End of the year: 1st grade

1st graders wrapped up the school year by studying the country of India and learning about the painted elephant festival. To begin, I made a handout of painted elephants to get the kids excited. After viewing that and talking together, I taught them how to draw an elephant in profile view and when they were done adding details, they traced everything in sharpie, added crayon if desired and then painted the elephant's gray skin. On day two, students painted a 12x18 piece of paper in warm or cool colors and created a stamp using a piece of 4x4 matboard and some craft foam. Students were asked to glue down at least 5 shapes to the matboard to make the stamp -the shapes could be organic and/or geometric as long as they were not glued on top of one another. On the third day, students painted black tempera onto their stamp to add a border of prints on top of the warm or cool painting. Then the kids cut out their elephant and brought their papers to me. I helped them assemble everything since we were short on time and then I sprinkled on the sequins as a finishing touch. Next year, I will make the entire project half the size 9x12 or omit the stamping part. I was biting off a little more than I could chew with this one, but they did turn out lovely.

For the last 2 periods of art class, we made watermelon illustrations which were so much fun! I guess you could say we went wacky for watermelon! We talked about placement, overlapping, rhythm, repetition and emphasis in this lesson. I love seeing the kids draw fruits - so this is a theme I will definitely revisit! I had to laugh when I saw some kids going way above and beyond the amount I asked them to draw. I think one student snuck in 40-something slices of watermelon - talk about setting the bar high. Haha.