First Grade Monsters

At this time of year, as much as I absolutely love my job, I am finding myself clenching my fists and swallowing screams due to the terrible effects that cabin fever and a very long winter can have on the average 6 year old.  Sometimes there is no other word, but "Monsters!"  Thus the inspiration for our latest first grade drawing and painting project.  Thanks to the captivating power of paint, my fist clenching has been greatly reduced, and the art room is full of an altogether different kind of monster.

We started by reading the book The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone by Timothy Ering.  One of my all time favorite books.  Frog Belly Rat Bone is a monster built out of junk by a boy who needs help protecting the precious treasure he discovered.  Students love the story and were instantly inspired to create their own monster.  We drew our monsters first and then outlined with sharpie marker.  Students were challenged to use "shapes not sticks" and to use their whole paper.

Next step, we painted with tempera paint emphasizing the need to still be able to see the original drawing.  The results are turning out quite splendidly.



The final steps are coming up soon.  Students will create a background around their monster or on a separate sheet to glue their monster into.  The final step will be a writing component to answer the questions-What is your monster's name?  What is your monster's job?  Many  have already named their monsters without any prompting...I love to see the writing component of art becoming a habit.

Clay, Paper Mache, and Paint: A Perfect Trio

Oh the excitement of creating three dimensional art with squishy, mushy stuff.  It doesn't get much better...  For most anyway.  I recently asked my first graders to design a character and then create a sculpture of that character out of paper mache.  Many of them LOVED paper mache.  Others, had to pep-talk their way through it..."I don't know how I'm getting through this, but I am!" was my favorite quote of the process.  Clay, on the other hand, is by and large the all time favorite.  I will definitely be ordering more clay every year so that we are doing multiple clay projects not just one or two.  Lastly, painting with tempera paint...I am always shocked at  the level of seriousness that my students approach painting.  As soon as they see a demo on how to paint carefully and how easy it is to turn a careful drawing into a colorful painting, they are immediately invested.  Granted, there are always a select few who are still more in tune with the sensory experience of painting and so need lots of reminders about not covering their drawing completely.  In those cases, I don't get too picky.  The sensory needs met by painting may are no less important than the creative and artistic skill gained.

On a practical note, though I am sneezing and sniffling a bit this week, I am thrilled to have discovered a great way to avoid the worst of the germs during flu season...plan messy projects!  I think I've washed my hands about 20 times a day since the beginning of February.  And students MUST wash their hands at least once during art which cuts down on germs in the room greatly.  From here on out, every year,  we will be up to our elbows in paint, clay, and paper mache between the months of December and April.

Kindergarten Artistic Behaviors in Action

My kindergarten students and I are finally falling into a good groove with our choice based art centers.  They have been working with drawing, painting, collage, and building centers.  (Photos of center arrangements and visuals coming soon.)  It has been wonderful to see their ideas blossoming and their skills becoming more focused.  It has also been a very valuable teaching lesson for me as well.  I have always wanted to teach this way, but am surprised at how difficult it's been to break away from the cookie-cutter standard that we often expect of art programs designed for small children.
I'm looking forward to next year when I can roll out this program from day one with a lot of the guess-work out of the way.  Luckily, this year's students really haven't noticed that they are essentially guinea pigs in this experiment.

We start each class with a "meeting" to discuss a new skill or art word.  As I was wrapping up my demo at the start of a class this week, a boy in the front row raised his and asked, "Can we go play NOW?"  For an instant I thought, "NO! This is ART class not PLAY time!"  And then I came to my senses, and said, "Of course, go play...but use your artist brain."  Here are some of their beautiful creations...