Van Gogh Sunflowers

For this lesson I read Camille and the Sunflowers to the students and showed them a PowerPoint on Vincent Van Gogh. The kids loved his paintings and were sad to hear that he only sold one during his lifetime. We learned about why he chose to paint so many sunflowers at one point in his life and what they represented. The students got a sunflower worksheet along with a pair of dice and used these to complete their drawing. Each number rolled represented a different sunflower or vase shape/design. Gold and yellow paints were used for the sunflowers and neutral colors for the vase. Once dry, they outlined in black crayon. Unfortunately, we ran out of time in the school year for them to sign their names on the vase like Van Gogh did, but I encouraged them to do it once they took it home.

Roaring Lions

Kindergarten and 1st graders studied safari animals this week in art class! They really loved looking at the different colors, patterns, feathers, and horns of different animals. For their painting project we focused on lions. More specifically, male lions since we would be doing big colorful manes. Students also learned about and used neutral and warm colors through this lesson. We mixed brown and white to make the face color and used red, gold, yellow, orange and brown to make streaks for the mane. They loved that their lions are roaring! I love this project because they turn out cute no matter what.