Our Painted Gardens

Using the colorful painted papers that they made last week (HERE), kindergarteners cut and glued their own garden collage patterned after Lois Ehlert's Planting a Rainbow.

The table set-up had all the colored papers (I cut them down to an appropriate size) sorted into flower colors and stem/leaf colors, glue cups, scissors, etc. I asked that they start with one long, one medium and one short stem. The long stem was pre-cut and waiting on their board and I taught how to use 3 (that is THREE) dots of glue on each stem, one dot at the top, one in the middle and one at the end. We kept reiterating, "A DOT IS A LOT" so students would not spread the glue like peanut butter on a sandwich!!!

I gotta say, the colored papers started out nice and neat like this, but by the time the sixth class  arrived we had QUITE an assortment of scraps. I kept adding more "whole rectangles" to the pile and we had plenty of paper to complete the project with left-overs for another time!!

 Once the stems were glued, and looking at flower pictures on the Smartboard for reference, I taught how to cut a zig-zag line (starting at the corner and cutting diagonally) for the top of the tulip and curved lines for the bottom, so that the bottom of the flower looked like the letter "U."

I also demonstrated cutting a circle, trying to stay near the edge of the paper so that the circle wouldn't end up too small!! For the basic leaf shape, I modeled cutting a curve up from the mid-point of the bottom to the mid-point of the top of the rectangle and then doing the same on the other side. However, once kids had scraps, they were encouraged to design their own leaf shapes.

No pencils were used during the cutting process, so the result were some pretty creative flowers!!

Color choice and composition was left up to the kids to decide. The only thing I asked was that they try to glue their stems even with the bottom of the paper so we didn't have "floating flowers." Most were successful with that.

This was a great opportunity to circulate and help kids with cutting skills. Once before I posted about the use of scissors (HERE) and I REALLY saw a variety of ways that kids can hold scissors during this lesson. Probably the most creative was the child who had the scissors turned toward herself and was cutting top to bottom!!

The saddest part of this project is that I have to give all this art back to the students!! I could take any of these home to hang on my wall!! The best part was that the kids didn't want to stop creating!!

 Kids who finished early cut flowers for a larger mural that we will be hanging in the hallway and leaving up to welcome students back in the Fall. As soon as I get it up, I will show you that, too!!  

Have a great week at school!

Painted Papers for a Kindergarten Garden

I have long admired the website, Painted Paper, and promised myself that one of these days we, too,  would spend a whole day just painting papers to be shared and used for a future project. Well, today was the day!!

Kindergarteners started out looking at a photo of Eric Carle and some pictures of some of his "painted paper" book characters for them to identify. Then we watched a short slide show from his website showing how he paints his paper (HERE).

Next, it was time to splash into the painting our papers for next week's collage patterned after Lois Ehlert's, Planting a Rainbow.

Each of 6 tables had a different color paper to start with (the 6 colors of the color wheel, which happen to match our table names). I was focusing on how to hold the brush and make broad, sweeping right to left (and left to right) strokes across the paper and filling the paper with paint. When they finished this background layer, we learned how to clean "Mr. Brush" and test that the brush was clean by "painting" our hand (hopefully with clean water!!).

Then, each table had a different method to use to add their 2nd color for a pattern or design. One table had brayers, one used 1 finger dipped in paint to make fingerpaint road, one table had sponge prints, one had sponge brushes, one had lids to make prints and one used brushes. This way, all the painted papers had a different look to them.

This was the first time these kindergarteners had visited the art room, so there was a lot to learn about routines, too. One of those was we carry our art with 2 hands and another was how we place 4 pieces of art on our drying racks and then put up another rack for the next group coming with paintings to place.

Everyone did a GREAT job and we will have lots of painted papers for next week when I will share the results!!

These are a few that were dry so I could start cutting them into small, manageable pieces that kids will use for their cutting next week. I am sorting them by colors.

Primary Colors for our Mice

 The art room echoed "Oh look, green!" and "I just made orange!" as first graders overlapped primary colors to make a background for their Mouse Paint mice. I used Ellen Stoll Walsh's Mouse Paint to reinforce the concept of primary and secondary colors.

Students started with yellow cake tempera and painted about one third of their background, starting at the corner and brushing towards the center. Then, after getting their brushes REALLY clean they did the same with red paint, overlapping part of the yellow, creating orange. When they added blue, they overlapped both red and yellow, making purple and green. (That's when the ooh's and aah's started.) All this was done at their tables.

