1st Grade Fall Prints "Autumn Elegance"

1st graders are taking their first look at printmaking.  As the fall season has arrived we are doing, what I like to call, an "Autumn Elegance" inspired project.  Using real, pressed leaves students experimented with printing leaves.

Collected Leaves:

Using gold paint students painted on the vein side of the leaves and printed on black paper by holding a paper over the leaf and rubbing gently with their hand.

Taking the project a little further we discussed how we see artwork in an art museum.  We came up with the conclusion that art in an art museum is usually presented with a frame.  To finish our project 1st graders could pick between these colors; red, yellow, green, and orange (keeping along with the fall theme.) We talked about the word "matte" and using the color students chose they matted their leave prints with glue.  Students were to try their best to center their print on the matte. With oil pastels students created a pattern around their frame. 

4th Grade Indian Corn Still Life

4th Graders are focusing on these important art concepts in this fall inspired lesson:

Still Life: A painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects.
Contour: Shows the outline of the subject, and not the volume or mass of an object.
Visual Texture: The illusion of a 3D surface on a 2D Surface.  If we were to touch a visual texture, we would not feel what our eyes tell us to expect. (A concept 4th graders have been exploring in science)

To explore these concepts students drew a still life of indian corn, focusing on the contours to show visual texture.  

After students made their contour drawing they outlined it with sharpie.  Next they colored each kernel individually with crayon, blending and overlapping colors to get the desired color.  Students then used wax resist with watercolor to paint the background and areas not covered with crayon.

Student Examples:

Kindergarten Secondary Colors

The kindergartners last project was focused on just the primary colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue.  With the start of our next project we explored why the primary colors are important and what they do.  We discovered when we mix the primary colors together you get the secondary colors: Orange, Violet, and Green.

We watched this video to help remember our primary and secondary colors.

Using the primary colors students made their own secondary colors to create painted paper.  Students had about 7 minutes at each table and then they rotated to another table to make a different secondary color.

We've made tons of painted paper to use for our next fall inspired project.

3rd Grade Analogous Color Monsters

3rd Graders continued discussing the color wheel.  Building from our previous project discussing primary and secondary colors students explored analogous colors.  Analogous colors are 3 to 4 colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. By using these three analogous color schemes:

1. red, orange, yellow  
2. blue, violet, red
3. blue, green, yellow

Students picked an analogous color scheme and using the straw watercolor blowing technique students made monsters.  Students used the collage technique to add features to their monsters and to give them a background. 

Teacher Example:

Student Examples

4th Grade Rock Art

4th Graders explored the ancient world of Rock Art.  Starting with the Paleolithic people ending with the Native American Pueblo tribe.  Students explored the caves in France and the cliffs in the Southwest United States.  They loved learning about these ancient peoples and looking at the way they lived their life.  We talked about how these people did not have a written language and creating art was a way for them to communicate and tell us their history. Our main focus was on animals because they were so important to these people.  Students chose an animal and made a pictograph on their rock-like paper using oil pastels.  Students also were able to use a hint of gold paint to add a more modern look.

Important terms we discussed:

Petroglyph- Carving into rock

Pictograph- Painting on a rock

Paleolithic- Stone Age

Examples of Cave Art in France:

To take a virtual tour click here.

Pueblo Art in Southwest United States:

   

We took a look at this book when doing this lesson.

Teacher Example:

Student Examples: