Pre-K Daisies

Look at these sweet daisies made by my littlest friends in the art room, Pre-K! This is a one-day lesson for the littles that they make on 12x12 art paper. The process is quite simple - drawing and painting - and only requires a few supplies for the teacher to assemble ahead of time - yellow construction paper crayons, yellow & orange oil pastels and watered down green paint, pencils and brushes.
Before the kids come, the teacher will pre-trace a circle in the middle of each paper for a starting point.







Using pencil, show the kids how to jump around the center of the flower to create the petals. If possible, show off some real daisy flowers - observation is such a powerful thing! Once the drawing step is complete, have them color the center of the flower using the yellow construction paper crayon. For the petals, I showed the kids how to use the yellow oil pastel first. Then we blended some orange oil pastel on top. To make everything look a little more natural, I showed them how to use the yellow oil pastel again to smear the two colors together - loads of fun! The finishing touch is the green paint for the background!

End of the year: 3rd grade

3rd graders worked on a 12x12 geometric painting during the last few weeks of school. I still needed to cover tints and shades and found this a perfect way to do so. Plus, it really worked well in getting the kids to focus and discover color mixing since we were still in testing mode. I found it to be therapeutic for them to work this way, plus they had fun mixing and making as many colors as possible! Students traced about 7 shapes from my box of teacher-made shape tracers (Did I mention before how much I love peanut butter lids for circles? They are perfect!). Then I asked them to dissect the paper using a ruler from one edge to another, at any angle, about three times. All pencil lines were traced with black crayon and off they went to paint! I kept six large egg cartons stocked with paint (one for each table) inside a Tupperware lidded container over the weeks so I didn't have to keep preparing them from scratch. That was a nice trick I discovered and will continue to use. Students used pieces of white scrap paper for their palettes. 

 

A couple of groups had some extra time, so we talked about Aboriginal art and how it's based on circles and dots which fit right in with our geometric theme. I made a handout of Aboriginal art so they could view many, examples. The kids were given those same egg cartons full of paint and a piece of 12x18 paper and asked to paint about 5 small dots scattered onto the surface and then build them out to "pack" the paper. I gave a demonstration and showed a variety of ways to build the painting, making sure to emphasize that my way is never the only way. It was really neat to see the kids get into a thinking trance as they worked!

5th grade Graffiti Cityscapes

These graffiti cityscapes by 5th graders were showcased at our 2014 art show. The first step was to paint the skylines with our knowledge of tints. The following class, students used Styrofoam printing plates to make the brick walls. I pre-made about 5 or 6 of these to save time and materials. The brick walls were printed onto gray paper in most cases (some students requested a colored paper and wanted to use black ink). Then each student got to work designing his/her name in a unique font style.....the name designs were cut out and glued on top of the brick walls using liquid glue. Then came the final assembly - the brick wall was trimmed of excess paper and placed below the skyline. You can't use liquid glue behind a print, so these were adhered using a glue-stick! 

*These were inspired by a fellow art teacher. You can find her post at Ms. Elfers Art Room.

4th grade Mixed Media Landscape with Atmospheric Perspective

I can't keep it a secret anymore.....I am so incredibly loving my 4th graders this year. Does anyone else feel like this with a particular grade level? They roll with the punches and are so much fun! I can improvise with them and they are so patient and well, great little artists! An image on Pinterest spurred on this idea which uses painted book pages (one of my favorite things to use in artwork), paint, oil pastels and Sharpies. The focus of our lesson was center of interest and of course, atmospheric perspective. I am so pleased with the results! Each one has its own identity......

Sail Away with Kindergarten

This seascape project takes anywhere between 2 to 3 class periods based on the way you break it up. The kids had a great time learning how to "scoop and swoop" to make our ocean water using non-permanent flair tip pens. Turquoise and blue tempera cakes make the painting portion easy to accomplish. The sailboat(s) are made first by drawing and then cut and glued onto the ocean. The bright suns were also added using the collage method. Our final mixed-media paintings are 8x10 and so charming! 

1st grade Fall Reflections

An oldie, but goodie. I like to use this landscape project during the fall because the kids squeal with delight when we print the foliage from one side of the paper to the other. It's so magical! The first part of the project focuses on drawing with symmetry which is a great learning challenge for the 1st graders. Impressionist artists are a natural connection for this painting project.