Thanksgiving Turkeys

There is always time before holiday breaks where I need to do a quick and simple lesson to fill time. In this case, I decided to do a simple turkey drawing with Kindergarten and 1st grade. They followed my demonstration so well and I was pleased with all the colors they chose to decorate their turkeys!

Tissue Collage Self Portraits

This was Kindergarten and 1st grade's first attempt at drawing themselves in the art room. We first looked at a couple of famous self portraits from the artist Frida Kahlo and Vincent Van Gogh. Students pointed out interesting things in the paintings such as that the artists included things they loved (Van Gogh including paint and paintbrushes and Kahlo including her pets.) We also discussed the reasons one might have for creating a self portrait. Before we got started on our art, we did a little standing up exercise to get to know our bodies better. I had them stretch their arms to the air, feel how their shoulders come out from their neck, find out where their elbows and fingers stopped on their sides, touch their feet, etc. This got them thinking about placement. I told them we would be drawing a full body self portrait. Once they sat down and had a sheet of paper in front of them, we started with our heads at the top of the paper. I gave them sample sheets of how to draw hair, eyes, nose, and mouths. They liked having the different options to choose from. We then drew everything step by step all the way down to the feet. Students were given free reign on how to design their outfit, shoes, etc. They were given a Sharpie to trace and sign their name on the side of their self portrait. These were cut out bubble style and glued down onto a tissue paper background completed the next week. To make this project a fun momento for their parents, I had them fill out a little "About Me" paper on the back asking how old they were, what their favorite color and animal was, etc. How fun will they be to look back on in 20 years?

Exploding 3-D Shapes

2nd and 3rd graders got to reinforce what they have already learned from math in their regular classrooms for this art lesson. They were asked to write the difference between 2-D and 3-D shapes and then to recall and label several 3-D shapes. We turned this into an art lesson by using one point perspective and learning about certain color groups. Students drew a dot in the middle of a vanilla colored paper and then traced already cut out shapes around the sides. 4-5 shapes was plenty. They then drew lines going from the shape corners to the middle dot using rulers. Any corner that would have a line going THROUGH the shape wasn't allowed. Students then colored the line sections with analogous colors, which are any that are close together on the color wheel. This was hard for some of them to understand but I just repeated myself a lot, haha. Their design was then cut out very carefully and glued down onto one of the complimentary colors. They could choose any color that was across from the colors they already used for their shapes. This also took them awhile to grasp but they got it. I love how they look!

Mondrian Designs

This was my first time teaching Piet Mondrian and now I'm wondering why I hadn't done it sooner. He is PERFECT for Kindergarten and 1st grade. I was amazed by how much they connected with his art. We looked at several of his works as well as a YouTube clip that brought the famous Broadway Boogie Woogie painting to life. I asked the children what his artwork reminded them of and I got an overflow of answers. Many students saw train tracks, streets, jail cells, Mine Craft, parking spaces, etc after staring for a few moments. I also told them how much the artist liked jazz music so we listened to a compilation of popular jazz songs while we worked on our art. The first thing I had them do was to glue down skinny rectangular strips of black paper onto a piece of white paper to create a unique design. The only rule was that the lines had to either run horizontally or vertically. I love how every child gets this same direction but each one came out so wonderfully different! The next day the students learned about the primary colors and used these to paint in a few spaces from their designs. They were told to leave a few white spaces if they wished. 

Aliens Love Underpants

For this lesson I read the book Aliens Love Underpants to 2nd and 3rd grade. We looked at the different styles and designs of the underpants on each page. Afterwards, they were to cut out their own alien and design their own underpants for him to wear. Each child chose a shade of green construction paper to draw their alien onto, which I demonstrated. This was cut out and glued onto their space/planet background which was also made out of construction paper. They then added as many eyes as they wanted to their alien and used a marker to draw a mouth. The underwear was cut from scrap white paper. I showed them how to hold the paper up to their alien's waist to determine how big to draw it. Then came time to draw patterns/designs onto the underwear. Markers were used to color them in. Gold and silver star stickers were added for extra detail. When their artwork was finished I gave them a sheet of paper with questions that they had to fill in. They had to name their alien, describe his/her personality, name the planet they came from, and describe the underwear they designed. These were of course presented and admired the next week!

