More Kindergarten Shapes: Organic and Shape Family

Since I am at two schools with two different schedules, a lot of my classes finish projects at different times. I am sharing a few stand-outs from my kinders/1st graders projects on organic/free-form shapes and the shape family. The creativity contained within these children is always so astounding!

This student graded her own artwork, ha!

PTO Chili Supper Posters

I just wanted to share the wonderful posters my students made for PTO's Chili Supper and Craft Fair! These are marvelous!

I had my class of 5th and 6th graders make these in one 50 minute period! They made these all on their own, I only supplied the words that were supposed to go on the posters. These students are so talented and creative! There are supposed to be nine posters, but it appears I am missing a picture of one of the "Thanks" posters. I will try and get it added next week!!

3rd Grade Shape Resist

This is another lesson I stole from my supervising teacher during student teaching. Basically, students traced shapes onto their large sheet of paper. Students were told to overlap all of the shapes and fill the page. Some shapes should even go off the page!

Next, students color in each section (not each shape) with a different colored crayon. This means spaces that overlap are a different color than the rest of the shape. Students were told not to use black.

When students are finished coloring in their shapes, they use black watercolor to paint over the top of the entire thing.

6th Grade Graphic Flowers (Georgia O'Keeffe)

My sixth graders created bright, expressive flowers! Here are the steps we took for each class.

Day 1: Observe Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers and practice drawing our own large flowers. I asked students to make their flowers so big that the petals ran off the page.

Day 2: Background time! I had students choose either warm or cool colors. Students drew circles inside of circles on a sheet of 12x14 paper for the background (reference the final results). Students then did a watercolor wash over the top of their background. If students used warm colors, than the color they chose was warm.

Day 3: Students drew large flowers and put different patterns inside the petals, leaves, etc.

Day 4: Students traced over their lines with oil pastels. With a smaller class, I would have had the students use oil pastels right away. Some of my students used crayons. The next time I do this lesson, I will have everyone use crayons. They just work so much better!

Day 5: Students used watercolor to make their flowers look awesome!

Day 6: Students cut out their flowers. Students folded strips of paper accordian style and glue them to the back of the flower and to the front of the background. This make the flowers POP off of the page. Voila!

Don't these look awesome!?

Bare Trees with 1st Grade

I did a project with my 1st graders yesterday on Halloween. It was a really bad idea because they were completely crazy with thoughts of costumes, candy, and fun times. Luckily, they came to art class immediately after their fall party in the classroom. Seriously, my 1st graders were crazy-town yesterday! They finished the project in about five minutes. Not okay.

I searched Pinterest (yes, I finally gave in) for a quick, filler project and found this. I thought drawing trees would be a cute project even if none of them ended up looking like trees are supposed to.

Let me just say, my 1st graders blew me away!! These turned out so well!!

I drew a tree under the ELMO document reader using the letters "Y" and "V." I used crayons only; crayons are my favorite. Here is my example:

Here are the awesome trees made by my talented 1st grade students!

I'm so proud and impressed! I may have used this as a filler lesson, but I think now that I should develop it into a bigger lesson! These look so cool!!

Kindergarten: Types of Line

I got the idea for this lesson while browsing through the art teacher tag on Instagram. When I see an idea I want to use, I take a screenshot and save it for later. This is the first one that I have I put to use!

This lesson does require some prep, unless you honestly expect kindergartners to be able to use a ruler properly. I used scrap paper from another project. I had cut four inches off of paper for another grade and was left with these 4x12 inch slices of paper. On the short sides of the paper, I picked a width and marked it with lines that would later be connected by my students. This is important so all of the lines will fit next to one another and form one, larger line.

I used a method I learned in printmaking class to mark the papers more quickly.

I started the lesson by asking the students to give me a definition of a line. This discussion guided the class to talking about different types of line. I had a half sheet of computer paper that I put each type of line on, i.e. zig-zag, curvy, wavy, thick, thin, etc.

I then demonstrated the project for the students while they watched around my table.

1. With a black crayon, connect the top dashes with a crazy line.
2. With a black crayon, connect the bottom dashes with a crazy line.
3. Color inside the black lines (the middle) with a black crayon.
4. Use all the other colors on the top and bottom! Make it random, not a "picture."

I demonstrated ALL of the steps for the students until it was through, emphasizing that they needed to color neatly, only use black on the line, etc.

I had students go back to their seats and passed out the papers with the front side down. I instructed students to write their names on the side I put down for them. I then vocally walked the students through all of the steps again. It may be necessary to walk around the room and help some with the line part. A lot of students don't want to color between the dashes, connect the dashes, etc.

As the students finished, I had them bring their lines to me at the back table. I put two pieces of masking tape on the back of their lines, and connected them all on the wall! I wrote the teacher's name on the inside of my line and put it at the very end. The students loved pointing out where their lines were. I'd say it was a pretty successful project.