Adaptive Art: Giant Cupcakes

I do a lot of torn paper work with my special needs students.  We also do a lot of simple painting with sponges, sponge rollers, foam brushes etc.  For this project, I pre-cut the bottom of the cupcake for the students.  They started out by painting the bottom with sponge rollers.  Next they choose- chocolate or vanilla frosting.  They start tearning their paper into strips and gluing a shorter one onto each layer until they reach the top.  Then, they tear a cherry and decorate with glitter and "sprinkles".

1st Grade: Kandinsky Circles

I began this lesson by reading the students "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds.  Then I show Kandinsky's concentric cirles painting.  I show students how to fold their paper in half "like a hotdog" and then fold that in half, and then once more.  When opened, up they will see their eight squares.  When painting, they only start out with primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and have to mix them to get secondary and teriary colors.  Students love when they discover a new color like turquoise or magenta.  They have fun naming their own colors too- they come up with some pretty funny names. :)

Art Room: Mona Lisa in Winter

In my art room, above my sink, I have a changing Mona Lisa.  I try to follow a theme depending on the time of the year, world events, and so on.  Students get a kick out of walking into the room and being the first one to notice.

3rd Grade: Veteran Heroes

For Veteran's Day this year, I decided to do a one day activity with my third graders.  I had them choose a person who they wanted to give a medal of honor to.  It could be someone they knew or just a made up stranger.  Some kids chose soldiers, while others chose nurses and police officers or family members who had fought in the war.  They created their medals with foil and tooling.

3rd Grade: Silly Scarecrows

First we read the story, The Scarecrow Boy and discussed the fierce and silly faces made by the main character.  I had students create their own scarecrows with crayon, outlining everything in black.  Then they painted a warm color watercolor wash over the entire thing- starting at the top and working their way down.

4th Grade: Autumn Trees

For this project I mixed a little brown tempera paint with water to thin it out.  After placing a puddle of brown paint at the bottom of each students' paper, they used thin disposable straws to blow the paint upward and out, creating the branches.  Once dry, watercolor leaves were added. 

2nd Grade: Wild Things

After reading Where the Wild Things Are, and imagining (with eyes closed) what our own wild thing friends might look like, students used crayon and watercolor resist.  They had to show at least 3 different patterns with the crayons.