Recently in Art 1st graders were introduced to the artist Piet Mondrian. We looked at and discussed his work. 1st graders learned about horizontal, vertical lines and how to put them together to create simple geometric shapes. We talked about visual balance and composition. Also we reviewed the primary colors red, yellow and blue. Each 1st grader began with a square of white paper and cut and glued black strips of paper to create their own geometric composition using horizontal and vertical lines. The following art class 1st graders used primary colors to carefully paint in their shapes. At this point of the art project the children were to think about the balance between color and white. Students enjoyed this design based art project. |
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This art lesson started off with looking at a map of the world. We looked at where we live in relation to where India is. Then as a class we discussed elephants and looked at the differences between African and Indian (or Asian) elephants. We looked at pictures and watched a video of painted Elephants at the Elephant Festival in Jaipur. Mahouts are the people who groom and decorate the elephants for the festival .The kindergarteners became Mahouts and then drew an Indian Elephant and used construction paper crayons to decorate their elephants.
This mixed media art lesson was rich with content and as usual the kindergarteners did an amazing job !
This lesson was full of content and the results were astonishing. First we learned about tints and how to create values by mixing paint. The 1st graders then created a sponge painting of dark and light greens followed by tearing 3 strips of white paper. The objective was to create 3 different tints of blue, one for each strip, by mixing white into blue paint. It was such a treat to see how impressed the 1st graders were when they realized they could make different blues by just adding white.
The next art class we learned about symmetry and landscapes: foreground, middle ground, background and depth. 1st graders divided and folded their green paper in half to cut out at least 3 symmetrical trees, one big, one medium and one small. Next the 1st graders glued down their blue tinted strips of paper (hills) onto dark blue colored paper. Darkest blue in the foreground and lightest blue in the background. To create the illusion of space and depth we discussed how the tree that are closer appear to be larger, trees that are further away appear to be smaller and we could see this right out our art room window. Ultimately students glued down their trees in the foreground, middle ground and background. After adding trunks and an optional moon we ended this lesson with a fun surprise, creating snow. The 1st graders were very confused when I took out a container of toothbrushes. We had to dip toothbrushes into white paint, tap off the extra and use our thumbs to pull back the bristles pointing down over our landscape art to create a splattering of white snow. Who knew we could paint with toothbrushes! Art isn't only about seeing and learning in a new light but it's about making and having fun. To wrap up our color and line unit Kinders finished with an art activity learning about warm and cool colors. First we looked at different art works that used either warm or cool colors to help us recognize what warm colors are vs. cool colors. After, each table group worked together sorting cool and warm color swatches to help us better understand warm vs. cool colors. At the end of this art class every kinders applied their knowledge individually and painted a painting half with warm colors and half with cool colors. The following art class we reviewed all the different lines we learned about earlier in the year: squiggly, wavy, zig zag, dashed, dotted etc. The Kinders were to create a setting or rising sun over an ocean using different lines. The sun set had to be on the warm color side and the ocean had to be on the cool color side. We ended this lesson with a critique of the classes work. In this art lesson we captured little fingerprints and adorable expressions in these fingerprint reindeer by the 1st grade classes. We used our thumbs to make a head and body and then added details with sharpie. The children were to try to create a sense of movement in their reindeer. As a final touch we used cotton swabs to dot on glitter paint for snow and maybe a red nose for a Rudolph. This is something Mrs. Ray has done in the past with her 1st graders and I just love it! The 1st grader also loved making pictures using there fingerprints. Kindergartners working hard on their cutting and gluing skills in these too cute chilly penguin collages. The children drew and cut out their own penguins shapes and glued them together. In this exercise we learned how to use white glue with out making a mess, just a dot not a lot! Kindergarteners also used marker to make a patterns on their scarfs. To create snow we used cotton swabs to dot on white paint in the background. I thought it was so funny how most of the kids kept calling the earmuffs, headphones.
Art can tell a story, and stories can inspire art. For this art lesson we read 2 Native American stories Tomie DePaola's The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush and Paul Globe's The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses both with beautiful illustrations. We discussed how artists can be authors too. The first step was to create a radiating sunset with paint. The following class we practiced drawing horses, we talked about the shapes we could use to draw a horse, and we looked at pictures of horses. Then we learned what a silhouette is: the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single color, usually black, its edges matching the outline of the subject. These 1st graders did fantastic!, it wasn't easy to draw and cut out a horse. Did you know our school Wawaloam Elementary was named after the Narragansett Tribe Princess Wawaloam who lived over 350 years ago in our area. In Kindergarten we talked about emotions, feelings and how artists can show this in their artwork. After reading a short story about feelings we looked at some artwork and discussed what the artist was trying to tell us about how that person feels. After brainstorming all the different feelings and emotions we could illustrate, the kindergarteners used marker to draw 4 faces with 4 different emotions. In the end the children mounted their faces from side to side or top to bottom onto colored paper .
It's important to know that not only can art be used to create a picture, but also to express emotions. In 1st grade we recently looked at slides of owls. We discussed how owls were nocturnal and had big eyes to see better at night. There are so many different kind of owls! horned owls, spotted owls, owls that look brave, owls that look cute and owls that have patterns . We also described the shapes we saw in an owl, ovals, triangles, and circles.
The 1st graders used pencil to draw life sized perched owls on black paper, drawing big can sometimes be challenging so we have been working on that in Art. 1st graders also had to think about creating patterns and designs to make texture for the feathers. Then the children traced the owls with glue, this gives a nice black outline and keeps colors from smudging together. The next art class we went over using chalk pastels. Chalk pastels blend together beautifully and we have been practicing blending mediums in 1st grade so far with oil pastels and watercolor paints. The children were to decide if they wanted their Night Time Owls to be more realistic looking with natural colors and feather patterns or artistic looking with bright colors and funky designs. These came out stellar! I am so proud of Wawaloam's young artists and the work they have been creating! Continuing our study of color theory, in this art class art we learned about primary colors and mixing. Art class began with reading the story mouse paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh and listening to OK Go's Three Primary Colors, this song really got everyone moving and grooving! Kindergarteners were now ready to mix and make colors of their own. Once our primary colors were mixed to make secondary colors we made collage mice to run around on our pages. |
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February 2016
Ms. BeaulieuK~2 Art Educator at Wawaloam Elementary Click the icon above to visit Wawaloam's Artsonia online art museum
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