6th Grade Keith Haring

6th graders learned about artist Keith Haring. They were fascinated by his artwork and him as a person.  We started off by reading his biography found on the Haring Kids website.  We then took a look at his subway drawings and paintings.  Although, at times some of Keith Haring's images seem to be "weird" the students loved them and it was awesome to see which one's they tried to recreate on their own.

After studying about our artist we started in painting out backgrounds.  Students were asked to come up with an outside themed background; some sort of wall or brick. We used neutral colors to paint them the backgrounds. 

When moving on to drawing Haring's figures, there was a lot of emphasis on motion. Students were to draw 5-6 figures filling the page.  Those students (which are most) who like to draw small found out when it came to cutting their figures out it was a bit challenging.  I had originally wanted students to pick out a color scheme when painting their figures, but because of time and some missed classes I let students go ahead and paint them however they liked.

Here are some of the results:

1st Grade Giraffes Can't Dance

1st Graders read the book "Giraffes Can't Dance" by Giles Andreae.

Overview of Book 

Gerald the giraffe longs to dance, but his legs are too skinny and his neck is too long. His knees buckle whenever he tries to twirl. At the Jungle Dance, the warthogs waltz, the chimps cha-cha, and the lions tango. "Giraffes can't dance," they all jeer when it's Gerald's turn to prance. But there is one little creature who believes in Gerald. "Everything makes music," the cricket explains, "if you really want it to." So Gerald starts swaying to his own sweet tune.

With light-footed rhymes and high-stepping illustrations, this tale is gentle inspiration for every child with dreams of greatness.

The focus of this lesson is on movement and blending colors.  Through a step by step guided drawing students created their own dancing giraffe.  Students used yellow, orange, and brown markers to color there giraffes and then cut them out.  Students then created a nighttime background.  Using white, blue, and purple to paint the sky and green and yellow to paint the ground.

Teacher Example:

Student Examples