2nd Grade Neutral Colors

As part of the new 2nd grade art curriculum neutral colors are to be taught.  OH MY GOSH was I dreading it.  I'm the type of person that does not believe in wearing black or white...it's just not my color, a little too snoozey for me. I take that back-- I have 3 things that are associated with black or white only because I'm a San Antonio Spurs fan and when I was a small child I picked the NBA team with the worst colors in the league.  If you were to look at my closet, classroom, bedroom (anything that I'm in control of) your eyes might start to hurt because of all the color, and I'm no even mad about it.  Color is like my favorite thing.  It's awesome. It makes me happy.

But UGHH neutral colors really???!! How was I supposed to get 2nd graders excited about only using neutral colors If I wasn't even excited?  I searched the interwebs looking, no seeking, answers hoping one would just jump out at me from my computer.  Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.  As I was sitting in my classroom (about ready to pull my hair out) I got it--ICE CREAM. 

The best part of this lesson was talking about the neutral colors and how they make you feel.  One 2nd grade boy said they made him feel "depressed" (I'm right there with you bro.)  But then when I tell them GUESS WHAT, we're only doing a project with the neutral colors...you can see the anger in their eyes.  It all becomes right in the world when I show my example and they get excited to make ice cream!  

So I present to you our super scrumptious, awesome vanilla, chocolate, and twist ice cream cones only using the neutral colors (with a hint of red sparkly cherry, because what kind of person would I be if I didn't allow 2nd graders to add that dazzling detail?)  To make the awesome patterned background we used these, they are seriously the greatest.

Now that we've made you hungry go get yourself some ice cream.

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?

3rd Grade Shoe and Crazy Sock

3rd Graders first project of the school year was a very independent project and they all turned out so well!  We discussed contour line drawings and used a shoe for our drawing.  Once students drew their shoe they were instructed to create a crazy patterned sock.  They used colored pencils for the shoe and markers for the sock.

2nd Grade Clowns

2nd graders talked about emotion, pattern, and the figure for this project.  Students made a clown with oil pastels on black paper. Students had to give their clown an identifiable emotion and have a pattern somewhere on their clown.  We talked about the human figure because clowns are just people with makeup and costumes.