Seasonal Adaptive Art

Twice on my 8 day rotation I have two Adapted Art classes I teach. For the most part I try to do a lesson that kindergarten or 1st grade students are already doing and adapting it to their needs. As most projects only take these groups one class to finish I have the tendency to do a lot of seasonal projects. It also gives me a chance to try out some new techniques with students. 

Here are just a few of the projects I've done with these students this year. 

This project stemmed from this kindergarten project. With this group I created a negative shape stencil for the snowy ground and snowman than students painted the exposed paper with white paint. We used the same techniques with the cardboard and qtip to finish the painting. Much of the work the students do are in aid of a para using hand over hand techniques. 

This next lesson was somewhat of an experiment. I've seen a lot of classroom teachers do the snow globe snowman project. I wanted to come up with a way for it to look a little more, dare I say "artsy."  

We started with a paper with 4 circles traced on it. 

We used silver paint to paint the snowman balls. With a white oil pastel (mostly hand over hand) students colored in a snowy ground. Using blue, turquoise, and purple liquid watercolors students painted the large circle.  We let the circles dry for a few minutes. As the paint was drying students made pine trees look snowy by adding white oil pastel to a die cut pine tree.  We cut and assembled our snowmen, glue on our trees, added some snow with a white oil pastel, and to finish off we added a little glitter.  I mean what kind of snow globe would it be without glitter?!! I had the black stand and name plates already cut out and we just glued everything onto a piece of paper.

6th Grade Clay Pinch Pot Snowmen

In lieu of the Holidays 6th graders made a pinch pot snowman.  This was really a quite simple lesson for these students as making a pinch pot was a review for them.  Every once in a while it's nice to have a little bit of a "brain break"and just make something fun!  With the simplicity of this lesson I really focused the importance of slipping and scoring so all of their small snowman pieces would stay on.  Using acrylic paints they were able to finish them off!

Notice the icicle hanging from the snowman's nose. I love it!

5th Grade Still Life Realism Vs. Abstraction

For this lesson 5th graders discussed many important art concepts.  The idea for this lesson came from here with a few changes.  We started off the lesson by talking about and looking at different still life examples ending this portion by looking at photorealism.  A great focus for this lesson was on value and how value can give the illusion of 3D objects on a 2D surface to make shapes look real.  Before we started our projects students used this value worksheet to help us understand the concept a little more.  

Together students did a directed drawing of a cone, cube, sphere, and cylinder.  While drawing we discussed composition and how we could arrange the objects to look visually interesting on our page.  I told students that they could keep the forms they way we drew them together or if they would like to change their objects into something else they could.  For instance, I gave the example of changing the sphere into an apple or the cylinder into a soda can.  Most students left the objects as they were or changed just 1-2 objects.  Using drawing pencils and tortillions students shading in the objects using their value worksheet as a reference. 

As a final step students were to create a patterned abstract background using one color of marker.

  I love the results and the change from a traditional still life/shading lesson!

3rd Grade Tint/Shade Ice Cream Cones

This is a lesson that I have seen many different places.  I decided to try it out on third graders to continue on with color theory.   This was a two day lesson.  On day one we discussed these terms:

 Tints=Color + White

Shades=Color + Black

Value=One color going light to dark

Together students drew four ice creams scoops.  They then watched me create color tints using white and my chosen color.  I stressed the importance of each color looking different.  Students experimented with mixing colors and getting four different color tints.  After students finished painting the ice cream scoops they got a piece of paper for their background.  Choosing the complement color students painted their background with texture combs and "mystery colors" (Crayola "Pearl it" or "Glitter It" mixing medium.)

On day two of the lesson we review our terms and they watched a demonstration on how to mix a shade.  They painted their cone, set it aside to dry, and began to cut and glue their ice cream cone together to create a value scale.  When everything was glued students had the option of adding a glitter cherry.

4th Grade Radial Designs

For this lesson 4th Graders learned about radial balance.  Students worked with using a compass to create a circle and I had a template they could use for the pie slice. Students were to come up with a theme when creating their design.  This project was very open ended so there were many different outcomes! To transfer the design students used the trusty window tracing technique. To finish our designs they used colored pencils and markers and mounted it on a piece of paper.