Blue Dog: Kindergarten

This project is awesome!! I walked the kindergartners through a blue dog drawing step by step on a piece of blue paper. All we used were blue, white, and black crayons (and yellow for the eyes!).

There are so many paintings of blue dog! We looked at many different paintings. I then had students create their own, unique setting for their blue dog. I encouraged students to make the setting something special about themselves, i.e. a favorite place, where they are from, etc.

Here is one of my blue dogs:

Check out how talented my Kindergartners are!

The final project on display in the art room!

2nd Grade Dutch Cities

For a free draw before (while students were finishing up) I assigned students to draw a gingerbread house. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but gingerbread houses look a lot like Dutch architecture! This is what inspired the Dutch City project.

I showed students pictures of Dutch buildings and talked about how their roofs looked, windows, etc. I also emphasized how close together the buildings are. They really seemed to like the buildings, especially after we connected them to gingerbread houses. After we finished the project, one of my students even brought in a picture of Dutch architecture which he tore out of a magazine. Hooray!

For the project, I cut 12x18 sheets of paper in half (6x18). This provided a long, skinny piece of paper. I had students use their pencils to draw buildings with crazy roofs, lots of windows, etc. with walls super close together. Students then traced their lines with permanent marker (not crayola marker!)

Students colored in their buildings however they liked with crayons. The only parts students were NOT to color in were the sky and the windows. I told students to press kind of hard with their crayons to make the colors smooth and bright.

Students used watercolor to finish these buildings! For the sky, students were to use both blue and purple. Some of the skies look pretty amazing! Students painted the windows in yellow.

With a class size of 36, it is hard to come up with a good project for 2nd grade!! I am very satisfied with how these turned out!

(Two students had to paint on a different day because they were not finished coloring!)

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!!

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: Organic/Free-form Shape

This is a fun lesson!! I do this lesson after the ovals and before the shape family. To prep for this lesson, I drew four random, squiggly shapes on a piece of paper. I cut each shape out (students receive one shape each).

Before starting the lesson, I discussed what a free-form/organic shape is. I talk about all the things that are free-form shapes (people, flowers, dogs, leaves, etc.) I then held up one of my free-form shapes and asked students what it looked like. I rotated it to see if their views changed. I did this for each of my four shapes. Students loved coming up with ideas, and it really helped stress that organic shapes can be anything!

I then handed each student a shape and had them turn it into something with their crayons. Like my previous lessons in the shape series, students cut, glued, and colored on a piece of construction paper to make a completed picture.

Here is one outstanding piece from one of my kinders! My school has empty black frames in the hallway for me to insert artworks into. This is a picture of a wolf howling in the woods! If you look closely, you can see the black lines around the wolf. That is one of the random shapes I drew on paper.

The results can be surprising! I love that this lesson gives students so much creative room!

Kindergarten: Shape Family

This lesson allows for students to use the four main geometric shapes: square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. I borrowed this lesson from my student teaching experience!

I review the shapes with the class, pass out a paper with all four shapes, instruct students to color, cut, and glue!

After reviewing the shapes, I ask students to raise their hand and tell me an idea for how to use all the shapes together. This helps get the creativity flowing. A lot of my students did "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" in one class ; however, I did not get any pictures of these.

Here are the pictures that I managed to capture! I allowed students to pick out the color of construction paper they wished to use.

The arrow shows his dad's head rolling off. These Kinders are silly!

Kitty!

I love when I get their little hands in the pictures!!