, is essential to this learning as well, and if you’re a parent reading this to understand SEL and how it impacts your child, I encourage you to use some of the reflection questions from the project description below next time you are in conversation with your child.
Monster Makers and SEL
Back to the residency and a look at how Social Emotional Learning is integrated throughout. In this section, I’ll include the SEL competency in [bold and brackets] to connect to specific parts of the lesson.
Day One: Picking Sketchbooks
On our first day, we’re picking sketchbooks to work in throughout the residency. With older children (ages 7 and up), I usually lead them in a simple pamphlet bind to make their own sketchbooks. This option is preferred whenever possible since it allows the students to make choices and feel truly connected to the sketchbook as their own very special creative tool [self-awareness/identity, responsible decision making].
Reflection questions: “What does it feel like to get to choose what materials you use to make art?”
“How does it feel when someone else tells you what you have to use?”
In a class of 15 – 25 kindergarten and first grade students, I make the sketchbooks for all of the students with ample extras. The pretty paper I use for covers and the overstock of books means students still get to make a choice for their sketchbook and hopefully choose something that feels meaningful to them. But before students are invited to pick a book to use, we have a discussion, which brings us back to the beginning:
Reflection questions: “What does it feel like if someone else gets the sketchbook you wanted?”
“What does it look like when you feel ____?”
“Where in your body do you feel ____?” (this would be a good opportunity for modeling, sharing where you might feel anger, “in my chest, in my fists”)
In this discussion, I’m asking students to name their emotions [self-awareness] and then to embody those emotions by acting them out. It is important to normalize their feelings and to demonstrate that everyone in the room knows the feelings of being mad or jealous or disappointed.
Next, we talk about what can happen when we feel those emotions, including how we might respond or what actions we can take [relationship skills, responsible decision-making, self-management].
Reflection questions: “What do you do when you feel ______?”
“When you take that action, what happens?”
Young children will often come up with ideas they’ve heard are correct: ask nicely, share with each other. I also prompt them to name actions and behaviors that might happen but aren’t socially-appropriate: snatching things away, yelling, hitting, etc. This discussion not only supports students’ understanding of their own emotions that lead to actions, as well as how they can make choices in their actions, but it also helps create understanding for the actions of others.
This discussion takes about half of the entire first class. It’s time well-spent because without even touching the materials yet, we’ve already set the tone for how we’ll understand and manage feelings that come up throughout the entire residency.
Days Two and Three: Drawing Shapes, Foil Armature, Clay Forms
During the 2nd and 3rd days of the residency, we’re getting into shapes, forms, armature and clay.
With small sculpture air dry clay, a tin foil armature is needed to give sculpture structure and help the material dry evenly. We start with drawing shapes to draw images of animals, focusing on classic shapes we’re used to seeing: circles, rectangles, triangles and other polygons. Then we make those shapes as 3D forms with foil and use thin layers of clay to wrap the foil.
“This is hard” comes up a lot. It is hard, it’s likely not something children this young have tried before. When I hear this, I revisit the earlier discussion of what it feels like to do something difficult [self-awareness, self-management].
Reflection questions: “What does it feel like when you try something difficult?”
“What can you do if something feels like it’s too hard?”
Sometimes asking for help is the right thing to do, and I’ll spend time with different students showing them up close how to shape the foil and wrap the clay. We’ll also use score and slip to attach pieces to the forms, and young children might need more help with smoothing the seams of attached pieces.
Students can get stuck into an “I can’t do it” mindset and need a little more space away from their project. Gentle encouragement can be helpful: “it is hard and I know you are able to do hard things.” A lot of the time, though, giving space in these moments are more important, which can be taking a break to a quiet corner or working on a different part of their project.
It is super important to give time for students to go through the process of struggle and resilience. This particular aspect may be the most impactful learning of the entire project, and rushing this process could be more harmful to a student’s resilience. Being rushed through something difficult could activate students into their panic mode, causing them to freeze or lash out violently, or in tears [self-awareness, self-management].
Reflection question: “What does it feel like when you’re being rushed to do something?”
Day 4: Painting
Our last day together is all about painting. With these young students, preparation is vital. To move between 4 different classes throughout the day with paints is no simple feat, and I manage this with creative ways of preparing the paints and materials to make clean up easy.
For this group, I prepare 80 sheets of Yupo paper (a synthetic paper that can be washed clean after classes) with five small dabs of paint on each of them in blue, red, yellow, black and white gouache. As I pass these out to my young students, instantly the questions burst out of them: “Why are there only these colors?” “Where’s green? I need green for my lizard.”
Before we get into painting the sculptures, I guide students through a color mixing practice using a small piece of watercolor paper I’ve also given them. I start with asking for suggestions for colors students need: “Pink!” “Orange!” “Brown!” Then, I ask for other students to suggest what colors we can use to make those colors.
“What two colors can we use to make orange?”
“Blue and yellow!”
“Ok, let’s try it!”
I can demonstrate how to use the brush to pick up a little bit of blue and move it to an empty part of the Yupo paper, wash the brush, and then pick up some yellow to mix with the blue. And we observe what happens [responsible decision-making, curiosity].
“Oh it’s green!”
“Try red and yellow!”
And we experiment again.
I can also demonstrate thinking through if my orange seems to red: the students suggest I add more yellow. This moment of experimenting with colors is a perfect opportunity for students to practice Responsible Decision Making and Curiosity.
Reflection questions: “What happens when you mix two colors together?”
“What happens when you mix three or more colors together?”
When students are finally able to start painting their sculptures, they jump in with gusto. Painting is really fun! Frustration can happen here, though, with students thinking that they are unable to get the color they want for their work, or pieces are falling apart as they are working. Referring back to previous learning supports student resiliency, again. I may remind them of the last session and how we connected pieces to keep them together, or point to their practice paint sheet and remind them how they had mixed the colors they needed before.
As we’ve worked together for days or weeks up to this point, at each opportunity we’ve built resiliency, normalized emotions including frustration, and we’ve continually shown how we can move forward with our projects.
Closing and Conclusion
At the very end of our last session, students are invited to sit in a circle and look back over the whole time we’ve worked together and share one memory they are keeping from the experience. Reflection over a period of days or weeks helps students see their own progress and remind other students of what they have learned. As they share their memories, I repeat what they say and try to get as many memories floating around us as possible [social-awareness]. Lastly, we end our last session with Peace to Rain: making the sounds of a growing and then ebbing rain storm with our hands.
Reflection question: “What is one memory you’re keeping from our project?”
Art projects are invaluable opportunities for practicing social-emotional skills. The opportunities to make choices, push into discomfort and gain new skills, as well as work through struggle to build resiliency are naturally present in creative activities and offer students rich practice with SEL skills. Students also practice planning ahead and making responsible decisions for their limited art materials and time, all while also building creative skills with special materials and learning alongside a helpful adult.
Warm gratitude to Arts for Learning Northwest for the opportunity to work with schools in the greater Portland area, which brought me to this residency in 2025. See more about Arts for Learning Northwest here!
Looking for more ways to engage your students or your child in Social Emotional creative learning? Check out your local libraries and arts organizations to connect with local arts educators and teaching artists. Find your local arts organization with these resources:
https://councilforarteducation.org/resources/art-centers-and-associations/
https://www.arts.gov/state-and-regional-arts-organizations
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