6-Colors of His Own

To start off this first grade lesson and ingrain my students' brains with the rainbow color order one more time- students used the stick on paper tape to create part of a rainbow. 

(If you've never used, it's great for the little ones especially.)

Then we read A Color of His Own and each student drew a 

chameleon at the bottom of the page with a place. 

The students colored in the chameleons in rainbow order to match their rainbows using twistables.

The final touch was painting with watercolor to fill in the rest of the rainbow. 

It was a great practice for beginning watercolor use as well. 

Cylinders are up!

 They are roughly 24"x24" squares. 

Intro to color, collage, resist, & 3-D FISH

Kindergarten under water adventures with watercolor, oil pastel, shapes, warm/cool, 

resist, and 3-dimensions. 

First off... texture rubbings and watercolor resists to create our oceans. 

(However we used blue and turquoise tempera cakes.)

After we read Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert the students drew a fish using shapes. 

Then we learned about warm colors and oil pastels and colored the fish in 'carefully'. 

The next day we read I'm the Biggest Thing inthe Ocean. 

I taught the kids how to draw a crab by breaking it down into shapes- they did awesome! 

The crab drawings are hilarious. 

 

The last part of this project was like my Octopus lesson. I taught the K's how to roll paper around a pencil to create a spiral and curly line. We added on 3-D seaweed. 

(We did this seaweed as our intro to 3-D then we followed it up with the cylinder lesson.)

3-D Cylinder Class Collaboration

First of all--- Thank you Zamorano!!

I had also saved this image of Lee Gainer's work a while back. 

But your cylinder post was perfectly timed!

I showed the students the image of Kandinsky's circles and then three examples of Gainer's 3-D work. It was the perfect comparison of 2-D vs. 3-D and circles within circles. 

I used this lesson as an introduction to 3-Dimensional and to 3-D forms. 

Each K & 1st grader made their own 6 inch square. I have them for half hour blocks. We did this for two days, which I highly recommend because sometimes its just really nice for the students to be able to practice a specific skill the following day, jump right in, and be more productive. 

(The second day the students added a border on to start.)

Each class will have a collaborative 3-D piece that hangs outside their classroom! 

(I'll photograph the hall tomorrow when I hang them!)

My students have named these "Cylinder Cities" :)

Peace-a-palooza

This is my fifth year starting out doing a lesson based on the International Day of Peace (Sept. 21) 

and tying it in with beginning of the year basics. 

I always teach about what symbols mean, what the word "peace" means, 

and how the peace sign came to be. 

I was actually published in Teach Boldly where I wrote a portion of a chapter 

about my first experience teaching this unit.

This year after showing a slide show on the peace sign, other peace symbols such as the dove and olive branch- and introducing works of Pablo Picasso and Rene Magritte-- I went back to basics with my new fifth graders. We reviewed color mixing with model magic. 

Then each student made their own peace sign, also including texture if they chose to do so.

Each student was responsible for creating an accompanying tag with their name and a sentence about how they define peace of what it means to them using thin marker and colored pencil. 

I hung them in the window, they looked awesome!

We are currently working on another related lesson that focuses on composition and overlapping. 

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Past lessons I have done include these below:

Primary colors mixed with a new take on Pinwheels for Peace. 

Rainbow colors of marker lines turned into paint- and then collaged onto the peace sign. 

Hands put together to form a large peace sign. 

One grade I had draw examples of peaceful and 

respectful behaviors to set examples for the other students. 

Octopus Oceans

First grade ocean pictures!

We read I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean to start things off. 

I also chose an octopus as our main subject because my first graders have been learning about hexagons and octagons and I want them to make the "8" connection between octopi and octagons. 

Step 1: Octopus drawing in pencil. Trace in white oil pastel. Color the circles in with yellow oil pastel. 

Step 2: Our focus was "careful coloring close-together" so that the oil pastels were bright and the kids could get there first crack at oil pastel color blending. Our color choice was influenced by the cover of Eric Carle's "Animals, Animals".

Step 3: We looked at closely at one of Van Gogh's ocean-scapes and how the Starry Night sky looks like the ocean. We painted the water in the style of Van Gogh and the student's had their first experience with oil pastel resist as they painted over white oil pastel wavy lines with turquoise and blue tempera cakes. 

 Last step: Introduction to 3-Dimensional art! We discussed the difference between 3-D and 2-D and I showed the students how to roll paper strips to create curly lines and how to fold accordion style to create zig zag lines. We glued on our 3-D seaweed for the final touch.