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.

Dots, Ish, and Magic

School is back in full swing and we are loving our art rooms!!











Here is what we've been up to in art class these first few weeks...

 
Kindergarten artists started their year in art by creating Magic Carpets, (photos coming soon!) an idea I borrowed from Hope at Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists, a blog I discovered over the summer that has many wonderful project ideas. We started out by focusing on drawing lines of all sorts on our papers. Next, students added cut paper shapes to their magic carpets for another layer of line, color, and shape.  The overall goals of this project were to start refining drawing skills and to practice cutting and gluing.  Additionally, this simple project allowed space in those kindergarten brains for yet another set of new  routines.  Those first few weeks of school are so exciting, but can also be really overwhelming. We will be moving on to a watercolor and crayon resist project next...also fairly magical.



First grade artists are just wrapping up projects centered on the book The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. We read the book, then students were asked to create their own dots just like the girl in the story.  The message of the story is that one should never be afraid to make their mark.  First graders had a blast making their mark...





Second grade artists also enjoyed a book by Peter H. Reynolds.  We read the story Ish and discussed what it means if something is "ish."  It's not quite one thing, and not quite another...it's "ish."  We applied this concept to our drawings.  Setting out to draw something can often be a challenge and a frustration if it doesn't turn out looking the way it should.  Well, the story Ish is meant to remind artists of all ages that thinking and drawing "ish-fully," is quite a wonderful thing.









Much more to come next week as we get started on our Art to Remember fundraiser projects.  To coincide with this project students at all levels will be thinking about and discussing the idea of giving and receiving gifts--an art in itself!  Stay tuned...

Cold Outside--Warm & Cozy Inside

With my first grade classes we read several poems from the book Winter Eyes by Douglas Florian.  His poems are perfect for young readers and best of all, he illustrates each poem with really great paintings that are also very approachable for young artists.  Florian's images provided an excellent springboard for teaching my lively first graders about warm/cold colors and also the opportunity to teach them how to draw the interior of a room. 

We read a few poems and then zeroed in on two in particular.  One was about a cold "wintry, wondrous" night.  The other was about being cozy and warm inside.  We looked at the details of each painting and especially at the colors.  I demonstrated a few possible approaches to drawing either a Cold Outside picture or a Warm, Cozy Inside picture. 

Cold Outside

Cold Outside

Warm, Cozy Inside