Kindergarten Winter Landscapes

Kindergarteners made these lovely winter landscapes. To start we drew a line from one side of the paper to the other. We then added the three circles for the snowman.  Students then got a mixture of silver paint with Crayola "Texture It" mixing medium to paint the snowy ground and the snowman.  

Students made trees using a small piece of cardboard. Students watched as I made a straight line from the ground up with black paint and added just a few black branches. Students then made their black branches reemphasizing to stamp the cardboard not slide it. I then added green paint to the paint tray and kindergarteners stamped on more branches. White paint was added to the tray  and students stamped a few white lines to make the trees look "snowy."  Cardboard was discarded and kindergarteners received a q-tip using it first to make the white snow on the background. They used the other end to create the details on the snowman. Lastly, using a white oil pastel students outlined their snowmen and added some orange for the nose. We got this all done in one class!

                                           I love how abstracted some of the trees look. 

2nd Grade Patterned Landscapes

For this lesson 2nd graders discussed space and how to create the illusion that something is going back in space.  We look at several images with foreground, middle ground, and background.  Students problem solved why the objects in the background looked like it was further away then objects in the foreground.  We talked about how we can "trick" and give the illusion that something is further back  by changing the size of what we are drawing, even when it is on a piece of paper!  

Together we drew 3 hills going from one side of the paper to the other.  We then drew our trees. The first tree starts at the top of the paper and goes to the first line, the second tree to the second line, and third tree to the last line we drew.  It was important to stress to make each tree a little smaller when they drew it.  

Students were given a pattern packet and were asked to create three different patterns on their hills, keeping the trees and sky pattern free.  Once students had finished their patterns they outlined everything with a sharpie marker.  Using crayons students then started coloring some spaces on their hills.  They were instructed to leave WHITE SPACES that were not colored in at all because that is where the watercolor would go.  After students finished with crayon they used a brown and white oil pastel to give the trees some value.  To finish off students could pick a maximum of 4 watercolors to paint the sky and three hills.

This student made hers into a holiday themed; the first hill for Valentine's Day, second for the 4th of July, third for Christmas, and the sky for Halloween.  Don't you love the way kids think?

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:

Kindergarten Ladybug Pinch Pots

Kindergartners started this lesson by talking about shape vs form. 

We then read "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle.

Step by step, using air dry clay students first made a pinch pot, they added a head, and poked in eyes with the back of a pencil.  They then divided the pinch pot with a line to make the wings and by rolling small balls and flattening them on the ladybugs body they made spots. I poked in holes and glued in pipe cleaners for antennas.  

To see last years ladybug post click here.  



To add color students used a black and red oil pastel.  They then used a mixture of watered down tempera paint to get any remaining white spaces.  They were topped off with a coat of clear acrylic.  

1st Grade Leaves and leaf rubbings

For this project 1st graders were given a leaf. There were asked to enlarge their leaf and have it fill the page.  Then using yellow, orange, red, and brown oil pastels students practiced blending colors to fill in the leaf.  Then students used crayons to do leaf rubbings around the outside (some of them are hard to see in the pictures). Students finished by outlining their leaf with a black oil pastel.

4th grade Patterned Pumpkins

This was a quick two day lesson that the students loved! I was inspired by this project.  We drew our pumpkins all together.  I then passed out a packet filled with patterns, students were instructed to create a different pattern on each section of their pumpkin.  We then finished off with watercolors.  Here are some of the results.

Leaping Lizards or Crawling Chameleons

Third graders explored color mixing and how to make intermediate colors. This was a three day lesson. On day one students painted paper using one primary color and one secondary color to create and intermediate color. Using different rollers and scrapers students were able to give texture to the paper. I had one class paint one side of the paper and another class painted the other side so we wouldn't have white paper showing on our sculpture. 

We watched this video which really got they students pumped!

On the second day we made the bodies and added legs. On day three students made heads, eyes, and tongue.  We followed these step by step instructions. 

2nd Grade Warm/Cool Color Leaves

Students explored warm and cool colors. For this lesson students went outside and found a leaf.  We came back inside and drew our leaf on a 5in square, students were instructed to have their drawing touch all four sides of the paper.  We then cut it out for a stencil and traced on a white piece of drawing paper 3-4 times (depending on how big the leaf was).  When tracing leaves students were instructed to not have leaves overlap or touch.

We then discussed warm and cool colors. Students were to choose if they were using warm or cool colors to fill in their leaves.  We did this step with crayons leaving no white spaces students could create patterns and designs in all of the leaves.  I did not make them repeat patterns if they didn't want to. 

To fill in the background students used the colors they did not use on the leaves.  Each class filled the background using different materials either using markers, crayons, or liquid watercolors.

Here are some of the results, I think it's a nice twist on a typical fall project!