1st Grade: Re-Post Kandinsky Musical Lines

I did this project last fall, but wanted to post again because it was a great one!  Music is a huge deal at our school.  We are the only school in our district with an early instrumental music program.  Students travel to our school to learn violin. For the project, I let students listen to all different kinds of music (non-vocal, all different tempos).  They created lines and doodles with crayons to go along with the music and emotions they felt when hearing the music.  Then we listened to more music and used a paintbrush and watercolors to add more lines and splashes of color. Finally they colored instruments and glued them on. These were so full expression and  it was a good intro to paint, control, and paint clean-up processes.

3rd Grade: Warm/Cool Still Life

This lesson was thought up by one of the other art teachers I teach with.  She had collected various real dried flowers (Allium, Hydrangea, Eucalyptus, and Fountain Grass) and placed them in a vase.  We placed one vase in the middle of each of our four tables and had the students draw their still life in pencil first.  Then they sharpied over the lines, and finally used chalk pastels to add color.  They had to choose whether to use only warm or only cool colors.  Simple one day lesson!

4th Grade: Dreaming with Marc Chagall

For this project, I showed a powerpoint on Marc Chagall and talked about how he was inspired by his dreams to create his artwork.  Check out the book Dreamer from the Village by Michelle Markel. (Children's biography on Chagall).  First day we brainstormed dream ideas.  Questions asked were: 1)What are you dreams for the future? 2)What do you daydream about? and 3) What strange dreams have you had at night? This gets the students thinking. 

We used these figure drawing templates the first day to create a pose for ourself in our dream.  We drew figure and details in pencil then outlined in sharpie.  Next class I demonstrated color washing. I used watered down red, yellow, and blue tempera  and let the kids mix to get secondary colors.  Final day, I demonstrated how to blend color pencils with gradation technique, and let them finish coloring in.  The last step was to write a little description sentence about their dream on a cloud (that I pre-cut for them).  These turned out nice...fun way to do a self-portrait that's not your typical face and shoulders.  By the way, Marc Chagall's America Windows will be returning to the Art Institute of Chicago starting November 1st.  You may remember them from Ferris Beuller's Day Off! http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/Chagall

 

Art Room: Online Storytime

Hey Art Teachers and friends... Check out http://www.storylineonline.net/ . Right now they are featuring this children's book about Picasso and Mattisse.  This website is great for my younger classes.  If I feel like using a story to start a lesson, there are many to choose from on here.  I think the kids get more into the story seeing it on a large screen, rather than me holding up the book.  I always turn off the lights, project it on my LCD projector, and let the fun begin.  It's nice because it gives your voice a rest for a little while too! :)  Also, on the Barnes & Noble sight, they are featuring Where the Wild Things Are, read by Maurice Sendak.  Found here http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/online-storytime-books-toys/379002381/

6th Grade: Glue Line Pumpkins

I am going to begin this project with my 6th graders this week, but I think it could easily be done with younger kids.  These are two of my examples I tried out this weekend.  The paper is 9x12 construction paper, or watercolor paper would also work nicely.  First a giant pumpkin is drawn, then grass, stem and leaves in pencil.  Students then take a glue bottle and trace over all of their pencil lines.  Next art class glue will be dry and students start painting using wet on wet watercolor technique.  Encourage color mixing so that students end up with splotches.  Next class they use sharpie to outline every glue line and also any interesting splotches their paint made.  The end results are beautiful! 

Printmaking Revelation!

I am currently teaching the printmaking process to my 5th and 6th graders, as we learn about Pop Art (I will post the lesson as soon as we finish).  I use regular printing ink and brayers and usually manilla paper to roll the ink onto, to be thrown away when we are done for easy clean-up. However, I just realized that *laminating film* works really well for rolling out ink and it is re-usable after we wash it!  (Trying to be more "green" this year)  Here is one of my laminating rectangles taped down to the art table right before we washed it off.



2nd Grade: Scarecrow Texture Collage

For this project students learned many different ways to create texture in their artwork (both visual and tactile!).  We began by painting the full moon in the background with a sponge.  Next we create the arms and hat by doing a crayon rubbing with texture plates all over an entire 9x12 white construction paper.  Then they cut their paper in half and once more to get two arms and glued them down.  For the hat and face they used a pre-made tracer.  The face was wrinkled up and glued, hair and hands were added, and the crow and tissue paper patches were finally glued down.  I ran out of black feathers mid-project, so we had to improvise with colorful feathers...I told the kids they were "hybrid" crows....hahahaha!!! ;) This was a FUN three-day lesson.