Clay Farm Animals

Art Club post! I have a very limited amount of clay this year, definitely not enough for a whole grade to use. So, I decided Art Club would be the perfect group size to make use of it! I decided making cows and pigs would be super cute. I used my document camera to show them how to build them using the scratch and score technique. This took them about an hour to complete because they were really trying to show good craftsmanship! The next week we used tempera paint to paint them in. This was air dry clay so we did have some issues with parts falling off occasionally so I kept my glue gun handy. In the end they came out oh-so adorable and thankfully, in one piece. 

Lady Bug Life Cycle

I read a book about the life cycle of a lady bug to Kindergarten and 1st grade for this lesson. There was a fun section in the back of the book that allowed them to but the steps in correct order. By the end they were pumped to create their own lady bug art! We started by placing a wavy brown piece of paper onto the bottom of a blue sheet of paper. Then they used a brown marker to create dirt dot texture to it. Next came the grass! I put several shades of green paper strips onto each table and demonstrated how to cut long skinny triangles from them. Two pieces of grass could come from one green rectangle if cut correctly! They cut as many as they wanted and then glued them down. Students cut their own medium size circles from red paper for their ladybugs and glued them down onto their background. I told them they could be crawling on the dirt, crawling on the grass or even flying in the sky! The last step was getting a black marker and adding polka dots and little legs to each one. Arn't they adorable?!

Why So Grumpy?

This lesson was inspired by my love of grumpy cat. I am not ashamed! I introduced the internet famous cat to 4th and 5th grade. Some had heard of her, some had not. We learned that her real name was Tartar Sauce and that she had feline dwarfism. Their objective for this lesson was to come up with their own reasoning for her being so grumpy and to determine a solution. They wrote a paragraph on this and then created an artwork to go along side it. I showed them step by step how to draw grumpy cat and the rest was up to them. Their drawings were traced with Sharpie and painted in. This project really let their creativity shine and I couldn't wait to make a hallway display!

The Scream!

I saw the idea of children placing themselves into The Scream painting on Pinterest and I loved it! I had to try it out with 2nd and 3rd grade. I started by showing them a slideshow about the painting. They learned the back story behind it, about the artist, and that there were actually several different versions made. This allowed them to see the effects of using different mediums on different surfaces which was pretty cool. Before beginning the drawing aspect of the artwork I had them write a paragraph of a time they felt scared. This set the mood for the lesson. A few got stuck and couldn't think of anything at first but I also told them that describing a bad dream would work too. When they were done with this, we started by drawing our open mouthed scream faces, with hands on our cheeks. Then we added the long black cape garment that we saw in the original painting. Next came the bridge and swirly lined sky. Their drawing was outlined in Sharpie and then colored and painted in. I made sure to include a presentation day where the kids could go to the front and hold up their scream picture while reading their scary tale from the back.

Haunted Houses

This Halloween season I decided I wanted the 4th and 5th graders to create haunted houses. We explored what the word silhouette means when it comes to art and looked at several examples including paper cut designs. I also displayed several haunted house designs for them to study. We brainstormed what things reminded us of Halloween such as bats, pumpkins, skeletons, etc and started thinking of how to add those things into our picture. They were responsible in designing their own haunted house silhouette on top of a flat ground line or a hill. It's important to emphasize that the house will be COMPLETELY colored in with black oil pastel except for the windows before they get started. Most students really struggled with wanting to add extra details to the house including shingles, potted plants, or bricks. With a couple of reminders that only the outline will show, they eventually grasped the concept. I did say that adding things to the SIDE of their house was ok, such as a porch, stairs or even gravestones on the ground line. Once I checked out their individual designs, they got started with the black oil pastel. This part is definitely time consuming and oh-so messy, haha. Giving them a paper towel to rest their hand on while they color helps with the smearing. Once their spooky houses are filled in nice and dark, they get to use watercolors! First they fill in the windows and doors with yellow and then they got to choose 2-3 colors for a spooky night sky! The results are even better than I hoped!