Then we moved back to the rug area and talked about how to "pinch tear" the shape of the mouse body. This is always a bit challenging for little ones, but with a little help, everyone was successful.

When the bodies were torn, students returned to their tables (where the backgrounds had had a chance to dry a bit) and cut pink ears and tails to glue on to their bodies with small dots of glue. One of the classroom teachers shared her class's reminder about applying glue, "A dot is a lot" -- I loved it!!!

 Before gluing the mouse (or mice) on the background, I asked kids to decide where they would place it and paint the bottom part of the mouse the color of the background where it would be. We had talked about camouflage when we read Mouse Paint.

Students could choose to paint their mouse with a primary color, or mix two colors to paint the mouse a secondary color. They used small lids as palettes for their mixing and many referred back to the colors they had used in the background to mix the secondary color that they wanted. I put masking tape over the secondary colors in the tempera cake tray so kids would have to mix primary colors if they wanted orange, green or purple -- tricky, huh??

Now that the art is posted in the hallway, I hear lots of kids (and parents) talking about one of their favorite books as they pass by!!
Next week it is on to some Kindergarten projects, oh boy!!!!

Organic Shapes for First Graders

Using the art of Reggie Laurent as their springboard, 1st graders finished these cool mixed media collages this week. I loved this project on so many levels and will definitely do it again!! Here is some of the completed artwork:

      

There was a LOT of art vocabulary (organic shapes, primary/secondary colors, curved lines, borders, line patterns, etc), not to mention the actual production skills of cutting, paintbrush control and gluing. We use Elmer's Glue All, so students only needed 5 small dots of glue on each shape (applied with a sandwich stick).

This girl was "painting" a practice line with water before she actually applied the white paint.

For their border pattern I had asked the kids to use either black or the complementary color of the "inside" color. Most students remembered to do that and I noticed a lot of heads turning to consult the Color Wheel!!

The steps to the original lesson are here. I found that the only step some students needed help with was the cutting. The gluing and painting was a "snap"!!
Happy Week-end to all:))

From Sketchbook to Classroom

For the last couple of years, as I have mentioned before,  I have participated in the Sketchbook Challenge. ( See my sidebar for the link) I like the informal structure and I like having one topic for a whole month. It gives me time to think about the concept as I'm moving through daily life and then draw when it is convenient.

Someone recently asked me how I use my sketchbook. Well, sometimes it stays out and I grab it while I'm watching TV. Sometimes, it is sitting there and because it is a watercolor sketchbook, I'll get out the paints and work for half an hour to an hour just for fun. When I don't have it sitting where I can see it, I tend not to do as much drawing (lesson learned!!).

This month the topic was "Spirals". I did a quick sketch early in the month called, Wandering Spiral.

Then, I got to thinking about that, and how I might use it in the classroom. Instead of using colored pencils (as in the sketchbook spiral), I decided to have the kids use red, yellow and blue tempera and thumbprints to make the spiral.

To form the initial spiral I coiled a length of yarn leaving plenty of space between the arcs to fit thumbprints.

Using the primary colors for some of the prints and combining the colors to make secondary colored thumbprints, students will consider balance as they complete their spiral, leaving the yarn until they have finished making their prints.

When the prints are dry, we'll outline them with a Sharpie.

All done -- sketchbook to classroom!

The Art of Reggie Laurent

Reggie Laurent's art is a great way to talk about line, color and unity with elementary school students. The site "Art is Fun" has photos, links and a wonderful interview with the artist. (click here) First graders will be focusing on the part of the interview where Laurent describes how he makes his art.

Instead of acrylics, students will create their art with collage, markers, white paint and white chalk. Step one will be cutting a few organic shapes out of white drawing paper.

Next, they will color the inside of the shape, using primary colors first, and leaving a white border.

That border will be used to draw patterns with crayons or markers. I kind of like the idea of using complementary colors or black, but that might be a bit much for first graders given our time constrictions.

When gluing the shapes on our black illustration board, we'll think about placement of colors.

The final step will be to make our white line to thread between and around the shapes, tying everything together.

In this sample the color inside the shapes was cake tempera with crayon borders. The white line was painted white tempera with white chalk drawn over it.

I first heard about Reggie Laurent from Joanna at We Heart Art. See her kids' version of his work here.
I love the contrast created in this art!! I'll post kids' results when they are finished.

Wildflowers Drying in the Breeze

Here are a few of the results from this week's wildflower lesson. I haven't gotten them up on a bulletin board yet, but that will come ...

The lesson for these is here.