1st Warm/Cool Klee Castles

First grade artist studied the famous artist Paul Klee who was known for using repeating shapes and colors to create abstracted buildings and city-scapes. We started by finding shapes in Klee's works we then using large building blocks to practice repeating and stacking shapes. Then we drew from our created buildings. We finished with Warm Willy or Cool Carly's favorite colors. We also graphed our color choices and added them together. MATH IN ART...SAAAAY WHAAAT :)

Legends

First grade artists painted sunsets just as Little Gopher did in The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Students learned how legends start as a true story but throughout time may get exaggerated. Students also read the Legend of the Blue Bonnet and created a class bar graph of things that we like and things that we love based on their sentimental value.

1st lines and leaves

First grade experimented with printmaking and contour line patterns for this project.

Intermediate Trees

1st grade artist used tissue paper to overlap and blend intermediate colors. They also put their cutting skills to work when they created trees in the foreground of their pictures. 

Welcome to ART!

This is my welcome to art video :) This was a great introduction to art class, it goes over the basics in a fun way. A major advantage is that I do not have to repeat the "rules" to all 18 of my classes!! 

Picasso Portraits

Grade One artists recently finished their Pablo Picasso Portraits. They students viewed many of Picasso's drawings and portrait work. They discussed the style of the portraits and identified lines and shapes. Students used marker and water to create washes of color. 

To close the project students displayed their finished artwork under the document camera and talked ART-iculate and ART-smart about their work.

Here is a handout I gave student to earn "money" points and a display that now hangs in our art room. 

Winter Penguins

I am loving these winter projects. These penguins were created by our grade 2 artists. They used a wet on wet watercolor background with an added salt effect to simulate an icy feel. Then we added an adorable penguin skating on the ice!

Winter Trees

\

These were created by our grade 1 artists. They blended tints of blue to create a cool background and use printmaking to create the tree and snow!

Watercolor Leaves

1st Grade painted these watercolor leaves by blending cool colors for the background and warm colors for the leaves!

Tissue Paper Trees

These fall trees were created by our 1st grade artists. They applied modgepodge to torn tissue paper to represent the leaves and used black crayon to draw the trunk and limbs of the tree. In this lesson students discussed color theory in the natural world and why colors can change.

Name Line Designs

These are a fun creation by our 1st grade artists. They started with very tall letters that stretched from the top to the bottom of their paper. Next came crayon line designs in all of the spaces created by their name. Lastly students painted a watercolor resist over each section!

Rainy day hearts

Marker colored hearts made way more magical with some rain! 1st grade loved watching the colors fuse when the water hit them!

Swirling trees

We had a blast letting our paint brushes "blow" like the wind. 1st graders were wowed with their results.

Underwater Self-Portraits

I have been loving the ideas Im getting from my blog roll, it is better than any lesson book I have ever seen! I loooove this lesson I found at the Crafty Crow from Use Your Colored Pencils, it was so much fun for our 1st grade classes! We started with a sharpie drawing of ourselves underwater, we discussed the feeling of floating in the water, we added goggles, snorkes and bathing suits. We then colored our selves with oil pastels. THEN CAME THE TRUE FUN... we sent our portrait swimming a blue tub of "ocean" water...AND THEN THE FUN CONTINUED... when we crinckled up our art work to give a textured look of waves. We then topped this project off with using some bottle caps to make bubbles floating out of our snorkles.

This fun winter landscape was just done by my 1st grade classes. We look at the differences in realism and abstract art. We learn about the colors that make us feel cool. Then we create this cool feeling winter landscape using only the cool colors.

Abstract Tree Silhouette

In this project students start by watching a Prezi that I created introducing them to the basics of what abstract art is and why we create it. Students then create a bare tree silouette with branches that strech to the edges of the paper. Students use black oil pastels to thicken thier outlines. Students then add a different color of oil pastel to every space created by the tree branches giving the work an abstract feel.

Under the sea

This is a 1st grade lesson that allows students to explore the world that lives underwater. We start by finding interesting fish facts from books and internet sources. We have a class discussion on ideas we already know about underwater life then we build on that knowledge base by adding new facts from research.

Now that we have a good knowledge base we delve into the art process. Student do thier sketchbook connections first by doing step by step how-to-draw demos that allows them to do sketch work on about 8 different marine life animals. Then we choose our best fish to create a large individual sketch. Then we create a resit with watercolor and oil pastels. To wrap up each student presents their fish along with one interesting fact they learned and places them in a mural that we have previously created.

Space Exploration

This is a super fun lesson that I do with 1st and/or 2nd grades. This lesson starts with a how-to session that creates our space ship, the ship is outlined and we add details, we brainstorm about things that we would see on our space ship like the NASA emblem, a picture of the earth, the letters USA. Then we talk about what NASA is and how those emblems relate to us. Then we cut out the space ship and set it aside for latter.

Now we focus on space. We discuss the planets, how they relate in terms of color and size and to our planet. We draw the planet and we start with the sun and learn of its importance to out solar system. We outline our drawings with crayon, then paint them with watercolor to create a resist. The resit technique gives the planet a glowing quality that the students just love! Lastly we glue our space ship into orbit and blast off. This is a good cross curriculum with science.

Lines, Lines, Everywhere Are Lines

This lesson has students study a picture and pick out varieties of lines. The students then go on a line hunt: they create a journal of lines then scout inside the school on one page and outside on another, copying the lines that they see. Then when we return to class the students take turns drawing a line on the board. We see who "hunted" out the most lines. The second day of the lesson students use popsickle sticks and tempera paint to create an abstract line painting.
This lesson takes approx. 2 4o minute classes. The hunt is good for kinesthetic learners and gets students active. They can use their line journal to help them while painting. They can try new things like swirling the stick to make blended lines. I really liked this lesson, my students were interested and they all turned out very well.