Hot Air Balloons: 2nd Grade

Second grade did a collaborative project with Hot Air Balloons! We looked at the artist David Kracov and imitated his style. Each student drew, colored, painted, and cut out a hot air balloon on a piece of posterboard.

 I had students come up by table and lay their balloon somewhere on the floor overlapping one another. I used pieces of foam to space out the balloons as I attached them (I used masking tape).

I put them all up after school and decided they were missing something. So the next day, I had each student create a cloud! Here is the final product!

Looking back, I wish I had taken the time to cover the board with a blue paper. The final piece is still pretty amazing though! Go second grade!

Second Grade Where the Wild Things are Costume

I collaborated with the music teacher to have second graders make parts of their costumes in art class. Students made a headband, claws, and foot covers. Here are my two examples!

The top one has ears; the bottom one has horns.

We used materials we found around the school! The students were VERY creative!

2nd Grade - Formal Balance/Symmetry Butterflies

I used butterflies to teach symmetry/formal balance to my second graders!

Here are the steps! We did this over the course of 2-3 days:

1. Fold 12x18 white paper in half like a card.
2. Draw half of a butterfly.
3. Trace in oil pastel.
4. Fold so that the drawing is on the inside.
5. Rub over drawing with a craft stick - the oil pastel will transfer to the other side.
6. Open up and trace over the transferred oil pastel.
7. Watercolor - make sure students know to make it the same on both sides!
8. Cut out and glue to a piece of colored construction paper.

2nd Grade - Cubist Autumn Leaves

Wow, I definitely forgot to post this lesson! Although, I suppose this lesson could also be done with flowers. Here is my example:

Here are my basic steps:

1. Introduce Cubism (Picasso)

2. Have students draw different kinds of leaves - I project a picture of leaves on the screen for students to look off of.

3. As a class, split up the paper into sections using a ruler. We split ours into EIGHT sections. 

4. Have students go over their pencil lines in permanent marker.

5. Talk about Warm Colors vs. Cool Colors.

6.  Demonstrate how to color in the leaves using warm colors.

And that's pretty much it. I should have posted this months ago!

2nd Grade: Autumn Trees

What better way to bring in the fall than with a project about the trees and their autumn leaves?!

I started this lesson out by passing out a piece of construction paper. I told students to pick a crayon: brown, tan, gray, black, etc. On the board I demonstrated how to draw a tree as the students did each step along with me.

1. Draw two parallel, vertical lines that go from the bottom to about the middle of the page.

2. Curve the lines outwards, away from each other

3. Use "V's" to create lots of branches.

Obviously, I am not going into too much detail on here since I'm sure other art teachers already know how to draw a tree!! If not, there are many tutorials online.

For the tissue paper, I used red, orange, and yellow. Each student was to use all three of these colors. I only instructed students to put leaves around the bottom of the tree and on the branches of the tree. Some students, however, wanted to make falling leaves. This I allowed. Any time that a students wants to be creative with their art, my heart leaps with joy and I nearly shout "YES, DO THAT!"

Here are the steps for applying tissue paper:

1. Rip off a small piece of tissue paper.

2. put a pencil (eraser end) down in the middle of the ripped tissue.

3. crinkle the excess tissue up, around the pencil. Hold it like that.

4. Put a dot of glue where you want the "leaf" to go.

5. Push the tissue/pencil down onto the glue, let go, and lift up! Don't flatten the tissue!!

These turn out REALLY nice. I did these with my students during student teaching. It's definitely a lesson I want to keep doing!

Here are the final products displayed in the hallway!!

Some students added tire swings, birds, etc. I love them all!

Close-up view!

Aren't these great?!

2nd Grade: Mondrian Lines & Color Blocks

I showed third grade examples of Piet Mondrian's work, as well as a clip from this episode of Arthur. Binky, one of the characters, is proven to be an "expert" on art when he uncovers that Mondrian's work is hung the wrong way!

I also show students examples of things that have utilized Mondrian's works:

This lesson deals with vertical and horizontal lines. I go over the definition of these words with the students. Each student is handed a ruler. I then instruct students, on their papers, to draw three vertical lines and two horizontal lines.  From there, students are to add their own lines. My only guidelines are that the lines must ONLY be vertical and horizontal. The lines must also start and end at either another line or the edge of the page.

The next step is for students to trace over their lines with a black crayon. After finishing this, students fill in each block with a color. Unlike Mondrian's work, students are not permitted to use the same color in two blocks adjacent to one another.

Here are a few examples. I did not take picture of the entire class's since they all look pretty similar! They are VERY colorful though!

Block Letters and Graffiti (2nd & 3rd grade)

I used this as a filler project during my first week. I talked to students about graffiti, then demonstrated how to make block letters/graffiti. I must admit, I have no experience with graffiti (spraypainting OR drawing) so I did my research beforehand. I found this site to be very helpful.

I told the students just to start out by writing their name. I used the word "ART" as an example. I purposefully made my letters jumbled/not lay on the same "line."

I then demonstrated these three steps:

1. How to draw block letters
2. How to attach the letters to one another, add arrows, broken pieces, etc.
3. How to trace around the word

I left the background patterns up to the students. Some of the results were pretty awesome, so I'm going to share them here!

EDIT: Some of my students are having a hard time remembering all the steps when they come back to class to work on these. Let's face it, there is a lot to remember. So, this is what I've been reviewing at the beginning of every class (quickly). I number all of the steps in a different color. I use the same, corresponding color to demonstrate that step and leave it up for students to reference. It's much easier to say "you still need to do step 3," than to explain what they need to do over and over again. It also allows me to help more students.