2nd Grade Desert Landscapes

As I'm on my way back from New Mexico I felt it only appropriate to share this lesson.  I've just spent the last five days in 90 degrees and sunshine, needless to say I'm SO READY for summer.  If I could grow a cactus in my yard in Nebraska it would already be done.  My sophomore year of high school my job in biology was to water the cactus.  I KNOW, I KNOW easy job right...give it a little sprinkle of water every month or so and done.  Yeah...about that I forgot about it the entire year and needless to say it's end came much shorter than anticipated.

Enough about my glory days of high school and more about the rockstar work of these 2nd graders!  The concept here was space, here is last years lesson where we explored foreground, middleground, and background.  A little magic with some salt and watercolors really sold 2nd graders on this lesson.  

Well I've still got a few days left of Spring Break and I'm going to enjoy every second of it. But first please do enjoy my favorite cacti from my New Mexico vacay.

And to end things on a good note please enjoy this photo for the next several seconds. Does anyone have a thigh master I can borrow? 

It's a Winter Wonderland

CAUTION: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE MAY OVERLOAD YOU WITH IMAGERY

This winter (starting in November) has really brought in some cool temperatures for us.  The little snow that we've had is long gone because of a couple of 60 degree January days--weather man when is the next big snow storm?  But really when I was a kid growing up in the 90s snow forts, sledding, and snowmen were a regular phenomenon.  And when I say snow I MEAN SNOW. Nebraska hasn't seen a real snow fall (over a foot) since 2009.  I wear my snow boots with pride, even without snow, but every once in awhile they like to meet up with an old friend too (so bring back that 90s snow).   

Anywho, here are a few of the winter themed projects done by the primary grade students throughout the season.  

This is a lesson I did last year with kindergarten.  But instead of just using blue construction paper students made some painted paper to use instead. And WOWSER I love this version! There is just something about that added texture and dimension the background gives.

And who doesn't love a good snowman massacre?  I also had another one that I didn't get a picture of, but let's just stay my buddy P got a little heavy handed with the red oil pastel--there was quite a scene.

Kindergarteners made these fun little penguins too:

1st graders had a lot going in.  It seemed like whenever there was an early out, "cold day," assembly, or I had a sub a 1st grade was hit.  So each class had about a zillion things going on and ALL OF THEM were different.  

With this lesson, that most started, we explored how you could create space.

The idea for this lesson was sparked by another elementary art teacher in the district.  Using the primary colors students mixed colors to create a rainbow.  The teacher I got the lesson from then had her students draw snowmen on top of the background, I wasn't really feeling the snowmen vibes so I went with a polar bear instead.

and to finish it off this group was just out of wack with our schedule so why not draw OLAF????

But really 1st graders drew these.  Are you amazed? Because I am

Here's another lesson I did last year and again this year with 2nd grade, it's quite popular in the Pinterest community and brings a lot of traffic my way.  I really enjoy doing this lesson, it gives a fresh take to the snowman or as I like to call him the SNOWcone.  

Maybe one day I'll have so much free time on my hands that I'll be able to illustrate and write a children's book--I think this guy would be my main character.  Have any good character names?

1st Grade Paul Cezanne Apple Still Life

1st graders talked about A LOT of different art concepts with this project.

1. They learned about the still life.
2. We talked about space and overlapping creating a foreground, middleground, and background.
3. They learned about complement colors.
4. We reviewed line and pattern.
5. AND we did a little Art History learning about artist Paul Cezanne.

All that with 1st graders and only a two day project.  They Rocked it.

Day 1: Students used an apple die cut to trace around, making sure they overlapped.  With this step we talked about space.  We then moved onto complement colors.  We studied the color wheel, learned how we could find them, and then they painted using the orange and blue combination.  

Once paintings were on the drying rack we learned about our artist and talked about the still life. 

 (I know that some of this stuff seems like it is done out of order, but because I see the students so little --once every 8 schools days--I want to make sure we get all the "making" done.  Sometimes I feel like I could just talk about all the concepts forever, but never actually get to work on them!)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a wonderful interactive history and story lesson on the website.  We explored this with our remaining time learning about Paul Cezanne. 

Day 2:  I pulled up an image of one of Cezanne's still life's and students set to work filling in the apples with the colors they saw.  Using blue and orange oil pastels they created lines and patterns on the background.

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?